We’ve finally come to the end of our series focusing on the practices God has given us to grow spiritually. We’ve looked at the practices of prayer, reading and reflecting upon God’s Word, following the guidance of the Holy Spirit, living simply and giving generously, serving others, confession, and worship. All of these practices, or disciplines as they are sometimes called, help us draw closer to God, and make us available to God to be transformed by him from the inside out so we reflect Jesus more and more. Last week I reminded us of the importance of spiritual growth because there are only two things we can work on in our present life which we will take with us when we die, our relationship with God and our character (love, faith, obedience).
I hope you have used these last ten weeks as an opportunity to begin putting these practices into your daily or weekly life (if you are not already doing them) to grow deeper in your relationship with Christ. Without these practices (and there are others which we didn’t get to) it is virtually impossible to grow spiritually. It is impossible to become more obedient to God. It’s just like the doctor says, if you want to be physically fit, eat healthy meals with more veggies and fruits and exercise three to five times a week. If you want to be spiritually fit, practice the disciplines, and find someone to help hold you accountable, whether a Bible study group, or Christian friends of yours, without these friends you are more likely to quit doing them.
We must also remember these practices aren’t just a spiritual to-do list, but a gift from God. If we see them as a chore, they will become a chore, and we will eventually quit doing them.
I remember when I was young I decided I wanted to learn to play the piano. I begged my parents to get a piano, that I would totally commit myself to learning to play the piano. My parents finally gave in, probably because they were tired of hearing me whine about it, and they bought a piano, and forked over the money so I could take lessons. As I began the lessons, I found out something I hadn’t realized, I actually had to practice. My piano teacher said I had to practice 20-30 minutes every day. At first it was fun being able to plunk out the notes and make it sound like more than just chopsticks. As the months rolled on, I got better at playing, but I noticed, I hated practicing. It became a chore and I lost the joy I once had for playing the piano. I finally quit. My parents still have that piano and none of us kids learned how to play it (and they like to remind me about this big living room decoration they have).
What happened? I got the attitude, the mindset, that piano practice stunk. We may begin practicing these discipline with all the right intentions but somewhere along the line, we may allow ourselves to think these disciplines stink. Maybe you made a commitment to pray but it seemed tedious and you grew to resent your praying time. Or you started reading and reflecting on Scripture every day but after a while it seemed more like work and so you gave it up. You started tithing 10% of your income to the church to be “generous” but it wasn’t a cheerful gift, more of a clenched teeth gift. If these are some of your experiences of exercising these practices and it has brought you less joy, then something isn’t adding up right.
These practices aren’t meant to be a chore, but a means of drawing us closer to God, and with that closeness one of the blessings we receive from God is joy. Richard Foster writes in his book The Celebration of Discipline, “Joy is the end result of the Spiritual Disciplines functioning in our lives.” If after practicing these disciplines you are not receiving the joy of the Lord then something isn’t quite right. You need to reassess your attitude towards them.
Joy is at the Heart of God
God wants us to experience joy as we walk closely with him. In John 15, the chapter our memory verse came from, Jesus teaches us about the need to abide in him or to stay close in our walk with him, to remain in his love. He uses the visual illustration of the vine and braches. He is the vine and we are the branches, we must remain in him, getting our nourishment from him. Remaining in his love means we are obedient to him. We do what he asks us to do. And then comes our memory verse.
NIV John 15:11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
God wants us to experience joy. He wants our joy to be complete, or as the NLT puts it he wants our joy to overflow. God is a joyous person. You could say, God is the most joyous person in universe. One of my favorite pictures of Jesus is of him laughing [Show picture of Jesus laughing]. We had a bust, statue, of this painting in one of our prayer chapels at seminary. I enjoyed that visible reminder of the Lord’s joy.
The closer we draw to God and abide in him in a love relationship the more joy we are filled with. Author Lewis Smedes writes, “to miss out on joy is to miss out on the reason for your existence.”
Joy is not to be confused with pleasure or happiness. These are the world’s counterfeits to joy. Their satisfaction is only temporary. They are based on the law of diminishing returns which means the more we seek pleasure and happiness from the world the less satisfied we are and so we seek a higher mountain, a greater thrill. Joy is lasting, it doesn’t depend upon our circumstances, we could be suffering, even enduring persecution and still have joy because joy comes from an inner peace of abiding in Jesus Christ. People said of Mother Theresa that rather than being overwhelmed by the misery around her she fairly glowed with joy as she went about her ministry of mercy. Why would someone ministering in one of the worst places on the earth have joy? Because she was abiding in Jesus, obediently serving him, doing God’s work. I believe a lot of people are searching for happiness when they really desire joy.
