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

Joy in Answered Prayer

Part 5

“Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” John 16:24

“And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” Matthew 21:22

I want to ask you a question and I want you to be honest with me. Not the Sunday morning answer. The real one. When was the last time you prayed for something and actually EXPECTED God to answer? Not hoped. Not wished. Not crossed your fingers and tacked on “if it be Your will” like a spiritual insurance policy just in case nothing happened. I mean genuinely expected – with the same certainty you have that the sun is going to come up tomorrow – that the God who made everything out of nothing heard your prayer and was going to DO something about it. If you had to think about that for more than a few seconds this post is for you.

The Verse Most People Only Half Read

John 16:24. Jesus is in the upper room with His disciples. This is the night before the cross. The last supper. The most important conversation He will ever have with these men. And in the middle of it He says “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” Now I want you to catch something here because most people miss it. He does not say ask and you will receive so that your NEEDS will be met. He does not say ask so that your PROBLEMS will be sorted out. He says ask and you will receive SO THAT YOUR JOY MAY BE FULL. Jesus directly connects answered prayer to joy. FULL joy. Overflowing joy. The kind of joy that has no room left in the glass. Which means if your joy is running on empty right now one of the reasons might be staring you right in the face: you stopped asking. Or worse – you kept asking but you stopped expecting.

Why We Stopped

Let me tell you what happens to most Christians and their prayer life because pretending about it is not going to help anyone. We start out on fire. We pray for everything. We pray for parking spaces and healing and wisdom and for that difficult person at work. And some of those prayers get answered and it is AMAZING and we tell everyone. But then we pray for something big. Something we really need. Something desperate. And it does not happen. Or it does not happen the way we wanted. Or it does not happen when we wanted. And that unanswered prayer sits in our chest like a stone and quietly whispers “See? It does not work. Not for you anyway.” And from that moment on we start hedging. We pray with one eye open. We add qualifiers to everything. We lower our expectations so that we will not be disappointed and we call that maturity when really it is just self-protection dressed up in spiritual language.

I have been there. It is a miserable place to live. And it is not where God wants you.

What Jesus ACTUALLY Said

Here is the thing about Jesus and prayer. He was not vague about it. He was not careful. He was not diplomatic. He said things about prayer that should make every one of us sit up in our chairs. “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do” (John 14:13). “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14). “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). Whatever. Anything. Whatever you wish. Those are not careful words. Those are BOLD words. And Jesus said them on the most important night of His life knowing full well what they meant. Now I am not saying God is a vending machine. Put in a prayer get out a blessing. That is not what this is. But I AM saying that Jesus intended prayer to be a place of POWER and JOY and encounter – not a religious duty you tick off your list between breakfast and checking your phone. Smith Wigglesworth said “I do not ever go to God and come away on the same level as I went.” THAT is what prayer is supposed to be. You go in one way and come out another.

Let Me Tell You What Happens When God Answers

I want you to think about a time when God answered a prayer for you. Maybe it was big. Maybe it was small. Maybe you had almost forgotten you even prayed it. But then something happened. A friend you had been praying for called and said something shifted in their life. A cheque arrived in the post that you were not expecting. You prayed for wisdom about a decision and a conversation with someone – maybe even a stranger – gave you the exact clarity you needed. You prayed for your child and you saw something change in their eyes. Do you remember what that felt like? It was not just relief. It was not just gratitude. It was JOY. The deep holy kind of joy that makes you want to laugh out loud and cry at the same time because you realise HE IS REAL. HE IS LISTENING. HE IS MOVING. And that joy does something inside you. It feeds your faith. It makes you want to pray again. It makes you want to pray BIGGER. And then THAT prayer gets answered and the joy gets deeper and the faith gets stronger and the cycle builds – prayer leads to answers, answers lead to joy, joy leads to more prayer, more prayer leads to more answers. That is the engine God designed to keep your spiritual life running hot. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

And what happens when you stop praying? The engine cools. The joy fades. You are back to running on fumes and wondering why the Christian life feels so flat. It is not complicated. If your joy is empty check your prayer life. They are connected and Jesus said so Himself.

But What About Unanswered Prayer?

I know what some of you are thinking. “But I DID pray. And God did NOT answer.” I hear you. And I am not going to dismiss that with a bumper sticker. Unanswered prayer hurts. It really does. But let me offer you a few things to think about because I have been on both sides of this and I have learned some things the hard way.

