Get Started on Experiencing Your Greatest Joy Forever

I'm addicted to sugar. I eat or drink way too much sugar every day. This is not a good thing, but my appetite still craves it. When I'm tired, or just want to take a break to relax, or when I'm looking at the menu, my body is telling me that sugar is an essential element for being satisfied.
 
What does this have to do with the image at the right? It's a bit of a testimony. Although my mind and body are convinced that sugar is necessary for me to enjoy my day, they're deceived. It's just not true. What's more, the things that really would make my body feel better and more energetic don't usually appeal to my appetite. My body isn't just mistaken about sugar; it's got the whole order of what's good for it and not so good flipped backwards.
 
I still remember the point in life where I discovered I was doing the same thing with my relationship with God. I had been worshiping God and learning the Bible and a lot about Christian faith and doctrine for years, but there was a point where I realized I was trying to be Christian but still find my satisfaction in the typical things most people think make for a good life: having a good marriage, enjoying time with friends, doing productive things, and hoping that the coming days of your life will be more and more successful and filled with fulfilling achievements as they go along. And like most people, I often felt empty and unsatisfied, and I would gravitate to things that promised immediate satisfaction. All of this got turned upside down when I read through John Piper's book Desiring God. For the first time, the central truth that being Christian meant treasuring God Himself as your greatest joy and pleasure was demonstrated for me.
 
Piper convinced me from the Bible and from quoting the experiences of dozens of Christians over the centuries like C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, Blaise Pascal, Augustine, George Muller, Charles Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, and dozens of other missionaries, teachers, authors, and philosophers that the point of Christianity is to enjoy God and treasure Him above everything else. Just as important, he convinced me that this works. That may sound silly, but I know it is all too common for people to hear and be persuaded that we are supposed to love and enjoy God, but to have no idea how to do it and to find the effort disappointing. It isn't enough to be told you need to be satisfied by the experience of God Himself. We have to be shown that this really will satisfy us, so that we don't get discouraged and quit before we experience it. We also have to discover what it is about God that brings us joy.
 
This is primarily because, just like my sugar cravings, we are very used to finding comfort and satisfaction in small things that provide some immediate pleasure. We become dependent on that habit and cycle, so dependent that changing our habits to seek our satisfaction in something else at first feels like self-denial and a loss of pleasure. It has taken me a long time to find satisfaction in eating real fruit instead of sugary foods and drinks. I had to stick with it in order to change my tastes and appetite and to convince my body that this really was more satisfying. In the same way, it took time and patience in sitting and reading the Word of God alone and praying for God to make my soul delight in Him before I really began to experience it. I had to establish a new diet, and I had to feed myself by reading the Scriptures just for enjoyment and closeness to God, as well as praying just in order to be near God more often than praying to get needs met. The more I practiced this and consistently sought God Himself rather than turning to something lesser to get comfort, the more I received satisfaction and comfort from God. 

"One of our obstacles to enjoying God is that we don't really have a good idea of what that means."

I have shared much more about this journey on this blog under the tag Finding Joy. You can find a lot more detail there if you're interested. The main purpose of this post today is to illustrate that one of our obstacles to enjoying God is that we don't really have a good idea of what that means. This is where the book shown above may be a blessing. The Scriptures tell us over and over that what we will enjoy for all eternity is God's glory. Glory is often referred to as the reward in heaven, both beholding the glory of God and receiving glory ourselves. Yet we tend to have a very vague idea of what that means, and so we don't have a real vision of how that will satisfy us. We understand it must be good, but it is hard to have your appetite whetted for something you haven't tasted. God's Glory Alone: The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life (David VanDrunen) is a book that promises to give us not just a taste, but a feast of glory. If you want to truly enjoy God, learn as much about His glory as you can. The more you train yourself to desire and look forward to that which will bring you your greatest possible joy, the more you will enjoy it now. I hope this book helps many Christians discover the depth and potency of being satisfied in God.
 
There is an excellent and detailed review of the book up at The Gospel Coalition. It sounds like some people may find more immediate application in the book if they start with the second section first. Read on and see for yourself! "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!" Psalm 34:8

Is Happiness a Vain and Worldly Thing or a Christian Thing?

Randy Alcorn has written the essay I have been waiting for someone to write. This is an important thing to get clear. We see so many people wrecking their lives and their souls by pursuing "happiness" in all the wrong places that we can become skeptical and critical of the idea of happiness itself.