Joy is a gift of God, a fruit of the Holy Spirit, of God’s transforming work within us as we draw closer to him. We cannot make ourselves joyful, only God can give it to us.
The Practice of Celebration is our Expression of Joy
When we begin to experience the joy of Christ, even the smallest amount, we are told to express our joy. The Apostle Paul wrote from a prison cell: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). If Paul could rejoice in the Lord in a prison cell, surely we can rejoice no matter what our situation. That is what our last practice is, the practice of celebration, expressing our joy in the Lord.
Celebrating With Special Holidays/Feasts
One form of practicing celebration is special holidays. In the OT, God actually established holidays called feasts as a way of expressing joy and thankfulness to God. The feasts were intended to be celebrations for the purpose of remembering what God has done.
There were five feasts: Passover, a day celebrating the angel of death passing over the children of Israel, followed by the seven day Feast of Unleavened Bread, which was a time of removing all the yeast and leavened bread from their homes and then refraining from eating bread made with yeast as a way of remembering the Israelites quick departure from Egypt. There was Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks (Feast of Harvest), which occurred fifty days after the Passover. The Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles), which was another week long celebration where they would live in booths or tents to remember how their ancestors had lived in tents on their journey to the Promised Land. Doesn’t sound like much of a celebration but consider how many hunters are out celebrating hunting by staying in makeshift cabins this week. If you add up all of these festival days established by God to celebrate what he had done for his people, it would total about three weeks of the year! For at least three weeks of the year (not including all of the Sabbath days) God expected His people to celebrate his goodness and remember what He had done.
Spiritual celebration meant gathering with people, eating, drinking, singing, laughing all while reflecting on the wonderful God who has given us such gifts. It didn’t mean getting drunk because it was a party for God. It wasn’t a time of fasting or eating brussel-sprouts (I hate brussel sprouts), but they would frequently eat the “choice food.” We might remember that Jesus was called a glutton and drunk by his critics, and his first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding celebration. I believe Jesus celebrated.
Today we have other times of celebrating and remembering what God has done, Christian holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter. How do we celebrate God and recognize Him as the Giver of gifts? For example, for Thanksgiving this week will you just gather with the family eat lots of turkey and watch football. What traditions do you have to thank God and remember that he is the Giver? For example our church is giving out food baskets to those in need in our community this week as a way of recognizing God has given to us so we can give to others. Just getting together to party is not a spiritual celebration. In another month we will celebrate Christmas, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. How will we put Christ at the center of our celebrating with family and friends? Celebrations have typically been a time to share with children and grandchildren what God has done. I have heard some argue that every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore there are churches that call their services celebration services.
Celebrating in each day
The Psalm writer encourages us to celebrate in every day.
NIV Psalm 118:24 This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
How do we rejoice in every day? Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that he used his meals in prison in Nazi Germany as an exercise in the daily discipline of joy:
“God cannot endure that unfestive, mirthless attitude of ours in which we eat our bread in sorrow, with pretentious, busy haste, or even with shame. Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.”
One of the English officers imprisoned with Bonhoeffer said of him, “Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive.” Would people say that about us?
Part of rejoicing is enjoying everything that God provides us with. Enjoying our meal, enjoying the sunrise or sunset, enjoying the relationships God has given us. I think that one of our problems as Christians is that we are often too stuffy because we don’t express our joy, we don’t celebrate enough. I enjoy times like the harvest dinner as a time to celebrate with our church family the goodness of God.
John Ortberg tells the story of giving his little daughters a bath (together to save time), and after one of his girls got out of the bathtub she began running around in circles (soaking wet mind you) singing “dee dah day, dee dah day.” John became upset because he had things to do. So he told her hurry up (meaning come get dried off), but instead she just did her little dance faster, “dee dah day, dee dah day.” Finally he snapped at her, “stop all the dee dah day stuff and get over here and dry off.” To which she responded “Why?” But John didn’t have an answer for her, so what do you suppose he did? Together they began running in circles singing “dee dah day.”
It sometimes takes a child to help us realize what joy is and enjoy life, to enjoy what God has given us, to enjoy our relationship with God.
Shouldn’t we as Christians, of all people, be able to rejoice and celebrate because we have been saved and given eternal life? Shouldn’t we celebrate because God is walking with us?
Conclusion:
Check your joy gauge is it running on empty, ¼ tank, ½ tank? If joy seems to escape you, let me ask, how close are you in your relationship with God? What are you doing to get closer? The funny thing with rejoicing is that the more we rejoice the more joy we receive. The Bible says, if you draw near to God, he will draw near to you. And fill you will joy. How much time to you spend rejoicing?