Sometimes what looks like an unanswered prayer is actually an answered one that you did not recognise. God said yes to something BETTER than what you asked for but you were so focused on your version of the answer that you missed His. Let me tell you a quick story. I used to pray for specific things and when God gave me something different I would put it aside like it was the wrong order at a restaurant. “That is not what I asked for.” But God is not a waiter. He is a Father. And a good Father gives His children what they NEED not always what they WANT. Any parent understands this. Your child wants to play with the sharp knife because it is shiny. You say no. Not because you are mean. Because you can see what they cannot. If you have ever said no to your own child for their own good then you already understand how God works. You just have not applied it to yourself yet.

Sometimes God’s timing is not your timing. And I know that is frustrating. Believe me I KNOW. Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. Joseph waited thirteen years between the dream and the throne. David was anointed king and then spent years living in caves running from a man who wanted to kill him. God is not slow. He is thorough. And His thoroughness works for your good even when it does not feel like it. I once heard someone say that God is never late but He sure does miss a lot of good opportunities to be early. That is how it feels sometimes. But looking back – and it is always looking back – you can see that His timing was perfect. Every single time.

Start Asking Again

Here is my challenge to you and it is simple. Start asking again. Not the safe hedged insurance-policy prayers where you have already talked yourself out of expecting anything before you have even said amen. REAL prayers. Specific prayers. Bold prayers. The kind that scare you a little because if God does not come through you are going to look foolish. GOOD. That is called faith. And “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). Not difficult. IMPOSSIBLE. He wants you to ask for things you cannot produce on your own and then trust that the God who spoke the universe into existence can handle your request.

And when He answers – and He WILL answer – do not just move on to the next request like you are working through a shopping list. STOP. Thank Him. Celebrate. Tell someone what He did. Write it down somewhere you will see it again. Let the joy of that answer sink deep into your bones so that the next time you pray you pray with the confidence of someone who has SEEN God move. Because you have. And He will move again. Read the Gospels. Read the book of Acts. Read the life of Smith Wigglesworth or Rees Howells or George Müller and tell me that God does not answer prayer. He does. He always has. The question is not whether He is listening. The question is whether we are asking.

Jesus said “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” He did not stutter. He did not add a footnote. He said it and He meant it.

Ask.

A Prayer

Father, I confess that I have stopped asking. Or worse I have been asking without expecting. Forgive me for treating prayer like a formality when You designed it to be an encounter that fills me with joy. Rekindle my expectation. Remind me of the prayers You have already answered that I forgot to celebrate. And give me the courage to ask again – boldly, specifically, and with the kind of faith that makes the enemy nervous. I want full joy Lord. Not half. Not some. FULL. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“I do not ever go to God and come away on the same level as I went.”

– Smith Wigglesworth

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer IS the greater work.”

– Oswald Chambers

 Always i-CH

Joy in Marriage

Part 4- It’s not what you think.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” Genesis 1:26

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” Genesis 2:18

I am going to say something that might ruffle a few feathers.

The true joy of marriage is not physical. It is not emotional. It is not about finding someone who makes you laugh, likes the same movies, or looks good across a dinner table – though none of those things are bad. The true joy of marriage is SPIRITUAL. And until we understand that, we will keep watching Christian marriages fall apart and wondering why the divorce statistics inside the church look almost identical to the ones outside it.

Here is why: we have been building marriages on the wrong foundation. We start with attraction, add compatibility, throw in some shared interests, and hope that God blesses the whole arrangement. We put more spiritual discernment into buying a used car than choosing a life partner. We will check the engine, the tyres, the service history, and get a mechanic to look under the hood – but choosing the person we are going to spend the rest of our lives with? “They have a nice smile, and they like Thai food. That will do.”

But God did not design marriage to start in the flesh. He designed it to start in the Spirit. And when it does, everything else finds its proper place.

In Our Image

Go back to the beginning. Genesis 1:26. God says, “Let Us make man in Our image.” US. OUR. God the Father, the Word, and the Spirit – a triune God existing in perfect relationship – creates the first couple in HIS image. Adam and Eve were not just two people who happened to be compatible. They were a reflection of the nature of God Himself.

And what did they do? They walked with Him. In the Spirit. Together. No religion. No programme. No couples retreat with matching workbooks and a guest speaker. Just two people and their God, walking in the cool of the day, completely unaware that what they had was the most precious thing in the universe.

