“Could it actually be that Jesus meant it when he said that his desire was that
'my followers will have the same complete joy that I do'." (John 17:13)?
Could CS Lewis possibly have been correct when he wrote, “Joy is the serious business of heaven”?
Could
Ignatius of Loyola have been expressing the heart of God when he wrote,
“sin is refusing to believe that God wants my happiness and fulfillment.”
Could
it be that the greatest obstacle impeding God’s desire to bring “joy to the
world” is Christians themselves? Could
it be that Walker Percey was on to something sad and profound when he wrote
about Christians, “I cannot be sure they
don’t have the truth. But if
they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the
degree that they embrace and advertise the truth.
A mystery: if the good
news is true, why is no one pleased to hear it?”?
Could
it be that senior devil Screwtape got it exactly right in his letters to junior
devil wormwood when he wrote, “Never
forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and
satisfying form we are, I a sense on the Enemy’s (God’s) ground.
He made all the pleasures. All
of our research to date has not enabled us to produce one” (book by CS Lewis)
Could
it be that the fundamental sin of Adam and Eve was simple disbelief, distrusting
that God had a world of abundance and joy in store for them but that they chose
instead temporal pleasures as “first things”, every
one of which has an ever diminishing shelf life, and each of which perfectly
fulfills the “law of diminishing returns”?
Could
it be that Jesus expressed the heart of God, The Ultimate Father, when he said, “I
have come to bring the Life, more and abundant Life than they ever dreamed of”
(John 10:10 Msg)?
Could
it be that you are missing joy because your life is wrapped up in getting
through the day, getting to the next thing, trying to be good enough for God and
others, hurrying without knowing why, living in guilt and failure that God has
long since forgiven and forgotten.
Could
it be that the senior devil Screwtape has effectively kept you from standing on
God’s Holy Ground, the best description of might just be unfettered joy, by
whispering in your ear, “The psalmist might be right when he writes, ‘joy
cometh in the morning’ but ‘morning’ is still a long, long, long way
off”
Could
it be that you are neglecting the spiritual discipline that you need to
implement more rigorously than all the rest, the Discipline of Celebration, the
Practice of the Presence and Availability of the Joy of the Lord”?
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