Joy Eternal

Part 10

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4

We have come a long way together in this series. Ten posts. We started at Nehemiah’s wall where the people were weeping and God said stop crying and start feasting. We explored how joy is contagious and how it came bundled with the nature of God at salvation. We went deep into the spiritual foundation of marriage and the connection between prayer and joy. We walked through the wilderness and discovered that the valley is where you find out who God IS. We saw that joy heals – spirit, soul, and body. We stood at the foot of the cross and learned that we were the joy set before Jesus, pressed out like oil in a garden called the oil press. And we learned how to fight for our joy when the enemy comes to steal it. All of that has been building to this final post. Because joy is not just for now. Joy is ETERNAL. And where we are headed is more joyful than anything we have experienced on this side of heaven.

A Deposit, Not the Full Amount

Here is something that I think will change the way you experience joy today. Everything you have felt of God’s joy in your life – every moment of worship where your spirit soared, every answered prayer that made you laugh out loud, every time the presence of God was so real you could barely stand – all of that was a DEPOSIT. Not the full amount. A deposit. Paul calls it the “guarantee of our inheritance” in Ephesians 1:14. The Greek word is arrabon – it is a business term. It means a down payment. Earnest money. The portion paid upfront that guarantees the full amount is coming.

Do you see what that means? The best moment of joy you have ever experienced in the presence of God was the DOWN PAYMENT. The free sample. The taster. If that was the deposit then what is the full inheritance going to be like? I cannot even get my head around it. The moments that brought you to your knees in worship, the moments where you wept because His goodness was so overwhelming, the moments where joy hit you so hard you could not speak – those were the PREVIEWS. The feature film has not even started yet.

That is one heck of a deposit.

What Heaven Actually Looks Like

We have some strange ideas about heaven. I think most of them come from cartoons and bad movies rather than Scripture. People sitting on clouds playing harps. An endless church service. Floating around in white robes with nothing to do for all eternity. Let me tell you – if that were heaven I would understand why some people are not in a hurry to get there. That sounds like the world’s longest waiting room. But that is NOT what Scripture describes.

Revelation 21 and 22 describe a city. A NEW Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. There is no temple in it because God Himself is the temple (Revelation 21:22). There is no sun or moon because the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb (21:23). The river of the water of life flows through the middle of it, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (22:1). And on either side of the river the tree of life – do you see it? The tree of LIFE. The same tree that was in the garden of Eden. The one that was there from the beginning before sin entered and everything went sideways. It is back. Full circle. What was lost in Genesis is restored in Revelation. The whole story of the Bible is a love story that starts in a garden and ends in a city and the tree of life is in both of them.

And in that place – Revelation 21:4 – He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more. No mourning. No crying. No pain. The former things have PASSED AWAY. Do you understand what that means? Every source of joylessness that has ever existed – death, grief, sickness, betrayal, loss, loneliness, the enemy himself – GONE. Permanently. Not managed. Not reduced. GONE. And what replaces them? The fullness of joy. The presence of God unfiltered and uninterrupted for eternity.

In Your Presence Is Fullness of Joy

David wrote Psalm 16:11 and I do not think he fully understood the weight of what he was writing. “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Fullness. Not partial joy. Not joy with a side of sorrow. FULLNESS. And pleasures forevermore. Not pleasures for a season. Not pleasures until the next trial comes. Forevermore. That word in the Hebrew is netsach – it means perpetual, everlasting, without end. Joy that never runs out. Joy that never fades. Joy that never gets stolen because the thief is no longer in the picture.

We talked in Post 6 about how the mountaintop is where you celebrate what God did but the valley is where you discover who God IS. Heaven is the final mountaintop. The one you do not come down from. The celebration that does not end. And the God you discovered in the valley – the one who was faithful when the fig tree did not blossom, who sang over you in the dark, who was crushed in the oil press so you could carry His joy – that God will be right there. Face to face. No more seeing through a glass dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12). No more walking by faith and not by sight. You will SEE Him. And in seeing Him you will experience the fullness of what every moment of earthly joy was pointing to.

This Changes How You Live Today

Now here is why this matters for your Monday morning and not just your eternity. If you know where you are headed it changes how you walk. If you know that fullness of joy is your destination then the joy you carry today is not wishful thinking – it is a FORETASTE. Every time you choose joy in the middle of difficulty you are practising for eternity. Every time you worship when circumstances say you should weep you are rehearsing the song you will sing forever. Every time you refuse to let the enemy steal your joy you are acting like someone who knows how the story ends.

And you DO know how the story ends. Revelation 22:5 – “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” No more night. No more darkness. No more midnight singing in prison because there will be no more prison. Just light and joy and the presence of God and reigning with Him forever. That is where you are headed. THAT is the joy set before you.

E.W. Kenyon said “Eternal life is the nature of God. It is what God is. When we receive eternal life, we receive the nature and substance of Deity.” We talked about that in Post 3. The nature of God is in you RIGHT NOW. And the nature of God is joyful. The deposit is already working. The down payment is already producing returns. You do not have to wait until heaven to experience the joy of eternity. It started the day you were born again and it will never stop growing.