THAT was the design for marriage. Two people, one spiritual walk, together with God. Not focused on the flesh. Not driven by emotion. Rooted in the Spirit. And out of that spiritual union, everything else flowed – intimacy, purpose, fruitfulness, joy.

We lost that in the Fall. And we have been trying to get it back with fig leaves and good intentions ever since.

What Paul Actually Meant

Paul the Apostle said he wished men could be like him – unmarried, unattached – to better serve the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:7). A lot of people read that and think Paul was anti-marriage. He was not. He was being practical.

There were no telephones. No email. No wifi. No satellites. No Zoom calls – though I imagine some of Paul’s church meetings could have used a mute button. If you wanted to spread the Gospel, you had to physically GET ON A BOAT and go. Try doing that with a family at home and no way to call them. Paul was not against marriage. He was dealing with logistics.

But here is the thing: we do not have that problem anymore. We have every method of communication ever invented sitting in our pockets. The logistics excuse is gone. What we do NOT have – and what we desperately need – are spiritual couples. Men and women who are walking together in the Spirit, strengthening each other, preparing each other, and sharpening each other for the work of the Kingdom.

That is the gap. Not technology. Not information. Spiritual partnership.

A Servant, a Well, and a Woman on a Camel

There is a story in Genesis 24 that the church has turned into a nice tale about finding a spouse. It is much more than that.

Abraham is old. He sends his servant back to his own people to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant travels a long way and when he arrives at the well, he does something remarkable. He does not look around for the prettiest girl. He does not ask who comes from the best family. He does not check anyone’s social media profile. He prays. He asks the LORD for a sign that he will know he has come to the right place and found the right woman.

And God answers. Rebekah appears. She does exactly what the servant prayed she would do. But here is the part that most people skip right over.

Later, when Rebekah sees Isaac from a distance – from AFAR OFF – she gets off her camel and goes to him (Genesis 24:64). She had never met this man. She had never spoken to him. She had never swiped right. But something in her spirit RECOGNISED something in his. She saw something IN him that moved her before she ever got close enough to see his face.

That is spiritual recognition. That is not attraction – it is something much deeper. And I know it is real because I experienced it myself. As a child, I saw someone in the Spirit that I would not find until many years later. I cannot explain it in natural terms because it was not natural. It was God.

We have lost this. We like someone because of their smile. Their appearance. The way they make us feel. And those things are not wrong – God made us to enjoy each other. But they are not the FOUNDATION. They are the flowers in the garden, not the soil.

The Ten Virgins and the Oil They Carried

Jesus told a parable in Matthew 25 about ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom. Five were wise. Five were foolish. The wise ones had oil in their lamps. The foolish ones did not.

Now it is well understood that the oil represents the Holy Spirit. That is solid teaching. But there is something underneath that parable that I do not think gets enough attention.

The wise virgins were PREPARED. The foolish ones showed up to the most important event of their lives and essentially said, “Does anyone have a charger? I am on two percent.” They were not bad people. They were just unprepared. And unprepared is not a position you want to be in when the Bridegroom arrives.

The wise ones did not scramble for oil at the last minute. They had cultivated a relationship with the Holy Spirit BEFORE they needed it. They PRACTISED. They knew their role before they entered the gate. They had an oil relationship – a Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, Spirit-dependent walk – and it was ready when the moment came.

We read this parable and think of individual believers. Fair enough. But the virgins represent the CHURCH. Men and women. All of us. And if we are supposed to be preparing for the King, should we not be practising that preparation TOGETHER?

The Scriptures say that older women were to prepare younger women. Older men were to prepare younger men (Titus 2:1–8). That is spiritual mentoring. That is generational transfer. That is the church functioning the way it was designed – not as a Sunday morning event but as a community of people who are actively helping each other keep oil in their lamps.

How many churches are doing this today? Really doing it? Not running a programme about it. DOING it.

The Greatest Joy

Here is what I want you to hear. Truly hear.

The church today needs spiritual men and women who will walk together in a spiritual marriage. Not focused on the flesh. Not distracted by the world. Not building their relationship on feelings that shift with the weather. But growing together in the Spirit, in preparation for the King.

It is hard for young people today. I understand that. The world throws so many fleshly and worldly things at them that the spirit gets blinded. Social media, dating apps, a culture that reduces love to chemistry and compatibility scores – it is relentless. And it is designed to keep them from seeing what Rebekah saw. Something IN another person that can only be recognised by the Spirit.