Some Christians have dismissed happiness as a worldly and self-centered idea that is different from Christian joy and satisfaction. They try to explain Christian joy as something different and spiritual, and they treat happiness as a self-indulgent desire. This is very confusing to our hearts, especially to those who struggle for joy, because it makes us feel criticized for some of our legitimate efforts to be happy. And yet we cannot get away from them. As Christian philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal famously said: "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end." (Pensées, #425).

This has been one of my first priorities in writing a blog, and I've tackled the search for joy a number of times from the very early posts to If You Struggle With Joy You're Not Alone and a string of posts here from 2013 on C.S. Lewis (including Don't Let Being Unhappy Make You Feel Guilty).

But for the present, I just encourage you to read Randy Alcorn's post. Here's a preview:

An ungrounded, dangerous separation of joy from happiness has infiltrated the Christian community. The following is typical of the artificial distinctions made by modern Christians:

Joy is something entirely different from happiness. Joy, in the Biblical context, is not an emotion. . . . There is a big difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is an emotion and temporary; joy is an attitude of the heart.

Judging from such articles (and there are hundreds more out there), you’d think the distinction between joy and happiness is biblical. It’s not.

John Piper writes, “If you have nice little categories for ‘joy is what Christians have’ and ‘happiness is what the world has,’ you can scrap those when you go to the Bible, because the Bible is indiscriminate in its uses of the language of happiness and joy and contentment and satisfaction.”

Here’s a sampling of the more than one hundred Bible verses in various translations that use joy and happiness together:

• For the Jews it was a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honor. (Esther 8:16, NIV)
• I will turn their mourning into joy. . . and bring happiness out of grief. (Jeremiah 31:13, HCSB)
• Give your father and mother joy! May she who gave you birth be happy. (Proverbs 23:25, NLT)

The relationship between joy and happiness in these passages refutes two common claims: (1) that the Bible doesn’t talk about happiness, and (2) that joy and happiness have contrasting meanings. In fact, the Bible overflows with accounts of God’s people being happy in him.

More...

How Can I Change the Fact that I Desire the Wrong Things?

The Church is founded on the Gospel of God's love for us, displayed through Jesus Christ giving Himself to remove our guilt and shame. The Christian community is together because we were all forgiven and rescued from guilt and judgment. This unites us into one people, and our lifelong goal is to help each other continue in the freedom and joy of this new life. The power to change your old habits and desires for the wrong things is embodied in the Gospel. One of the most important truths about Christianity is that the Gospel is not just the information that we can believe in the work of Jesus Christ, God's Son, and have forgiveness and salvation by accepting Him as our Lord. The Gospel is also the means by which we live every day as a Christian and overcome everything that wars against our souls. We begin with the Gospel, but we continue every day as individuals and as a community by living in the Gospel.

This is crucial, because it is not uncommon for Christians to find real discouragement and weariness as the years of life go on and they fight some of the same struggles with sin, doubt, fear, and temptation year after year. Many Christians have not been taught that the Gospel is the power that is meant to sustain them and refresh them day after day. They try to change themselves by force of will, or through guilting themselves and punishing themselves with shame when they make mistakes. God has a much better plan and solution for us than this. Milton Vincent gives a very illuminating but simple and accessible overview of this in his short book A Gospel Primer for Christians.

He wrote his book "as a correction to a costly mistake made by Christians who view the gospel as something that has fully served out its purpose the moment they believed in Jesus for salvation. Not knowing what to do with the gospel once they are saved, they lay it aside soon after conversion so they can move on to 'bigger and better' things (even Scriptural things). Of course, they don't think this is what they are doing at the time, yet after many years of floundering in defeat they can look back and see that this is exactly what they have done."

Instead, Christians need to see that "God did not give us His gospel just so we could embrace it and be converted. Actually, He offers it to us every day as a gift that keeps on giving to us everything we need for life and godliness." (A Gospel Primer, Milton Vincent, p. 5).

That sounds appealing, but the question most people have is "How?" How do we get daily benefits and refreshment out of the Gospel? How does it give us strength to live the Christian life as a liberating path of hope instead of an overwhelming list of rules to follow?

Vincent's book is precious because he spends the whole book answering this, and he ties everything he says to the Scriptures so we know this isn't just his creative idea, but God's genuine wisdom. He details how to keep your mind fixed on the joys of all that Christ has done for us and the unlimited blessings He has made our own through the Gospel, and how to keep your heart full of hope and encouragement instead of looking always at the size of your problems. Here is his description of how living in the Gospel changes our desires so that we truly want and enjoy what is good instead of being drawn to sin:

"On the most basic of levels, I desire fullness[.]"

