Sunday, April 12, 2009

we were created for joy.


Well I just recently moved to Saint Louis ..the Lou, home of the arch ..not arc, Sonia! ...and I have to say its growing on me. I have never wanted to live in a big city, still don't, however for the time I like it. I'll let you know when I see Nelly :) Anyway ...I've learned a lot here already and have only been here since March! Everyday is a battle. A battle for your joy. And its a choice. I can choose to have joy or choose to let the world swallow it up and I can wallow around just thinking of myself. Our life is supposed to be about JOY ...that's our light ...that's Jesus and in your brokenness its your light that God uses to help someone else that's broken! And we do this not to be a better person or to make God like us more ...or fear but because we have experienced this Joy and have been changed by it ...and we merely want others to experience it to.

All of who we are is to experience Jesus. All.

Its more that just talking about it ...seeing it ...but tasting it everyday! "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Its a battle between good and evil, yes but so much more! Everything that this world has to offer is biding for your joy. Your money, your time, your friends, your circumstances, the weather (hah yes ...this one is huge for me ...stl is cold ..boo), your gifts and talents ...and i could go on and on! But the point isnt to just go through life and let things not affect you. I have felt like this coming out of playing for the Eagles ....oh you cant react to not playing, for example ...or to the refs ...and i felt like i became someone who just tried to shove every emotion away and whenever anything bad happened i would not react and i felt like this was apathetic. Its a fight ...a battle ...and yes react!!! in a way that reflects Christ, yes ..but react ...and EXPERIENCE Christ ...experience Him ...because the times you most experience this joy ..this HOPE ...this living, breathing God that loves us is when amidst the suffering, the pain, the contradiction, the drama ...is when you have nothing to cling onto but God ..but love ...and that is Joy! Jesus died for the JOY that was set before him. The bible says that is was for the Joy that he endured the cross! That was his strength!

Joy is everything ...its how we make God smile. John Piper says this, "God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples."

Also think about this ...the really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the
moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. True, yeah? God created us to live with a single passion to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.

I find it rather "intriguin", as my roommate would say, that the word enjoy has the word JOY in it! Our purpose is to glorify God and enJOY Him forever.

Everyday I wake up and have to tell myself to choose joy because most days I don't want to. Its easy to love people that love you. Its easy to find joy and smile when its nice out and the dogs are finally sleeping! But everyday I have to FIGHT to choose joy ...and I dont pretend to have all the answers ...not even close ...or in the right direction ...but I know that "the JOY of the Lord is my strength" (Neh 8:10) and that "He will always do immeasureably more that you can ever ask or imagine" (Eph 3:20)

love life, choose joy!
L