That is why this is a major shift. Not a small adjustment. A MAJOR shift. Couples need to strengthen their spiritual walk together. Not their date nights – though those are fine. Their SPIRITUAL walk. Praying together. Seeking God together. Sharpening each other. Keeping oil in each other’s lamps. Because it is too easy to drift from God on your own. But when two of you are walking together in the Spirit, you hold each other steady.

The only Christians who can truly enjoy marriage – TRULY enjoy it, with a joy that does not fade when the romance cools or the bills pile up or life gets hard – are the ones who know this and walk in it. Two people, one spiritual walk, together with God. That is the design. That is the joy. And sharing that knowledge with the next generation is part of the calling.

And here is the part that makes me want to stand up and shout: when a couple fills their lamps together – side by side, on their knees, in the Word, in prayer, in the Spirit – that oil does not just light the way to the marriage that is coming. It lights the marriage they are building RIGHT NOW. Every moment spent together in His presence is fuel for today AND preparation for eternity. The practice is not a rehearsal. The practice IS the joy. Two people keeping each other’s lamps full, walking together in the oil of gladness – that is a marriage the enemy cannot touch.

This is the joy of marriage. Not the world’s version. God’s version. The real one. The one that lasts.

And it is worth fighting for.

A Prayer

Father, forgive us for building marriages on sand and wondering why they crumble. Forgive us for putting the flesh first and the Spirit second – or nowhere at all. Teach us what it means to walk together in the Spirit the way You designed from the beginning. Raise up spiritual couples in Your church – men and women who will keep oil in their lamps, who will sharpen each other, and who will show the next generation what a marriage rooted in You actually looks like. Give us eyes to see what Rebekah saw – not the outward appearance, but the Spirit within. And give us the courage to build on THAT. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

– C.S. Lewis

“Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first.”

– Billy Sunday

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The Joy of Salvation

Part 3

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:8–9

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Do you remember the moment? Not the date – I am terrible with dates. But the MOMENT. When something shifted inside you, and you knew with a certainty you could not explain to anyone that everything was different. That YOU were different. For some of us, it was dramatic – tears, trembling, the feeling that the floor had opened up and love rushed in from underneath. For others, it was quieter – a slow dawning, a gentle click, like a door you had walked past a thousand times finally swinging open. However, something changed. And it was not small. That was salvation. And I will tell you what else it was. It was JOYFUL. Wildly unreasonably unexplainably joyful. So what happened to that feeling?

We Shrunk the Biggest Thing That Ever Happened to Us

Somewhere along the way, we turned the most staggering event in human experience into a transaction. Pray this prayer. Sign this card. Welcome to the family. Here is a pamphlet and a coffee mug. See you Sunday. But salvation is not a ticket to heaven. It is a BIRTH. Jesus told Nicodemus – a man who had religion absolutely nailed down, every box ticked, every rule memorised – that he needed to be born AGAIN (John 3:3). Not improved. Not upgraded. Not given a better version of what he already had. Born. As in something that was not alive is now alive. Something that did not exist before now does. When you were saved, you did not just change your mind about God. You received a completely new nature. Second Corinthians 5:17 says it as plainly as it can be said – “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Not renovated. Not redecorated. NEW. The foundation was torn up and rebuilt from scratch.

And here is the part that should make you want to stand up from wherever you are reading this. The nature you received is not just any nature. It is HIS.

Let This Sink In

E.W. Kenyon put it in a way that I think should stop every Christian in their tracks – “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.” Read that again. Slowly this time. Eternal life is not just about duration. It is not simply living forever. Plenty of people are terrified of living forever – and honestly, if forever just meant MORE of what we have now, who would want it? No. Eternal life is a QUALITY of life. It is God’s own life planted in you like a seed that will never stop growing. The very thing that makes God who He is – His nature, His substance, His essence – has been deposited inside of you. Not next to you. Not near you. INSIDE you. Second Peter 1:4 calls us “partakers of the divine nature.” Partakers! That is a dinner table word. You did not just get invited to the meal. You got served.

The God of the universe did not just save you FROM something. He saved you INTO Himself. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

Salvation and Joy Are the Same Event

Here is something we miss. Salvation and joy are not two separate events. They are the same event experienced from two angles. Salvation is what God does. Joy is what you feel when you realise what He has done. Think about it. You were lost, and now you are found. You were dead, and now you are alive. You were an orphan, and now you have a Father. You were carrying a weight that was crushing you, and someone just lifted it off your shoulders and said, “That was never yours to carry.” Of COURSE there is joy in that. There should be a parade.