The Joy of the Lord Is Your Strength

We began this series with Nehemiah 8:10 and we end here. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Not was. Not will be. IS. It has been your strength through every post in this series and it will be your strength through every season that lies ahead of you. In the feasting and the wilderness. In the answered prayer and the waiting. In the marriage and the midnight. In the healing and the pressing. On the wall when the enemy mocks and at the throne when the story is complete.

I want to tell you something and I want you to hear it from my heart. I have known seasons of deep joy and I have known seasons where joy felt a million miles away. I have been on the mountaintop and I have been in the valley. I have feasted and I have fasted. And through all of it I have learned one thing that I would give everything to pass on to you: God is faithful. His joy is real. It is available to you right now – today – not because your circumstances are perfect but because HE is perfect. And the joy that He offers you today is just the beginning. The best is yet to come. It is ALWAYS yet to come with God.

So feast. Celebrate. Share with those who have nothing prepared. Send portions to those who are still in the wilderness. Keep oil in your lamp. Stay on the wall. Worship at midnight. And when the enemy tells you it is over and the joy is gone and you are finished – look him in the eye and say what Wigglesworth said.

“Oh it’s just you.”

And then roll over and go back to rejoicing. Because the joy of the Lord is your strength. And it is eternal.

A Prayer

Father, thank You. Thank You for joy. Thank You that it is my strength and my inheritance and my destiny. Thank You that the best moments of joy I have known in Your presence were just the deposit and that the fullness is still coming. I do not deserve it. I could never earn it. But You give it freely because that is who You are. Help me to carry this joy well – to share it, to protect it, to let it spill into every corner of my life and every person I meet. And when I see You face to face one day – and I will – let the joy of that moment be the completion of everything You started in me the day I said yes. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“Eternal life is the nature of God. It is what God is. When we receive eternal life, we receive the nature and substance of Deity.”

– E.W. Kenyon

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

– C.S. Lewis

Always i-CH

Steal my Joy? I don’t Think So!

Part 9

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Ephesians 4:30

If you have been following this series from the beginning you now know that joy is not a feeling. It is your strength (Post 1). It is contagious (Post 2). It came bundled with your salvation (Post 3). It is the foundation of a spiritual marriage (Post 4). It is connected to your prayer life (Post 5). It survives the wilderness (Post 6). It heals (Post 7). And it was the very thing that carried Jesus through the cross (Post 8). Joy is not a nice extra. It is ESSENTIAL to the Christian life. Which means the enemy has a very big problem with it. And he has a strategy to deal with it. That strategy is simple: if he cannot destroy you he will try to steal your joy. Because a Christian without joy is a Christian without power. And a Christian without power is no threat to him at all.

The Thief Has a Pattern

Let me tell you something about the enemy that I think every Christian needs to understand. He is not creative. He has ONE playbook and he has been running it since the garden of Eden. He steals. He kills. He destroys. That is it. Jesus said so Himself in John 10:10. The thief comes ONLY to steal and kill and destroy. Only. That is his entire range. He does not have a plan B. He does not innovate. He just keeps running the same plays over and over because they keep working. And the reason they keep working is that we keep falling for them.

When it comes to joy his approach is not complicated. He does not walk up to you and say “Hand over your joy.” That would be too obvious. Even the most spiritually drowsy Christian would recognise that. No – he is subtler than that. He erodes it. Slowly. Quietly. One offence at a time. One disappointment at a time. One unanswered prayer at a time. One harsh word, one betrayal, one sleepless night, one scrolling session through social media where everyone else’s life looks better than yours. He does not steal your joy in one dramatic moment. He bleeds it out like a slow puncture in a tyre. You do not even notice until you are driving on the rim and wondering why everything feels so hard.

Nehemiah Knew This Enemy

Go back to where this series started. Nehemiah 8 – the people weeping, the command to feast, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Beautiful moment. But the story does not end there. If you keep reading into chapters 4 and 6 you find that Nehemiah had enemies. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. And their strategy against the rebuilding of the wall was textbook enemy playbook. First they MOCKED. “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves?” (Nehemiah 4:2). Tobiah added “If a fox goes up on what they are building he will break down their stone wall” (4:3). Sound familiar? That is the voice that says “Who do you think you are? You think God is going to use YOU? Look at you. You are not qualified. You are not educated. You are not gifted enough. A fox could knock down what you are building.” That is the enemy’s first play. Mockery. Discouragement. Making you feel small.

