INTRO
It Will Not Be an Easy Journey Towards Joy
I take this task seriously. Our journey in this book is not across easy territory. There are dangers on all sides.
Spiritual desires and delights are not commodities to be bought and sold. They are not objects to be handled. They are events in the soul. They are experiences of the heart. They have connections and causes in a hundred directions. They are interwoven with the body and the brain, but are not limited to the physical or mental.
God himself, without body or brain, experiences a full array of spiritual affections—love, hate, joy, anger, zeal, etc. Yet our affections are influenced by our bodies and brains. No one but God can get to the bottom of these things.
“For the inward mind and heart of a man are deep!” (Psalm 64:6 ESV); and not just deep, but depraved: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 ESV).
So the answer to the question, “What should I do when I don’t desire God?” is not simple. But it is crucial. The apostle Paul said, “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” (1 Corinthians 16:22 ESV).
Love is not a mere choice to move the body or the brain. Love is also an experience of the heart. So the stakes are very high. Christ is to be cherished, not just chosen. The alternative is to be cursed. Therefore life is serious. And so is this book.
The Aim Is Not to Soften Cushions, but Sustain Sacrifice
The misunderstanding of this book that I want most to avoid is that I am writing to make well-to-do Western Christians comfortable, as if the joy I have in mind is psychological icing on the cake of already superficial Christianity. Therefore let me say clearly here at the beginning that the joy I write to awaken is the sustaining strength of mercy, missions, and martyrdom.
Even as I write this sentence Christians are being hacked to death outside Kano, Nigeria. Yesterday a twenty-six-year-old American businessman was beheaded in Iraq by terrorists. Why him? He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This kind of death will increase especially for Christians.
In Sudan water is systematically withheld from Christians as they die of thirst and malnutrition, while desperate attempts to visit wells are met with murder, rape, or kidnapping. Fresh reports come every month concerning the destruction of Christian churches and the arrest of pastors in China.
In the last decade over five hundred Christian churches have been destroyed in Indonesia. Missionaries are at risk all over the world.
When I address the question, “What should I do if I don’t desire God?” I am addressing the question: “How can I obtain or recover a joy in Christ that is so deep and so strong that it will free me from bondage to Western comforts and security, and will impel me into sacrifices of mercy and missions, and will sustain me in the face of martyrdom?”
Persecution is normal for Christians. “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12 ESV). “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12 ESV). “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22 ESV).
In the New Testament this sobering truth does not diminish the focus on joy—it increases it.
“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.” (Romans 5:3 ESV)
“Blessed are you when others . . . persecute you. . . . Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” (Matthew 5:11-12 ESV)
“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 ESV)
“They left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.” (Acts 5:41 ESV)
The fight for joy in Christ is not a fight to soften the cushion of Western comforts. It is a fight for strength to live a life of self-sacrificing love. It is a fight to join Jesus on the Calvary road and stay there with him, no matter what. How was he sustained on that road? Hebrews 12:2 answers, “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (ESV).
The key to endurance in the cause of self-sacrificing love is not heroic willpower, but deep, unshakable confidence that the joy we have tasted in fellowship with Christ will not disappoint us in death.
The key to endurance in the cause of self-sacrificing love is not heroic willpower, but deep, unshakable confidence that the joy we have tasted in fellowship with Christ will not disappoint us in death.
Sacrifices in the path of love were sustained in the New Testament not by willpower, but by joyful hope. “You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34 ESV).
The aim of this book is not to salve the conscience of well-to-do Western acquisition. The aim is to sustain love’s ability to endure sacrificial losses of property and security and life, by the power of joy in the path of love. The aim is that Jesus Christ be made known in all the world as the all-powerful, all-wise, all-righteous, all-merciful, all-satisfying Treasure of the universe.
This will happen when Christians don’t just say that Christ is valuable, or sing that Christ is valuable, but truly experience in their hearts the unsurpassed worth of Jesus with so much joy that they can say, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8 ESV).
Christ will be glorified in the world when Christians are so satisfied in him that they let goods and kindred go and lay down their lives for others in mercy, missions, and, if necessary, martyrdom. He will be magnified most among the nations when, at the moment Christians lose everything on earth, they say, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21 ESV).
“Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:13-14 ESV). This we will do for the joy that is set before us. And this joy will hold us and keep us, if we have tasted it and fought to make it the supreme experience of our lives.
Christ is supremely glorious and supremely valuable. Therefore he is worth the fight.