Though saved, I am daily beset by a sinful flesh that always craves those things that are contrary to the Spirit. These fleshly lusts are vicious enemies, constantly waging war against the good of my soul. Yet they promise me fullness, and their promises are so deliciously sweet that I often find myself giving into them as if they were friends that have my best interests at heart.

On the most basic of levels, I desire fullness, and fleshly lusts seduce me by attaching themselves to this basic desire. They exploit the empty spaces in me, and they promise that fullness will be mine if I give in to their demands. When my soul sits empty and is aching for something to fill it, such deceptive promises are extremely difficult to resist.

Consequently, the key to mortifying fleshly lusts [killing them] is to eliminate the emptiness within me and replace it with fullness; and I accomplish this by feasting on the gospel. Indeed, it is in the gospel that I experience a God who glorifies Himself by filling me with His fullness. He is the One, Paul says, "who fills all in all." He is the One who "fill[s] all things" with the gifts He gives. And He lavishes gospel blessings upon me with the goal that I "be filled up to all the fullness of God." This is the God of the gospel, a God who is satisfied with nothing less than my experience of fullness in Him! The first command God spoke in the Garden was, "eat freely." And with similar insistence He says to me now, "be filled."

What happens to my appetites for sin when I am filled with the fullness of God in Christ? Jesus provides this answer: "He who continually comes to Me will never hunger or thirst again." Indeed, as I perpetually feast on Christ and all of His blessings found in the gospel, I find that my hunger for sin diminishes and the lies of lust simply lose their appeal. Hence, to the degree that I am full, I am free.

...Preaching the gospel to myself each day keeps before me the startling advocacy of God for my fullness, and it also serves as a means by which I feast anew on the fullness of provision that God has given to me in Christ. "Eat[ing] freely" of such provision keeps me occupied with God's blessings and also leaves me with a profoundly enjoyable sense of satisfaction in Jesus. And nothing so mortifies fleshly lusts like satisfaction in Him. (Gospel, pp. 45-47).

The Ultimate Fulfillment Is Greater Than We've Ever Dreamed

C.S. Lewis perceived that our inconsolable longing in this life will only be completely fulfilled when we are united to God in the next. He also identified another awesome dimension to our ultimate desire for fulfillment. What we really want is not merely to be satisfied, but to become part of the beauty and glory that draws us in even now:

"When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as 'the journey homeward to habitual self.' You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. ... A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

"Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being 'noticed' by God. But this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (1 Cor. 8:3). ... Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.

...

"At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in." (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

We All Have an Inconsolable Longing - For Now

In the last post, I said that C.S. Lewis spent a great deal of time thinking about our universal human longing for happiness. One of the greatest and most important things he ever wrote on this subject is a sermon entitled The Weight of Glory. Every Christian should read it. It is one of the most revealing commentaries written in modern times on desire, fulfillment, satisfaction, and what it really means to be created for eternal life in heaven. Here is how Lewis explains our inconsolable longing:

"Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object. ... In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. ... Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

We are always trying in this life to arrive – to get to a place where we feel really fulfilled and do not long for anything else. And that is just what we can’t do. Lewis recognized that because we were not made for this world, we have a natural and inborn longing for something better and deeper that will only be fulfilled in the next world. That doesn't mean we don't get foretastes of joy and happiness and fulfillment in this life. Lewis also recognized that we are given the good pleasures in this world (the music, the beauty, the happy relationships) to whet our appetites for the glories of the next. But this world is temporary, and limited, and we can't experience the fullness of everlasting joy that God has planned for His people in this perishable world. We have to be ready to put it away when the time comes to receive our true inheritance.

In fact, the more we try to be completely satisfied here in this life on earth, the further we put ourselves from complete satisfaction. Our only means of being fully satisfied is to seek with all our hearts to find our satisfaction completely in God, something we will not fully receive until our bodies are renewed and we join Him in eternity. While we are on earth, this experience will become an increasing fulfillment and satisfaction in God if we continue to pursue it. The eternal fountain of absolute joy does overflow into Creation, filling those who embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior with streams of living water. But we aren't satisfied taking drinks from the overflow of the fountain forever. What we really want is to be plunged into joy endlessly, to never get thirsty again. In the next post, I'll share how Lewis depicted that glorious union.

Happiness Is Limited in This Life So You'll Enjoy It Forever

I want to make sure that I am clear in what I mean when I say God wants us to be happy. I do not at all mean that God promises we will be happy all of the time in this life, or that we will mostly have joy and very little pain. Joy is not a constant thing. If you have many seasons where you must struggle to find joy, you're normal. God does provide joy, and God is the only one you can rely on to provide everlasting joy. But He deliberately limits our experience of it in this life, and I think C.S. Lewis understood why.

