Complete - to be filled; full; complete
Today in my time in the Word I was reading in John, primarily chapter 15.
My devotional said to "approach every phrase as if [I'd] never seen it before." I hate when they say that because it often makes me nervous. I take my Bible and focus real intently and act as though I've never read the phrase before. I often get into arguments with myself over whether or not this is being phony or a falsifying my past, and if not, am I really approaching it well enough? Will the author of my devotional find out?
I digress...
God answered my request and I was blown away by an obvious concept I so often ignore. Verse 11 says, "I have told you this" (this being to remain in Him, by remaining in His love by obeying His words - particularly loving one another), "so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."
Complete joy. Joy that is complete. Full of joy.
God wants me to be full of joy.
This is not what most people generally believe and often even Christians. We simply forget or are ignorant. We spend our lives in search of "joy" and so often come up without it - or at least without very much or only fleeting moments of it because we try to obtain it apart from it's source.
We're sort of like people who attempt to plug a hairdryer into someone's nostrils. It may look like the hairdryer should fit in there, but aint no power gonna come out! (ps - I have never met any of those people)
In John Piper's book Sex and The Supremacy of Christ (which I HIGHLY recommend for anyone interested in understanding God more, sex more and/or our culture more) he writes,
"In C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, the devil Screwtape tries to explain to his nephew Wormwood what he finds most appalling and disingenuous about God: that God is really out to make people happy, and that even the austere parts of his program, the spiritual disciplines
are really ruses, clever deceptions to make them more happy. 'He's a hedonist at heart,' sniffs
Screwtape. 'All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like
foam on the sea shore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure and more pleasure. He
makes no secret of it; at His right hand are pleasures forevermore...'" (48).
When will we grasp that through Christ it is in those disciplines, in moments of loving those who we certainly don't deem deserving of it, in obeying Christ's commands, in hanging out in His "ever-surging fountain" of love as Beth Moore puts it, we get joy - completely?
I get it some moments, and then other moments I drift out of awareness of God's love and desires for me. Then I return. Then I go...Cyclical really.
Oh how I pray and hope He will continue to remind us and teach us to remain (aka "to dwell" or more literally, "to live") in His love, and that we will take Him up on the offer.
That's it for tonight. Love, Lauren and Simon (as he was so faithfully involved), and the Girltalk.blogs from whom I stole the picture
My devotional said to "approach every phrase as if [I'd] never seen it before." I hate when they say that because it often makes me nervous. I take my Bible and focus real intently and act as though I've never read the phrase before. I often get into arguments with myself over whether or not this is being phony or a falsifying my past, and if not, am I really approaching it well enough? Will the author of my devotional find out?
Anyways, this time I just asked God through the Holy Spirit to make the words fresh to me (as I'm typing this I have moved my dog's head off of the keyboard four times. Finally Daryl moved his entire body to the other end of the couch only to have him just now snuggle back over and stick his neck on my chest and his nose right in my face, blowing his warm breath up my nose. I get no respect from him, but constant affection, no doubt).
I digress...
God answered my request and I was blown away by an obvious concept I so often ignore. Verse 11 says, "I have told you this" (this being to remain in Him, by remaining in His love by obeying His words - particularly loving one another), "so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."
Complete joy. Joy that is complete. Full of joy.
God wants me to be full of joy.
This is not what most people generally believe and often even Christians. We simply forget or are ignorant. We spend our lives in search of "joy" and so often come up without it - or at least without very much or only fleeting moments of it because we try to obtain it apart from it's source.
We're sort of like people who attempt to plug a hairdryer into someone's nostrils. It may look like the hairdryer should fit in there, but aint no power gonna come out! (ps - I have never met any of those people)
In John Piper's book Sex and The Supremacy of Christ (which I HIGHLY recommend for anyone interested in understanding God more, sex more and/or our culture more) he writes,
"In C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, the devil Screwtape tries to explain to his nephew Wormwood what he finds most appalling and disingenuous about God: that God is really out to make people happy, and that even the austere parts of his program, the spiritual disciplines
are really ruses, clever deceptions to make them more happy. 'He's a hedonist at heart,' sniffs
Screwtape. 'All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like
foam on the sea shore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure and more pleasure. He
makes no secret of it; at His right hand are pleasures forevermore...'" (48).
When will we grasp that through Christ it is in those disciplines, in moments of loving those who we certainly don't deem deserving of it, in obeying Christ's commands, in hanging out in His "ever-surging fountain" of love as Beth Moore puts it, we get joy - completely?
I get it some moments, and then other moments I drift out of awareness of God's love and desires for me. Then I return. Then I go...Cyclical really.
Oh how I pray and hope He will continue to remind us and teach us to remain (aka "to dwell" or more literally, "to live") in His love, and that we will take Him up on the offer.
That's it for tonight. Love, Lauren and Simon (as he was so faithfully involved), and the Girltalk.blogs from whom I stole the picture
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