When that did not work they tried INTIMIDATION. They threatened violence. They plotted attacks. They tried to get Nehemiah to stop building and come down for a “meeting” – which was really a trap (Nehemiah 6:2). Nehemiah’s response is one of my favourite lines in all of Scripture: “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3). Let me tell you – that needs to be on a t-shirt. I AM DOING A GREAT WORK AND I CANNOT COME DOWN. The enemy will always try to pull you off the wall. He will always try to get you into a meeting about your problems instead of staying focused on your purpose. And the answer is the same every time. I am busy. I am building. I am not coming down to your level to have a conversation about whether or not God is real or whether or not I am qualified or whether or not this is going to work. I KNOW it is going to work. God said so.

And when mockery and intimidation both failed they tried DECEPTION. They sent a false prophet to tell Nehemiah to hide in the temple because people were coming to kill him (Nehemiah 6:10–12). And Nehemiah saw right through it. “I perceived that God had not sent him” (6:12). The enemy will use religious-sounding voices to get you to retreat. People who sound spiritual but whose advice would take you off the wall and into hiding. Nehemiah’s discernment saved him. He kept building. The wall was finished. And the joy that had been declared at the beginning – the joy of the Lord is your strength – carried them all the way to completion.

The Religious Spirit Is the Sneakiest Thief

Here is one that might surprise you. One of the most effective joy-stealers in the Christian life is not the world. It is not the flesh. It is the religious spirit operating inside the church. And I say this carefully because I love the church. But we need to be honest about this.

A religious spirit turns everything into duty. Prayer becomes an obligation instead of a conversation. Worship becomes a performance instead of an overflow. Bible reading becomes a checklist item instead of an encounter with the living God. And joy – joy gets replaced with solemnity. With seriousness. With the quiet unspoken belief that the more miserable you are the more spiritual you must be. I have sat in churches where you would think that laughing was a sin. Where the atmosphere was so heavy you needed a crowbar to pry a smile out of anyone. That is not the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is LOVE, JOY, peace (Galatians 5:22). If joy is missing something else is operating. And it is not from God.

In my earlier post on Fear I wrote about how our greatest fear as Christians should be grieving the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4:30 – “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Do you know what grieves the Holy Spirit? Among other things – joylessness. When you have been given the joy of the Lord as your strength and you choose to walk around defeated and discouraged and miserable, that grieves the Spirit who lives in you. He deposited joy in you at salvation. It is a fruit of His presence. And when you let the enemy bleed it out of you without a fight you are letting the thief take what was never his to have.

How to Guard What Is Yours

So how do you protect your joy? Let me give you some practical things because theory without application is just noise.

First – KNOW YOUR ENEMY. Peter says “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Notice he says LIKE a roaring lion. Not that he IS a lion. Jesus is the Lion of Judah. The enemy is an impersonator. He makes a lot of noise but he has already been defeated. Smith Wigglesworth looked at Satan at the foot of his bed and said “Oh it’s just you” and rolled over and went back to sleep. That is the posture of a man who knows his enemy’s limitations.

Second – GUARD YOUR GATES. What are you letting into your eyes and ears? What are you scrolling through at midnight? What conversations are you sitting in? What voices are you giving access to your spirit? Proverbs 4:23 says “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” Your heart is the source. If you let the enemy pollute the source the whole river goes bad. You would not drink water from a contaminated well. So why are you feeding your spirit from contaminated sources and wondering why your joy has dried up?

Third – WORSHIP AS WARFARE. This is the one most people miss. Worship is not just something you do on Sunday morning. It is a WEAPON. When Paul and Silas sang at midnight the prison shook. When Jehoshaphat sent the worshippers out AHEAD of the army the enemy defeated themselves (2 Chronicles 20:21–22). When you worship in the middle of the attack you are declaring to the enemy that he does not have authority over your joy. You are saying “You can take my comfort. You can take my circumstances. But you cannot have my worship and you CANNOT have my joy.” Try it. The next time the enemy comes for your joy – and he will – open your mouth and worship. Out loud. It does not have to be pretty. It just has to be real. And watch what shakes loose.

Fourth – STAY ON THE WALL. Nehemiah refused to come down. He refused to engage with distractions. He refused to attend the enemy’s meetings. And the wall got built. You have a wall to build too. A marriage. A family. A ministry. A calling. Whatever God has put in your hands – STAY ON IT. The enemy will send Sanballats and Tobiahs and false prophets and well-meaning friends who think you should take a break and religious voices that tell you to play it safe. Ignore them all. You are doing a great work and you cannot come down.

Joy Regenerates

Here is the beautiful thing about joy that the enemy does not want you to know. Joy is a FRUIT of the Spirit. And fruit regenerates. You can pick an apple off a tree and the tree grows another one. You can squeeze an orange dry and the tree produces more. The enemy can steal your joy today and the Holy Spirit can produce a fresh crop tomorrow. He cannot permanently take what the Spirit permanently supplies. He can harass you. He can discourage you. He can make you FEEL joyless. But he cannot reach inside your spirit where the Holy Spirit dwells and rip out what God has planted there. That is above his pay grade.

The joy of the Lord is your strength. Not was. Not will be. IS. Present tense. Ongoing. Renewable. The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy but Jesus came that you may have life and have it ABUNDANTLY. Abundantly means more than enough. It means overflowing. It means there is so much joy available to you that no matter how much the enemy steals there is always more where that came from.