I have been helped and encouraged immensely by C.S. Lewis when I have been struggling to find joy and happiness (as you can see from the link). Lewis has made more sense out of why we long so much for satisfaction that seems elusive, and why we suffer so much, than just about anyone else outside the Scriptures. The only other Christian author that has helped me this much is John Piper, and I suspect that is in no small part because Piper himself has been richly helped by Lewis. Piper titled his biographical sketch of Lewis "Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul" (a title that will be explained by the next post). It summarizes well how much Lewis thought about joy and satisfaction and the longing to find them.

Lewis's conclusion about why happiness is limited in this life was simply this: God gives us as much happiness in life as is good for us, but not so much that we miss out on everlasting joy.

"The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacles to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home." C.S Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Or, as the Scriptures put it: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” 1 John 2:15-17.

And not only that, but their joy abides forever too.

Why Does God Delay Giving Us Joy?

I firmly believe God does want us to be happy. The way Jesus prays for His people in John 17, especially John 17:13, is a powerful example of that. John 15:11 is another. He is really focused on our joy being full. It appears to be one of the main priorities Jesus has as He is preparing to leave the world. So why is joy so hard for many people to find? If God wants us to have it, why do we have to seek for it in spite of so many obstacles, and why do some of us have to wait so long to find it? This is a painful question for so many people. It has been a painful question for me. The thoughts below have truly helped.

I argued here that the Bible has many examples of God telling us we ought to ask Him for good things that He has already said He wants to give to us. The riches of God's love and kindness to us are displayed much more powerfully when we ask Him for something in complete dependence and He faithfully gives us just what we need. It's one way of demonstrating to the world who He is: a loving heavenly Father who knows how to give good gifts to His children. (Matthew 7:7-11.) That's probably only one glimpse of what God uses prayer to do. What about the prayers for joy, for relief from pain, that God doesn't seem to answer? Why do we sometimes have to ask repeatedly? Why not grant it the first time we ask for it? Wouldn't that look more generous than making us wait?

God clearly has a much more complex purpose in prayer. C.S Lewis made the point that prayer is not about changing how God acts; prayer changes us. There is something happening inside of us as we pray, and especially as we wait for God to act. In fact, to put it fairly, God is acting all the time as we pray to Him. Even when we don't see signs that He is answering the prayers we lifted up, He has already been at work changing us through the relationship of prayer. The process of praying earnestly for God's help over a long period of time is doing something in our souls while we experience it.

When we feel we need something from God and He doesn't seem to give it, it often doesn't feel like a comfort that He is invisibly doing something else in our souls we can't feel yet. We are almost always focused on our immediate needs and wants. We don't have the benefit of God's far-sighted perspective on what will bring us the most happiness. God is not just seeking our immediate happiness. He is seeking a permanent and lasting happiness. In fact, the process of waiting may be a necessary tool that shapes us and trains us so that we actually can receive the joy God wants to give us. We aren't always ready to receive what we ask for - it might not even help us much if we got it when we first asked for it. A loving God would do more than just give us whatever we ask; He would make sure to change us so that we could actually enjoy it.

We easily forget that we are not whole yet. We are not at present the mature children of God that we one day will be. There is still a lot of work to be done to untangle the cords of sin and defiance and pride that are wound around our hearts and souls. There are glorious things God has promised to us, but we have to undergo the process of being healed and fixed and restored in order to appreciate them, and to avoid ruining them. J.D. Greear, in his book Gospel (p. 188), pointed out that waiting for God, and even being denied what we ask for, reveals things about what we really place our hope in and what we really treasure. Sometimes when we ask for joy or happiness, what we really mean by that is that we want certain things in our lives to work out a certain way because that's what we think we need to be happy. The process of waiting can lead to our discovering that we treasure other things more than God, or we trust them to satisfy us more than we trust God to do it. This discovery may be exactly what God uses to bring us to the greater joy of being satisfied in Him alone. J.D. Greear quotes Larry Crabb as saying: "You might never really know Jesus is all that you need until He is all that you have."

The pleasure of knowing God Himself is the only joy in the universe that will never let us down and never wear out. One of the clearest demonstrations of God's love is that when we are wrong about what we think we need to be happy, He doesn't give it to us, but instead helps fix us so we will learn what will really complete our happiness. If we are depending on other things to happen for us to be happy, even "good" things like being married, having unity in our church, or being free from pain, then those things control our joy. As J.D. Greear put it, "Whatever controls your joy is what you abide in." (Gospel, p. 188.) Abiding in anything other than God for joy is setting ourselves up for disappointment. Learning to abide in God alone for joy is a very difficult process for us, but if it guarantees that we will get that joy, and keep it forever, then the sooner we learn to do that the better. That is truly a loving answer to prayer.