Psalm 51:12 is David’s prayer after the worst season of his life – “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Look at what he asks for. He does not ask for salvation back – he never lost it. He asks for the JOY of it. The wonder. The aliveness. The sense that God is near and good and not finished with him. He had buried it under guilt and shame and self-deception, and he wanted it back. David knew something we need to learn – salvation without joy is like a feast you forgot to eat. Everything is on the table. The food is incredible. But you are sitting there staring at the wall, wondering why you are still hungry.

Why the Wonder Fades

It happens gradually. Like a photograph left in the sun. The colours fade so slowly that you do not notice until someone shows you the original, and you think, “Wait – THAT is what it looked like?” We stop marvelling at grace because we hear about it every week. We stop being astonished by forgiveness because we have needed it so many times. We treat the cross as a historical event – something that happened back then – rather than as a present reality happening in us RIGHT NOW. And the enemy loves this. He does not need you to renounce your faith. He does not need you to become an atheist. He just needs you to get BORED with it. A bored Christian is an ineffective Christian. A Christian who has lost the wonder of salvation is a Christian running on fumes – still showing up but not sure why.

But here is the good news. And it really IS good news. The wonder can be restored. David asked for it, and God gave it. You can ask too. In fact, I think you should ask right now. What are you waiting for?

Taste It Again

If the joy of your salvation has faded, it is not because God moved. He has not gone anywhere. The well is still full. You just stopped drawing from it. Isaiah 12:3 says, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” That image is beautiful and practical. A well is not a puddle. It does not evaporate in the heat. Salvation is a deep underground, constantly replenished source – and joy is what happens every time you drop the bucket. So drop the bucket. Think back to what you were before Christ. Not to wallow in it but to REMEMBER. The emptiness. The striving. The loneliness of trying to be your own god. And then think about what happened. Someone spoke. Something stirred. Light came in. You were found by a love you did not earn, could not deserve, and will never lose.

First Peter 1:8–9 says it like this – “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Inexpressible. Filled with glory. That is not the language of someone going through the motions. That is the language of someone who tasted something so good that words cannot hold it. You tasted it once. You can taste it again. The flavour has not changed. Your taste buds just got dulled by lesser things. Come back to the table. The feast is still warm. And there is a seat with your name on it.

A Prayer

Father, I confess I have let the wonder fade. I have treated the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me as ordinary, and I am sorry. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation – not a new salvation but a fresh encounter with the one I already have. Open my eyes to see what You did, who You made me, and what now lives inside me. I am not just forgiven. I am not just pardoned. I carry Your nature. YOUR nature. Let that truth hit me so hard today that I cannot stop smiling. 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

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

– Irenaeus of Lyon

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Joy is Contagious

Part 2

“And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Acts 2:46–47

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

You know that person. The one who walks into the room and the whole atmosphere shifts. Not because they are loud. Not because they are performing. They just carry something. You cannot put your finger on it, but you feel lighter when they are around. You laugh more easily. Your problems do not disappear, but they shrink a little. Something about that person makes you think, “Maybe things are going to be okay.” That is joy. And it is contagious. God made it that way on purpose.

You also know the OTHER person. The one who walks in and the temperature drops. The one who always has a reason it will not work, a complaint nobody asked for, and a face that could curdle milk. They are not bad people. Most of them are hurting. But their joylessness spreads just as fast as joy does – sometimes faster – because misery does not just love company. Misery RECRUITS it.

The Early Church Did Not Have a Marketing Team

No buildings. No budgets. No worship bands. No Instagram reels. No fog machines. No seven-step growth strategy printed on cardstock and handed out at the door. What they had was joy. Acts 2:46–47 tells us they ate together with GLAD and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the result? “The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Do you see what happened? The greatest evangelistic tool the early church had was not a tract. It was not a sermon series. It was a dinner table full of people who genuinely enjoyed being together because they genuinely enjoyed the God they served. People looked at them and said, “I do not know what they have got, but I want some.”

When was the last time someone said that about your church? About you? I am not trying to make you feel guilty. I am trying to make you hungry. Because what those early believers had is exactly what the Holy Spirit deposited in YOU the day you were born again. The question is not whether you have joy. If the Spirit lives in you, joy is already in there (Galatians 5:22). The question is whether you have let it out or locked it in a cupboard somewhere between your theology and your to-do list.