So let him try. Let him send his mockery and his intimidation and his deception and his religious spirits and every other tool in his tired old playbook. You know who you are. You know whose you are. You know what you carry. And you are not coming down off that wall.

Steal my joy? I don’t think so.

A Prayer

Father, I am done letting the enemy take what is not his. My joy belongs to You and it was purchased at a price I could never repay. Forgive me for the times I handed it over without a fight. Today I take it back. I put on worship as my weapon. I guard my gates. I stay on the wall. And I declare to every Sanballat and Tobiah and lying voice that comes against me – I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Fill me fresh today with a joy that the enemy cannot touch because it comes from a source he cannot reach. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“Great faith is the product of great fights. Great testimonies are the outcome of great tests.”

– Smith Wigglesworth

“The devil is not terrified of us. He is terrified of Him in us.”

– A.W. Tozer

Always i-CH

The Joy Set Before Him

Part 8

“Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2

I want you to read that verse one more time. Slowly. Because buried inside it is something so staggering that if you really let it hit you it will change the way you see everything. Jesus endured the cross FOR THE JOY that was set before Him. Not in spite of joy. Not waiting for joy on the other side. FOR joy. Joy was the fuel that carried Him through the worst suffering any human being has ever endured. The question is – what was that joy? What could possibly be so joyful that it made the cross endurable?

What the Cross Actually Cost

We talk about the cross so often that I think we have lost the weight of it. We wear it around our necks. We hang it on our walls. We sing about it on Sundays. We put it on bumper stickers next to “My other car is a chariot of fire.” And all of that is fine. But I wonder sometimes if we have domesticated the most brutal event in human history. If we have turned the thing that split history in two into background decoration.

Crucifixion was designed by the Roman Empire to be the most painful and humiliating form of execution ever devised. The word excruciating literally comes from the Latin excruciatus – “out of the cross.” The Romans invented a word for the kind of pain that crucifixion produced because no existing word was sufficient. That is what Jesus walked into. Willingly. Knowing exactly what was coming.

But the physical pain was not the worst of it. Isaiah 53:6 says “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Every sin. Every act of rebellion. Every dark thought and selfish motive and broken promise from every human being who ever lived or ever would live – all of it was placed on one man. Paul says it even more starkly in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He did not just CARRY our sin. He BECAME sin. The one being in all of existence who had never known sin was made to BE it. And in that moment the Father turned His face away. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). For the first time in all of eternity the Son experienced separation from the Father. That was the true cost of the cross. Not the nails. Not the thorns. The separation.

And Jesus endured ALL of that – the physical agony, the shame, the sin, the separation – for JOY.

So What Was the Joy?

Here is where it gets personal. Here is where it gets so personal that if you really take it in you may need to put this down and sit quietly for a while.

The joy set before Jesus was YOU.

Not heaven. He had heaven. He came FROM heaven. Not the throne. He had the throne before the world was made (“Glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world existed” John 17:5). Not the glory – He had that too. Do you see? He was not enduring the cross to GET something He did not have. He was enduring the cross to get SOMEONE He did not have. You. Me. Us. The joy set before Him was the bride. The church. The people who would be rescued by what He was about to do. We were the treasure He did not yet possess and He was willing to pay everything to get us.

Think about that. In the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was sweating drops of blood and asking the Father if there was any other way – and the answer was no – the thing that kept Him walking toward that cross was the thought of YOU. Your face. Your name. Your rescue. He looked through time and saw you and said “They are worth it.” That is not theology. That is love so extreme it defies every category we have for it.

And here is something that ties this entire series together in a way I did not expect. The word Gethsemane comes from the Aramaic Gat Shmanim. It means “oil press.” It is the place where olives were CRUSHED to produce oil. Do you see this? We have been talking throughout this series about the oil of gladness – the ten virgins and their lamps, the oil of the Holy Spirit, couples filling their lamps together, the joy that lights the way. And here is Jesus, the night before the cross, being crushed in a place literally called THE OIL PRESS. Olives had to be crushed to produce oil. Jesus was crushed to produce the oil of gladness that would be poured out at Pentecost and into every believer who would ever live. The very joy we have been writing about for eight posts was pressed out of the Son of God in a garden named for the process. His crushing became our oil. His agony became our joy. That is not a coincidence. God does not do coincidences.

In my earlier post Jesus Believes in You I wrote about how Jesus entrusted the disciples with the work that He Himself could not do in His own country because of their unbelief. He had faith IN them. Do you see the pattern? The Father had faith in the Son. The Son had faith in the disciples. And on the cross the Son looked at ALL of humanity and said “I have joy over them. They are the treasure. They are the prize.” That is the faith OF God expressed in its most extreme form. And it was aimed at you.