Why You Have to Fight Sin by Trusting in God

I said here and here that in order to overcome sin and temptation, you have to let go of trusting in your own willpower and turn instead to putting all your hope and trust in God to provide the strength to resist. Here are some examples of how the Bible emphasizes this truth:

"Thus says the LORD:
'Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.

'Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.'"
Jeremiah 17:5-8

Paul said of his ministry: "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God... ." 2 Corinthians 3:5

Paul also confessed: "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." Romans 7:18-25

Paul recognized that he did not have the ability himself to obey what is right. He saw that his physical body was captive to the desire for sin, even when he wanted with his mind to obey God. And in verses 24-25 he emphasizes that he needs someone else to deliver him from this state, and then gives praise to God through Jesus Christ - the one who delivers him.

One of the most subtle deceptions that keep us trapped in a pattern of sin is the idea that our hearts and minds are basically good and capable of doing the right thing if we just try hard enough. Too many people cling to this idea as a self-image, not wanting to accept that they are not good by nature. Our hope of freedom is not found in being able to think of ourselves as good people. It is found in recognizing that God has shown inexhaustible and profound grace to us by loving, forgiving, restoring, and accepting us even though we were not good. Until we accept that we really are sinful and unable to obey God ourselves, we will not appreciate the relationship of salvation. It is, and must be, a total dependence on God alone for mercy and freedom. And that is the same way we have to continue to live, trusting God moment to moment to keep us from turning away from Him to seek after the deception of sin. I'll address this more deeply here and here.

How to Fight Sin by Faith

I said here that the way to defeat sin is to fight by faith - you must admit you can't overcome sin on your own and put your trust in God instead to do it. Here's how it works in practice: when you are tempted by any sin, don't think to yourself "I'm strong enough to beat this. I can hold out. I won't give in." That thinking is focused entirely on trusting yourself to be faithful and to be good. The problem with that is that we aren't good. No matter how much we try to do what is right, sooner or later we stray. Scripture makes it clear what our situation is: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus[.]" (Romans 3:23-24). We can't hope in our own ability to avoid sin; we have to accept instead that if we stand, we stand by the grace of God that comes through Christ.

This is the strength God wants us to draw on. "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might." says Paul in Ephesians 6:10. Instead of relying on our own strength or willpower, we need to rely on God's strength. So when temptation comes, turn to God in prayer and confess that you know you cannot do this on your own. Admit you need Him and are dependent on His power, and ask Him to strengthen you and to give you the grace to resist temptation. As Jesus said to His disciples: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26:41). He did not say, "Strengthen your resolve and resist temptation." He told them to pray that they would not give in, asking God to keep them from sin.

The next step is crucial: you have to trust God that He will deliver you and grant you grace to resist. "In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one[.]" (Ephesians 6:16). It is faith in God that deflects and defeats the temptations hurled at us. One of the biggest reasons I found that sin was defeating me was because I had failed so many times before that I was just convinced it was hopeless to hold out forever. I was convinced that sooner or later I would fail anyway. But God tells us not to trust in our own limited strength, and to trust in His infinite, almighty power instead. The change here is huge. When you realize you're relying on God's power, you know that victory is possible! Jesus spent His whole life without ever sinning. If that's the power of God at work, then you can resist and overcome too. The confirmation of this is that God has promised us He will make us able to escape sin: "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Fighting by faith means you take things one step at a time, trusting God to sustain you and give you strength to resist each temptation. You keep turning away from the temptation because you know that God is giving you the strength to succeed every time. And the reason this is different than trying to resist in your own strength is that you have asked God to deliver you and you have placed your faith in Him to do it. God responds to that trust and puts His power to work in your life to overcome sin. His power is inexhaustible and able to defeat anything.

What I Mean By "Beating Sin"

I said here that I would explain in these posts how I went about beating sin, and in the last post I said I have been experiencing freedom from certain sins for years. I want to be absolutely clear about what I mean by that:

• I do not mean that I am sin-free, so don't write this off as me saying something ridiculous. I sin in lots of ways, just like everybody else. There are only two kinds of people in this world - sinners who don't believe in Christ and sinners who do. No human except for Jesus has ever reached a point where he doesn't sin. But you can find freedom from habits of sin - sins you keep committing over and over and over (often called "besetting sins").
• I do not mean that I don't have to fight hard against temptation. I often do. Temptation doesn't go away. However, I have found that temptations are often weaker.
• I do not mean that I have "conquered" a particular sin and don't need to worry about it anymore. That would be a very dangerous idea. Sin is always a deadly enemy that you have to watch for vigilantly. You can't make peace with it. "Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?" (Proverbs 6:27).

