Yesterday we went to a pipe band concert that was just a little different. As with most Scottish bands, there were drummers, dancers, and a song or two, but this presentation included a nine-person jazz band that could do amazing things by combining Aretha Franklin with bagpipes. For me, a lover of jazz and bagpipes both, this was incredibly delightful.The audience agreed; everyone was smiling, clapping, enthusiastic. What was weird is that we went to the same concert (or similar), about two years ago, but I cannot remember being there. I love pipe bands and this one (in our city’s incredible Winspear music center) offers an exceptional performance. How could I so totally forget it?
Yesterday held another fascination. Personal issues (involving people whose permission I would need to publish details) have not changed. The storms I wrote about yesterday still raged then and into today, but when God urged me to rejoice in Him, my mood changed.
The joy of the Lord is hard to describe. I sit here and just rest my mind and I can feel it bubbling inside me like an artesian well deep in the cleft of a rock. Joy is there. If I focus on the problems and storms, joy does not vanish but the sense of it is muffled by anxiety and sorrow, and I know if I remain in that mode, this joy could be overwhelmed.
However, if I think about the power of God, His sovereign purposes, and His promises to meet needs and answer prayers, joy gurgles like a happy brook, washing over stones and carrying away sorrows like leaves tossed in its flow. The joy of the Spirit is more powerful and will not quit.
My devotional reading today tells how God created us in such a way that only He can truly satisfy the needs of our hearts. Because He knows that, and I don’t (or at least I didn’t at first), He understands the importance of me being detached from fleshy and worldly pleasures. How else would I discover the grandness of His joy if I were focused on other sources?
He created me with a God-shaped void that I’ve tried to fill it with all sorts of things which, of course, do not fit. All around me I see people who are obsessed trying to make their chosen ‘things’ fill that void. These are driven people. Some are still having fun because they have not yet realized the void remains unfilled, but most are unhappy and fearful. They know something is missing, but don’t know what it is.
God is Enough says, “We must come to the end of everything that is not God in order to find our joy in God alone,” not that God is out to rob us of all things, but to help us discover that His joy is superior. The joy of other things come and go, obviously. How else would I forget the joy of that concert two years prior? Obviously it delighted me because this one did, but I do not recall that delight. It didn’t fill the void.
The joy that Jesus gives is here, inside me, not depending on what goes on out there. I never have to struggle trying to remember it. My big struggle is in trying to keep my focus on Him, the One who so freely gives it to me.
The Psalmist wrote, “Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Oh, send out Your light and Your truth! Let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy hill and to Your tabernacle. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and on the harp I will praise You, O God, my God.” (Psalm 43:2-3)
Those verses remind me that my enemy is not flesh and blood but Satan, the one Jesus called a liar and a destroyer (Ephesians 6 and John 8). Satan tells me that only this thing will make you happy, only that event will give you lasting peace and joy. When I follow his line of thinking, my focus goes off God and my faith is derailed, but when God gives light and truth, and when I respond by turning my eyes and heart toward Him, I rediscover once again that He is my exceeding joy. He fills the holes in my heart, and He is enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment