“for the joy set before him”
What are your hopes and dreams? What are you looking forward to? What are your goals for yourself, your home, your family, your church? What is the trajectory of your life? What is the destination toward which your life is headed?
These are the questions of joy. Comfort, immediate gratification, alleviation of suffering, and relief from stress, are all overrated. Although each of us live “in” the “now”, almost all of us miss the “now”. Why? We’re complaining too much. We’re too worried about our “now’s”, what’s wrong with them and how to fix our immediate problems.
The Bible teaches that our “now” is fueled, infused, enlivened and made joyful by the trajectory of our lives, the anticipated destination, and our pursuit of a legacy that points beyond ourselves. In this way there is never a “now” moment, regardless how painful, that isn’t permeated with a certain joy streaming in from our future destination, that says, “this ‘now’ is real and it does matter, but it’s ‘not all there is’. It is part of God’s working into you and out of you his beyond imagination beautiful future”
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