Here's what I mean: By applying what I talked about in the last post, I experienced a decisive change in my life where I was able to regularly resist temptations that I used to give in to. I also found that the temptations became less frequent, the fight was often much easier, and I have been given the grace to have a long season of victory over some particular sins. That doesn't mean I might not stumble again someday. "Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor. 10:12). But the difference is night and day. That's what I call freedom - the freedom to establish new patterns of behavior and the freedom of successfully resisting over and over the temptations that you used to regularly give in to.

Fighting Sin Requires Admitting You Can't Win

When I was finally at the point with sin that I desperately wanted to change, I was trying everything I could to resist temptation and avoid sin. I was proud of myself for some really long periods (months) of staying away from certain sins. But I kept giving in to sin again and again. It seemed that no matter what my motivation was, no matter how much I hated sin or was ashamed of it, no matter what tactics I tried, I just kept returning to it. Then I read a book in which the author boldly stated in the first chapter something that stunned me. He said this fight is impossible and we can't win it. He proceeded to demonstrate from the Bible two things: 1) that we are corrupted enough by an appetite for sin that we aren't able to resist it on our own; and 2) that God's standard is complete holiness, something no human being can obtain by force of will or discipline.

At first, I was wondering where he was going with that. Then he explained that as long as we are trying to "work harder" at beating sin (this goes for any sin), we are just trying to do in our own strength something that is impossible on our own. The only way to victory is to recognize and admit to God that we can't do this. We will fail. I thought this sounded like giving up, but the author made me see that God's specific plan for overcoming sin is that we trust Him to supply the power to do it. When we admit to Him we can't do it and that we have to depend entirely on Him, we are being honest about who we are and who God is. That's what God wants us to see. He wants us to recognize that He is God, and it is His power that is going to change our lives. When we ask Him to free us and we put our trust entirely in Him to overcome sin, He accomplishes far more than we ever can.

I know this is right, because I've examined these ideas against Scripture, and that's exactly what the Bible teaches. But I also know it's right because I changed my tactics and started applying this truth in practice, putting all my trust and hope in God to keep me from sin, and now instead of those occasional months of freedom I've been free for years. God's plan works. Here's how it looks in practice.

The Roadblock to Spiritual Health

I had finally reached a point in my life where I had caused enough pain to myself and others through sin that I was sick of giving in to it. If you're not there yet, I recommend that you spend serious time in prayer asking God to show you how your sins are affecting others and to show you just how bad they are. Make no mistake: your sins are making you and other people unhappy and are frustrating your hopes and dreams. It's just a question of seeing how. As long as you take sin lightly, you won't care much about changing.

Reading the Bible will help you see sin clearly. Read Proverbs and you'll get a clear sense of the real consequences of sin and how self-destructive it is. James and Romans are also good books to read. Read Matthew 5. Scripture will show you how poisonous sin is and how widespread its destruction can be. Scripture is clear that the end of sin is death (Romans 6:20-23; James 1:14-15), but that seems to sink in for us more when we see illustrations of what sin does to us.

Perhaps the most convicting thought for me is that the desires for sin are directly opposed to spiritual life. "For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do." (Galatians 5:17). In other words, you will not grow in the Christian life unless you reckon with your sin. It is standing in the way of your spiritual fulfillment, and every time you make progress sin is sneaking in and working against you. Recognize that sin is your enemy.

Stage 2: Fighting Sin by Faith

I have said a lot about the importance of reading your Bible because I want to emphasize that equipping your mind with God's promises and instructions is a crucial tool you need to find joy and satisfaction. I am going to move now to talking about how I dealt with the sins and attitudes that were keeping me from joy. I listed this second in the outline I gave of the most significant things that were part of my transformation from being disappointed and unfulfilled to becoming free, joyful, and satisfied in my daily relationship with Christ. Simply put, I had reached a point in my life where I knew I wasn't measuring up to what I wanted to be and what my family needed me to be, and I was also giving in to sin over and over again in ways that left me feeling totally defeated.

We all know that sin is bad. We've heard the message over and over that sin is wrong and that it will lead to punishment in hell. We need to get that straight in our heads, because if we are going to find joy in God, we have to care about obeying God. You can't love the Lord and be close to Him and kick sand in His face at the same time. But I think a large part of the reason we don't obey God in this area is that we don't trust Him enough when He promises that we will be fulfilled by following His instruction. Sin comes along and tempts us with some immediate pleasure, and we give in because we don't think we'll be as fulfilled by resisting. So one thing I needed to realize before I hated sin enough to want to change is that sin makes you miserable. Sin may give some pleasure, but it always takes more in exchange.

