EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/11/2024 10:37 PM
My Worship Time Focus: “The Word of
Life is Joyful”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 1:4
Message of the verse: “These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.”
Let me say a couple of things before I begin looking
at this verse. First of all I forgot to
write my evening SD last night. Second I
just want to say that today 08-11-2024 is our 51st wedding anniversary,
we did a lot of celebrating last year but not much this year. God is good for without Him I don’t think our
marriage would have lasted this long, and with Him I know that He has blessed
us as we have two grown children and seven grand children, two of whom are 18
years old and one turns 16 tomorrow. All
of our children and grand-children have become born-again believers in Jesus
Christ and for that I am most grateful.
John’s message is a transforming truth and because of
that it is one that brings consummate joy, and produces full satisfaction and complete
fulfillment that can never be lost. Here
are some verses to support that statement (John 10:28-29; Rom. 8:35-39; Phil.
1:6; 2 Peter 1:10-11). The following is
what Jesus told the apostles in the upper room, “These things I have spoken to
you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (John
15:11 and we can also compare these verses with this one, John 1622, 33; Luke
2:10). Now as the apostle Paul explained
“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace
and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17, now compare with that Phil. 4:4 and 1
Thess. 5:16).
John MacArthur writes “The secular, dictionary definition
of joy—“the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the
prospect of possessing what one desires”—is thoroughly inadequate when applied
to the Christian life. Martyn
Lloyd-Jones correctly observed,
Another
thing we must bear in mind, in any definition we may give of New Testament joy,
is that we do not go to a dictionary; we go to the New Testament instead. This is something quite peculiar which cannot
be explained; it is a quality which belongs to the Christian life in its
essence, so that in our definition of joy we must be very careful that it
conforms to what we see in our Lord. The
world has never seen anyone who knew joy as our Lord knew it, and yet He was ‘a
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’
So our definition of joy must somehow correspond to that. (Life in Christ: Studies in 1 John [Wheaton,
Ill.”Crossway, 2002], 28).
“Lloyd-Jones went on to appropriately summarize the sort
of joy of which the apostle John was speaking:
Joy is
something very deep and profound, something that affects the whole and entire
personality. In other words it comes to
this; there is only one thing that can give true joy and that is contemplation
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He satisfies
my mind; He satisfies my emotions; He satisfies my every desire. He and His great salvation include the whole
personality and nothing less, and in Him I am complete. Joy, in other words, is the response and the reaction of the soul to a
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Life in Christ, 30)
“John wanted his readers to experience the joy that comes
from understanding the reality of Christ, the saving truth of the gospel, and
the fellowship that each Christian has with God and fellow believers. It is then that all true followers of Jesus
will have His ‘joy made full in themselves” (John 17:13; cf. 15:11; 16:24; Ps.
16:11).”
I remember that when I first became a believer in Jesus
Christ and the subject of joy came up the definition that I heard was something
like this. “Jesus first; others second,
yourself last.” I’m not sure that I
believe that this totally describes joy, but I suppose to a newer believer it
was a pretty good start.
8/11/2024 11:06 PM
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