The Parable That Explains Everything

Jesus told three parables in Luke 15 and every one of them is about the same thing – the JOY of recovery. A shepherd loses one sheep out of a hundred. Now any sensible farmer would write that off. One percent loss? That is a good year. But this shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one. He searches until he finds it. And when he does he does not just breathe a sigh of relief and move on. He calls his friends and neighbours together and says “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost” (Luke 15:6). He throws a party. Over one sheep. A woman loses one coin out of ten. She sweeps the whole house until she finds it. Same response – “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost” (Luke 15:9). And then comes the big one. The father whose son had taken his inheritance – which in that culture was essentially saying “I wish you were dead” – and wasted it in a far country. The boy comes home rehearsing his apology speech the whole way. He has got it memorised. He is ready to grovel. And the father sees him coming from AFAR OFF – that phrase again, the same phrase used of Rebekah seeing Isaac – and he RUNS to him. Does not wait for the speech. Does not stand at the door with his arms folded. He runs. In the ancient Near East a dignified man did not run. It was beneath him. This father did not care. He hiked up his robes and sprinted. And he threw a party so big that the older brother got jealous. That was one heck of a party.

Do you see what Jesus is teaching? The joy of heaven is not in the ninety-nine who stayed. It is in the ONE who came home. “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). Heaven throws a party when YOU come home. That is not a nice thought. That is the theology of the cross. Jesus endured everything He endured because the party at the end – the joy of bringing lost people home – was worth it. YOU were worth it.

This Changes How You See Yourself

I spent years believing I was a bum. I wrote about this in the I Am Not a Bum series. The enemy uses human voices to plant lies about your identity before you ever discover the truth. And one of the deepest lies he plants is this: you are not worth it. You are not worth fighting for. You are not worth suffering for. You are certainly not worth dying for. Let me tell you something – the cross says otherwise. The cross looked at every lie the enemy ever whispered about you and said “THAT is what I think of your opinion.”

If you ever doubt your value – and we all do, even those of us who should know better by now – go back to Hebrews 12:2. The Son of God looked at the cross with all its horror and then looked at you and decided that the joy of having you was greater than the pain of saving you. That is your worth. Not what someone said about you. Not what you have accomplished or failed to accomplish. Not what the mirror says or what the world says or what that voice in your head says at three in the morning. Your worth was decided on a Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem when the Creator of the universe hung on a Roman cross and refused to come down because YOU were the joy set before Him.

HOW COOL IS THAT?! How staggering. How utterly beyond anything we deserve. And yet here we are – rescued, redeemed, and called the joy of the Lord.

The Joy That Endures

Here is one more thing I want you to see in this verse because it matters for where you are right now. Hebrews 12:2 does not just say Jesus had joy. It says He endured the cross FOR that joy. The joy was future. It was set BEFORE Him – out ahead, on the other side of the suffering. He had not received it yet. He was looking at it by faith. And the looking – the anticipation, the certainty that it was coming – gave Him the power to endure.

That is the model for your life. Whatever you are enduring right now there is a joy set before you. Not a vague hope. A certainty. The certainty that God finishes what He starts (Philippians 1:6). The certainty that what He has promised He will deliver. The certainty that you are heading somewhere so good that the suffering of this present time is not worth comparing to the glory that is going to be revealed (Romans 8:18). Jesus endured by looking ahead. And so can you.

The cross was not the end of the story. If it were we would all be in trouble and this would be the most depressing blog post ever written. But it was not the end. The resurrection was. The empty tomb was. The ascension was. And Hebrews 12:2 tells us where Jesus is now – seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Seated. Not pacing. Not worried. Not wringing His hands wondering if it all worked out. SEATED. The suffering is over. The joy He endured for has been realised. And because He went through it YOU get to share in the outcome. His joy becomes your joy. His victory becomes your victory. His seat at the right hand is the guarantee that everything He did on that cross WORKED.

You are the joy set before Him. Let that truth go so deep that nothing the enemy says can shake it loose. And the next time you are tempted to doubt your worth or question whether God really loves you or wonder if the suffering you are going through has any purpose at all – remember the cross. Remember what it cost. And remember why He did it.

He did it for joy. And that joy was you.

A Prayer

Father, I cannot fully comprehend what Your Son endured for me. But I know this – He did it for joy, and that joy was me. That truth is almost too much to hold. Forgive me for the times I have doubted my worth or questioned Your love. You answered that question on the cross once and for all. Help me to live like someone who was worth dying for. Not in arrogance but in awe. And when the suffering comes – because it will – give me the same eyes Jesus had. Eyes that look past the pain and see the joy that is set before me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”

– George MacDonald

“The cross is the greatest illustration of God’s love and the greatest demonstration of His joy over us.”

– A.W. Tozer

Always i-CH

Joy and Healing

Part 7

“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” Proverbs 17:22

“Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.” 3 John 1:2

Read that verse from Proverbs again. A joyful heart is good medicine. That is not a suggestion. That is not a nice thought for a greeting card. Solomon under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is telling us that joy has medicinal properties. It heals. And the flip side is just as clear – a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Joylessness does not just make you sad. It makes you SICK. The Scripture is drawing a direct line between your spiritual condition and your physical health and most of the church has walked right past it.