Every sin makes you sacrifice something you need for a healthy, complete, fulfilled life in order to pursue it. Adultery comes at the expense of your marriage, your family, your friendships, and the peace of your home. Gluttony comes at the expense of health. Pride comes at the expense of hurting and pushing down others. Greed comes at the expense of peace of mind and contentment (you can never be satisfied when your happiness is wrapped up in getting - there's always more you don't have). Sin isn't just wrong - it's self-defeating. It is a traitor and a liar. Sin never makes a straight bargain, but always cheats you in the end.

In my life, I finally reached a point where I had screwed up enough to realize I was always going to be miserable unless I beat the sins I was giving in to. In the next posts I will lay out how I went about it.

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Psalms Part 2

Another way that the Psalms and Lamentations have encouraged me is how they express confidence in God's faithfulness and His goodness. When you read the words of people who were in deepest despair - people like David, whose father-in-law the King of Israel was hunting him down to try to kill him - you can find tremendous encouragement from the fact that these writers still trusted God and turned to Him for relief. Even in their darkest struggles, they had faith in God. If they can trust Him through such trials, then we can too.

Part of the comfort I have taken in books like the Psalms is the fact that they do not belittle or demean the pain of suffering. They don't try to trivialize it or suggest we're overreacting to it. On the contrary, it is clear from the Psalms that the writers experienced agonizing suffering. But their faith still held throughout their trials, and they still affirmed God's goodness. So whatever we're struggling through, we can be comforted that God was faithful to them and will be faithful to us. Great suffering is not evidence that God has abandoned us. If we put our trust in Him and hold fast to His promises, as the Psalmists did, we will find hope and comfort.

Four of my favorite Psalms for comfort: Psalm 34, Psalm 37, Psalm 56, and Psalm 73.

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Psalms

I used to think the Old Testament was not as important as the New Testament. I have to confess I saw it more as historical background, and therefore not as relevant or useful in everyday Christian life. What changed my mind was reading through it regularly in my daily Bible reading. I am amazed by what I was neglecting. As my faith and my relationship with God have developed, I have grown tremendously in my appreciation for the importance of the Old Testament writings in my daily life.

Example #1: I have found great encouragement in struggling with pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) through books like the Psalms and Lamentations. These books express cries of pain, anguish, grief, despair, and doubt very powerfully. I used to dismiss them because they were poetic. Now I cherish them, because they show that real children of God do struggle and that it is right to cry out to God in your struggles. David wrote a huge number of the Psalms. He was a man after God's own heart, yet he had these thoughts and made these anguished cries. So it's okay to admit you feel this way and to tell God about it. If David could express his heartache and fear and still be a man after God's own heart, then you can too (man or woman).

Some of us think that we have to suppress our struggles and pretend we aren't feeling doubt or fear, because we would somehow be accusing God or showing a lack of faith if we admitted to feeling this way. That is dangerous and unhealthy. We can't bear these burdens on our own. We need God to overcome these struggles. David honored God by crying out to Him in his suffering, because David showed that he trusted God as both the One who was powerful enough to rescue him and the One who was gracious and compassionate enough to do it.

Your feelings and thoughts aren't hidden from God (Psalm 139:1-4). He already knows how you're feeling inside, so there's no reason to avoid sharing it with Him in prayer. But when you express these things to Him in prayer and ask for His aid, you honor Him the same way David did. And you can take comfort knowing that God responds to these prayers:

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears
and delivers them out of all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:17-18

Don't Waste Your Bible - Any of It

One foundational truth of reading Scripture is that you need the whole Bible. I mentioned here that you shouldn't discourage yourself by getting too ambitious when you first start committing to reading your Bible each day. However, once you get started, make it your goal to eventually get through every single book of the Bible. If you just stick to the New Testament or if you avoid some books, you will leave yourself with an unbalanced and fragmented appreciation of God. You will also miss out on some of the best ammunition for fighting sin and finding encouragement. I'll give examples in the next couple of posts.

Paul exhorted Christians to appreciate the value of reading the Old Testament:

"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." Romans 15:4

"Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come." 1 Corinthians 10:11

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17

God gave us the Bible as the best explanation of who He is and what He created us for. Unlike some books, there is nothing in the Bible that is there by accident. It is all important. We can't expect to have a full and abundant Christian life if we only listen to half of God's message.