God Wired Us For This

Modern science has a term for it – emotional contagion. Researchers have discovered that emotions are literally transferable. Spend time with an anxious person, and your cortisol goes up. Spend time with a joyful person, and your brain starts releasing dopamine and serotonin. You do not even have to try. It just happens. God did not need a research paper to figure this out. He BUILT us this way. We were made in the image of a God who exists in eternal community – Father, Son, and Spirit – in unbroken fellowship and unbroken joy. We were designed to share emotional reality with each other. Joy was always meant to be the dominant note.

Proverbs 17:22 says, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” That is not poetry. That is biology wrapped in wisdom. Joy HEALS. Joylessness kills – slowly, quietly, from the inside out. Ask any doctor. Better yet, ask anyone who has spent a week around a chronic complainer and see how they feel at the end of it. Exhausted. Drained. Like someone opened a valve and all the air went out. Now ask someone who just spent an afternoon with a genuinely joyful friend. Different story entirely. THAT is the design of God at work.

Jesus Was Not Boring

Somehow, we have built an image of Jesus as a man who never cracked a smile. Serious. Solemn. Shoulders slightly hunched under the weight of the world. Always about to say something deep and slightly sad. But look at the evidence. Children RAN to Him. Not walked – ran. Children do not run toward boring, serious, heavy people. They run toward fun. They run toward safety. They run toward the person in the room who makes them feel like the most important person in the world. Sinners wanted to eat with Him. Tax collectors climbed trees to see Him. The religious leaders accused Him of being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19). You do not get that reputation by being dull. You get that reputation by being the kind of person people actually WANT to be around.

Hebrews 1:9 says God anointed Jesus “with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” Beyond His companions! Jesus was the most joyful person in every room He entered. Not the most solemn. Not the most religious. The most GLAD. If we are supposed to be becoming more like Him, we should be becoming more joyful, not less. And if that sounds wrong to you, it might be because somewhere along the line someone sold you a version of Christianity where seriousness equals maturity and gravity equals godliness. It does not. Joy equals Jesus. Check the Scriptures.

God Sings Over You

I think many Christians carry a quiet guilt about joy. As if really enjoying God – belly laughing in His presence, being DELIGHTED by Him – is somehow disrespectful. As if you should always be on your knees with your head down and your voice low. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord.” DELIGHT. That is the language of pleasure and enjoyment and the kind of satisfaction that makes you close your eyes and grin. But here is the one that gets me every time. Zephaniah 3:17 – “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

God sings over you. Let me say that again. God SINGS over you. The Creator of everything that exists looks at you – messy, imperfect, still-figuring-it-out you – and He breaks into song. If THAT does not give you permission to be joyful, nothing will. I am not talking about putting on a show. Forced joy is just performance, and people can smell it a mile away. I am talking about the natural overflow of a life that has tasted the goodness of God and cannot stop going back for more. That kind of joy does not need to be manufactured. It needs to be UNCAGED.

Let Them Catch It

The world is drowning. Scroll through social media for five minutes and tell me it is not. Anxiety, outrage, despair – all of it competing for attention, all of it spreading like a virus. People are exhausted by opinions and starving for something real. And here we are. Carriers of the joy of the living God. The question is – are we spreading it or hoarding it?

Paul wrote to the Philippians FROM PRISON – “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). He said it twice because he meant it twice. Then he added, “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” Be joyful. Be kind. And let people SEE it. The Lord is close. Act like it. Joy was never meant to be private. It was meant to spill. Into your marriage. Into your workplace. Into the supermarket checkout line, where the person behind you looks like they have had the worst day of their life, and your smile might be the only good thing that happens to them today. You are a carrier. The joy of the Lord is not just your strength – it is your gift to every person you meet. So let them catch it. Go be contagious.

A Prayer

Lord, forgive me for keeping joy locked up. Forgive me for treating it like something fragile when You designed it to be something fierce. I want to be the kind of person who changes the atmosphere when I walk in – not because of anything I manufacture but because of who lives in me. Make my joy contagious. Let it spill into my home, my conversations, my work, and even the mundane bits of my day that I think do not matter. They do. You are in all of it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“The surest mark of a Christian is not faith, or even love, but joy.”

– Samuel Shoemaker

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

– C.S. Lewis

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