The Connection We Keep Missing

In an earlier post in this series (Power of Forgiveness) I shared how my sister died of bile duct cancer and how just three years later my father died of the same disease. The doctors said it was extremely rare for two people in the same family to die of this in such a short span. What the doctors did not know – what they could not know – was that bile in the Old Testament is synonymous with bitterness. The Hebrew word mererah means bitterness (Job 16:13). There was a physical manifestation tied directly to a spiritual condition. Unforgiveness and bitterness literally ate them alive from the inside out. I did not see it at the time. I did not connect the dots until later. But the connection was there all along – because the Scripture had already told us. A crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Now if bitterness and unforgiveness can produce disease in the body – and I have seen it firsthand – then it stands to reason that the OPPOSITE is also true. If a broken spirit dries the bones then a merry heart – a joyful spirit, a heart that is alive and at peace with God – does good like a medicine. Joy HEALS. Not as a metaphor. As a reality. The same God who designed your body to respond to stress and bitterness with inflammation and disease designed your body to respond to joy with healing and restoration. He wired it that way on purpose.

What the Doctors Are Discovering

Modern medicine is only now catching up to what Solomon wrote three thousand years ago. Researchers have found that positive emotions like joy and gratitude reduce cortisol (the stress hormone that breaks down your immune system over time). They have found that laughter increases the production of natural killer cells – the cells your body uses to fight infection and cancer. They have found that people with a positive emotional outlook recover faster from surgery, respond better to treatment, and live longer than people who are anxious and depressed. The medical world is publishing papers about this as if they have discovered something new. Solomon wrote it in one sentence. A joyful heart is good medicine. God did not need a clinical trial. He BUILT us.

Now I am not saying that if you are sick all you need to do is cheer up. That is not what this is about and I would never be so flippant about someone’s suffering. What I AM saying is that your spiritual condition – the state of your heart before God – has a direct impact on your physical body. And joy is part of God’s prescription for wholeness. Not the only part. But a part that has been largely ignored by the church and misunderstood by the world.

Jesus Healed the Whole Person

Look at how Jesus healed people in the Gospels. He did not just fix bodies. In my earlier post on forgiveness I talked about the difference between dunamis (spiritual miraculous power) and exousia (authority and jurisdiction). When the paralytic was let down through the roof Jesus did not say “get up and walk” first. He said “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5). He dealt with the SPIRITUAL condition before He dealt with the physical one. The forgiveness of sin and the healing of the body were connected. They were part of the same act. The power of forgiveness is the literal separation of sin from the sinner and the evidence was obvious to everyone – they were instantly healed.

Do you see this? Jesus understood what we keep separating. The spiritual, the emotional, and the physical are not three separate compartments. They are one system. What happens in your spirit affects your soul and what happens in your soul affects your body. When sin was removed the body responded. When forgiveness was received healing followed. And when joy – real deep Spirit-given joy – is present in your life it does something to your whole being. Not just your mood. Your WHOLE being.

David understood this too. Psalm 51 is his prayer after the worst season of his life – adultery with Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, months of cover-up and deception. And look at what he writes. “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:6–12). Do you see what is happening in that prayer? David is asking for spiritual cleansing – purge me, wash me, create in me a clean heart. He is asking for emotional restoration – let me HEAR joy and gladness. And he is asking for physical healing – let the BONES that you have broken REJOICE. Bones. The same word Solomon uses in Proverbs 17:22 about a crushed spirit drying up the bones. David’s sin had affected his spirit, his emotions, AND his body. And his prescription? Restore to me the JOY of your salvation. Joy was not a nice extra. Joy was the medicine that would put him back together – spirit, soul, and body.

Third John 1:2 says “I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.” As it goes well with your soul. Your physical health is connected to the prosperity of your soul. And what makes a soul prosper? Forgiveness. Peace. Right standing with God. And JOY. The joy of the Lord flowing through your spirit into your soul and out through your body like a river of life. That is God’s design for wholeness.

The Prescription Nobody Is Writing

Here is what grieves me. The church has a form of godliness but denies the power thereof (2 Timothy 3:5). We preach about healing but we do not connect it to the spiritual condition of the heart. We pray for sick people but we do not address the bitterness or the unforgiveness or the joylessness that may be at the root of what is wrong. We send people to doctors – and there is nothing wrong with doctors, thank God for them – but we do not send them to their knees first. We treat the symptom and ignore the cause.

I am not anti-medicine. I am pro-wholeness. And wholeness starts in the spirit. If your spirit is carrying bitterness your body will eventually show it. If your spirit is weighed down with grief and joylessness and hopelessness your body will respond to that too. A crushed spirit dries up the bones. But if your spirit is alive with the joy of the Lord – if you are walking in forgiveness and peace and right relationship with God – your body gets the benefit of that. A joyful heart is good medicine.