Where I'm Going Next With This Blog

I have been generally focusing on the things I identified here as turning points in my life and faith, while interspersing other thoughts that seem worthwhile. After sharing a few more thoughts on the tremendous importance of reading Scripture, I am going to shift the focus to talking about feeling powerless to deal with our sins and learning to depend on God alone to give us victory (which is exactly how I have found strength to resist and overcome sin).

If You Struggle With Joy, You're Not Alone

A central purpose in my writing this blog has been to encourage Christians who aren't experiencing satisfaction in their relationship with God and to share what has helped me. One of the greatest gifts I've received has been the ministry of John Piper, and one of the chief reasons that he has been a gift is the fact that he is open and humble about his own deep struggles with fighting for joy and satisfaction in God. John Piper is probably best known for writing Desiring God, which makes a compelling case from Scripture that God intends for Christians to be joyful and happy, and that this happiness and joy comes from enjoying God Himself as our treasure. But he has also written this, and for anyone who feels discouraged in trying to find joy or satisfaction, this book is a great kindness. (and you can read both books online for free)

John Piper is absolutely right that our greatest satisfaction and joy comes from God, but there are many difficulties and challenges in life that make it hard for us to enjoy God the way we ought to be able to. I thank God that Piper has also been blessed with the humility to talk transparently about how these struggles affect him, and how he fights through them. If you're not experiencing joy right now, don't lose heart. Seek the Lord and trust His promise that He will be found by those who seek Him, and take encouragement from other believers who share how they face their own battles.

[W]hoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Hebrews 11:6

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live forever!
Psalm 22:26

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart... .
Psalm 119:2

Our Fear of Letting Go of Our Pleasures

To sum up the last post, you were designed and created to find your satisfaction in God, because that is the only place a living being can experience real satisfaction. As long as you find something more desirable than knowing Him and experiencing Him - as long as you hold something back as more dear to you than God - you will never be content.

This is the part that most people get discouraged at. We are used to relying on lots of things in the world (romance, sex, money, vacations, friends, family, food, books, television, etc.) for comfort and pleasure. The idea that we must set all these aside and desire God more than any of them, and further that we are supposed to be satisfied entirely by God Himself, feels threatening. We aren't yet used to enjoying God and being satisfied with Him alone, and so we are anxious that this idea of desiring God above all things will mean that the desires we are used to will go unfulfilled and will be a disappointment to us. This is where we have to act in faith. "Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart." says Psalm 37:4. And God has promised us that "whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever." John 4:14. If we want that deep longing in our hearts that none of these other things have ever fully satisfied to be finally fulfilled, we must trust God that He means what He says. We must seek Him first and most deeply.

One of the great delights we will find is that when we are most satisfied with God, we can enjoy the other good things He has given us too. Some past things we must give up entirely, because they actually come between us and loving God - those are sin. But many things we can safely keep as long as we never let them become more dear to us than our experience of God. Not one of the things I listed at the beginning of the second paragraph is bad in itself. It is only bad when taken in a way that puts it before God or disobeys His teaching. The safest thing you can do if you want to keep enjoying a thing is to always make sure it is never more important to you than God. For if you have begun to desire it more than you desire God, then what can God do in His love for you but remove the thing that is distracting you from fulfillment?

On the other hand, when we make God the center of all our desire and affection, the other worthwhile things we enjoy are not robbed of their pleasure. They are actually made more enjoyable. The most mature Christians you see are not people that never have any fun. They find enjoyment and delight in many things - but they enjoy the Lord more. The things they love, they love for the Lord, with the Lord, and because of the Lord. They don't enjoy anything without enjoying it together with God. That is the way to be content in life.

Don't Settle for Half-Hearted Religion

Ray Ortlund shared a very short, powerful insight from his father at The Gospel Coalition blog that is right on point with the problem I addressed in my introduction to this blog. It's a good reminder that doing things only halfway usually keeps us from experiencing the pleasure and joy involved in whatever it is we're doing. That applies equally - or even more so - to living the Christian life.

There are really only two options in life for satisfaction and fulfillment: either go after God with all your heart, or be unfulfilled. Any illusion that there is a third way - some way that we can find contentment by doing some things God's way but other things our way - is a false hope. God's command is not that we abandon everything in this world that we enjoy. His command is simply that we learn to treasure Him more than anything else that we also enjoy. If we don't seek Him as the central source of our satisfaction, we won't find it in anything else. C.S. Lewis said it brilliantly: "It is not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that He is our only good. Rather God is the only good of all creatures... If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows-the only food that any possible universe ever can grow-then we must starve eternally." (The Problem of Pain, p. 47).