I have experienced this personally. In the same forgiveness testimony I shared previously, when I prayed and released the bitterness I did not even know I was carrying, the CAT scan came back completely clear. The x-ray showed a mass. The CAT scan after prayer showed nothing. My doctor looked at me and said “I don’t know what happened.” I told him I knew exactly what happened. I was healed by God. The spiritual condition changed and the physical condition followed. That is not theology. That is testimony.

Joy as Daily Medicine

So here is the practical part and I want you to take this seriously. If Solomon says a merry heart is good medicine then joy is not just something you experience on Sunday morning when the worship is good. It is something you TAKE. Daily. Like a prescription. You choose it. You cultivate it. You protect it. You fight for it. Because the enemy knows that if he can steal your joy he does not just make you sad – he makes you vulnerable. Spiritually, emotionally, AND physically.

How do you take your medicine? You get into God’s presence. Psalm 16:11 – “In your presence there is fullness of joy.” You get into His Word. You worship even when you do not feel like it. You forgive quickly because unforgiveness is poison and you know it. You surround yourself with joyful believers because as we talked about earlier in this series joy is contagious. And you choose – CHOOSE – to count it all joy even when circumstances say otherwise. Every single day. Not because you are pretending. Because you are taking your medicine.

Nehemiah told the people “Go and eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing prepared, for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Feast. Celebrate. Share with others. And in the feasting and the sharing and the joy you will find strength. And in the strength you will find healing. That is the prescription. It has always been the prescription. We just stopped filling it.

A Prayer

Father, I confess that I have neglected the connection between my spirit and my body. I have carried things – bitterness, grief, joylessness – that have taken a toll on me in ways I may not even fully understand. Today I choose to release what is not mine to carry and to receive the joy that is mine to have. You said a merry heart is good medicine. I am taking my medicine today. Heal me from the inside out. Spirit, soul, and body. And let the evidence of Your joy in my life be obvious to everyone around me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“There is no better evangelist in the world than the Holy Spirit.”

– D.L. Moody

“The Spirit-filled life is not a special, deluxe edition of Christianity. It is part and parcel of the total plan of God for His people.”

– A.W. Tozer

Always i-CH

Joy in the Wilderness

Part 6

“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” Habakkuk 3:17–18

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” James 1:2–3

Read those two passages again before you go any further. I mean it. Read them slowly. Because what those men are saying is one of the most counterintuitive things in all of Scripture. They are saying that joy does not require good circumstances. They are saying that joy survives the wilderness. In fact they are saying something even more radical than that – they are saying that joy THRIVES in the wilderness. That the wilderness is where joy proves it is real.

Habakkuk’s Situation Was Not a Metaphor

I want you to understand what Habakkuk is actually describing because we read these verses on a nice screen with a cup of tea in our hand and we think it sounds poetic. It was not poetic. This man is saying that the fig tree has failed. The vines are empty. The olive crop – the one thing they depended on for oil, for cooking, for everything – has produced nothing. The fields are barren. The sheep are gone and there is no cattle. In an agrarian society that is not a bad season. That is TOTAL economic collapse. That is starvation. That is ruin. There is nothing left. And Habakkuk looks at all of that and says YET. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. Yet I will JOY in the God of my salvation. That word “yet” might be one of the most powerful words in the Bible. It is the hinge between despair and worship. It is the point where the flesh says “this is over” and the spirit says “no it is not.” Everything in the natural says give up and Habakkuk’s spirit says I WILL REJOICE. Not I might. Not I hope to. I WILL.

How? How does a man standing in the ruins of everything he depended on find joy? Because his joy was never IN those things. His joy was in the God of his salvation. And God had not moved. God had not failed. God had not left. The fig tree was gone but God was still there. And that was enough.

James Was Not Being Cruel

Now let us look at James because his instruction trips people up. “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” The word temptations here is the Greek word peirasmos which means trials, tests, or proving. He is not talking about being tempted to eat a second piece of cake. He is talking about the hard things – the trials that test what you are made of. And he says COUNT it joy. That word “count” is the Greek word hegeomai which means to consider, to reckon, to make a deliberate assessment. James is saying DECIDE that it is joy. Make a choice. Do not wait until you FEEL joyful – you may never feel it. Reckon it. The same way Abraham reckoned his faith as righteousness (Romans 4:3) – he decided to believe what God said even when everything in the natural contradicted it.

And why does James say to do this? “Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.” The trying of your faith WORKETH. It is actively producing something. Patience, endurance, staying power. The wilderness is not punishment. It is a WORKOUT. God is not trying to break you. He is building something in you that can only be built under pressure. You cannot develop endurance sitting on the sofa. You cannot develop faith when everything is going well. The wilderness is God’s gym and joy is what keeps you from walking out.

Jesus in the Wilderness

I want to show you something about Jesus that I think changes how we look at this. After His baptism in the Jordan – after the heavens opened and the Father said “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17) – the very next thing that happens is the Spirit DRIVES him into the wilderness (Mark 1:12). Not leads. Drives. The Greek is ekballo – the same word used for casting out demons. The Spirit forcefully sends the Son of God into forty days of fasting and temptation in the desert. Right after the greatest spiritual high of His life up to that point.

Do you see what this means? The wilderness was not an accident. It was not a detour. It was the PLAN. The Spirit of God took Jesus directly from the blessing to the proving ground. And if that was the path for the Son of God what makes us think our path would be different?

Now here is the part that most people miss. Jesus came out of the wilderness “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). He went in blessed. He came out POWERFUL. The wilderness did not diminish him – it equipped him. Everything he would do from that point forward – every healing, every miracle, every deliverance – came after the wilderness. Not before it. The wilderness was not an obstacle to His ministry. It was the DOORWAY.

And I believe the same is true for you. Whatever wilderness you are in right now it is not the end of your story. It is the doorway to what comes next. But you have to go THROUGH it. Not around it. Not over it. Through it. And joy is what carries you.

Paul and Silas Understood This

I referenced Paul and Silas briefly in an earlier post but I want to come back to it here because the details matter. Acts 16:22–26 tells us they were stripped, beaten with rods (not a light punishment – Roman rods could break bones), thrown into the inner prison (the worst cell, the darkest, the coldest), and their feet were fastened in stocks. This is not a bad day at work. This is brutality followed by isolation followed by immobility. Every single natural circumstance screamed “you are finished.”

And at midnight – MIDNIGHT, not the next morning when things might look a bit more hopeful – Paul and Silas prayed and SANG HYMNS unto God. And the other prisoners heard them. Let that land. The people around them in that dark place HEARD their joy. And then the foundations of the prison shook. The doors opened. The chains fell off. Not just theirs – everyone’s.

Do you see what happened? Their joy in the wilderness did not just set THEM free. It set everyone around them free. The jailer fell on his knees and said “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). That man did not ask that question because of a theological argument. He asked because he saw two beaten, bleeding men singing with a joy that defied every circumstance – and he wanted whatever they had.

How cool is that?! Their wilderness became someone else’s salvation.

Your Wilderness Is Not Wasted

Let me tell you something I have learned the hard way. The wilderness is never wasted. Not one day of it. Not one tear. Not one sleepless night. God does not waste pain. He REDEEMS it. Romans 8:28 says “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” ALL things. Not some things. Not the nice things. ALL of them. The bankruptcy. The betrayal. The diagnosis. The loss. The season where you prayed and heard nothing and wondered if God had forgotten your address. All of it is working. All of it is building something. And joy is the evidence that you believe that even when you cannot see it.

I have been in wildernesses that I thought would never end. Seasons where the fig tree was not blossoming and the fields were bare and there was nothing in the stalls. And I can tell you from personal experience that Habakkuk was right. When everything else is stripped away and all you have left is God you discover that God is all you ever needed. And THAT discovery – that He is enough – is where the deepest joy lives. Not on the mountaintop. In the valley.

The mountaintop is where you celebrate what God did. The valley is where you discover who God IS.

Joy Is the Evidence

Here is what I want to leave you with. Joy in the wilderness is not denial. It is not pretending that everything is fine when it is not. It is not slapping a smile on your face and quoting verses while your world falls apart. Joy in the wilderness is a DECLARATION. It is your spirit standing up in the ruins and saying “The God of my salvation has not changed. He has not left. He has not failed. And because HE is still standing I am still standing.” That is what Habakkuk did. That is what James instructed. That is what Paul and Silas demonstrated at midnight in a Roman prison.

And here is the thing about that kind of joy – the world cannot explain it. When you have every reason to be crushed and you are joyful instead, people notice. They cannot help it. It does not make sense to them. And that is exactly the point. Joy in the wilderness is one of the most powerful testimonies a Christian can carry. It says more about the reality of God than a thousand sermons ever could.

So if you are in the wilderness right now – and some of you are, I know it – hear me. You are not forgotten. You are not abandoned. You are not being punished. You are being PREPARED. And the joy of the Lord is available to you right where you are. Not after the wilderness. Not when things get better. NOW. In the middle of it. In the darkest cell at midnight.

Count it joy. Reckon it. Decide it. And then open your mouth and sing. You may be surprised at what shakes loose.

A Prayer

Father, I am in a hard place and You know it. I will not pretend otherwise. But I choose today to count it joy. Not because I understand what You are doing but because I trust who You are. You have not left me. You have not forgotten me. And this wilderness is not my grave – it is my proving ground. Give me the strength to sing at midnight. Give me the courage to worship when everything says I should weep. And let my joy in this season be a testimony to everyone around me that You are real and You are enough. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“If you want anything from God you will have to pray into heaven. That is where it all is.”

– Smith Wigglesworth

“God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome.”

– Oswald Chambers

Always i-CH