Recently I was talking with a few brothers when one of them raised some interesting questions. His (paraphrased) questions went something like this: What is the proper place for emotion in the Christian Life? More specifically, how can we be continually affected by the Gospel in everyday life? And what of the Christian who has grown up in the Church, and who’s love for the Gospel has grown slowly with understanding? (I don’t really answer any of these questions; this post is an introduction of sorts. Hopefully I can answer and connect these questions in subsequent ones. I just wanted to get all my thoughts out on this before I forget.)

Let me start off by saying that the fight to feel, and to be affected by the things of God, is the chief struggle in my life. Honestly it scares the heck out of me. Why? Because to have the right emotions and affections for God is entirely out of our control. If you lack knowledge of God you can solve the problem by studying the Bible. If you’re always gossiping, you can solve the problem by disciplining yourself and seeking to be an encouragement instead. Of course, God is needed to work in us, but we still retain a certain amount of “control”. It is not so with emotions and affections. You cannot make yourself feel harder; you cannot make yourself truly affected by something you are not already. The fight to love God in our hearts simply cannot be forced by sheer will-power or discipline. It is God alone, who can transform the heart to be affected by His glorious Gospel.

And what’s more scary? This is not a secondary or peripheral battle in the Christian life, it is the most important one. The Westminister Catechism ask the question: “What is the chief end of man?” It’s answer? To glorify God, and enjoy him forever. And so we find that to enjoy God forever — to be rightly affected by the Gospel, and to feel proper emotions towards it, is the very purpose for our existence! If we lose this battle of loving, and marveling at the Gospel, we fail in the very thing we were created for!

I lose this battle more often that I would like to admit. There are days, and even extended seasons when I wake up, and I simply do not care about the Gospel, I am unaffected by the Word of God, and prayer feels ineffective. Oh, how I want to radically love the Gospel in my heart! How I long to feel what I ought to feel when I hear of my Savior on the cross for my sin! But too often my heart is hard as rock. In this state the doubts start to creep in: What if these emotions and affections you long for never come? What if they don’t even truly exist? And perhaps this will shed some light on my struggles addressed in my last post: What if Jesus isn’t worth it? What if this is all a sham?

There is so much I can say on this. and this will undoubtedly be a frequently occurring topic in my blog. However in the interest of keeping this at a reasonable length, I’ll end with three observations: one an exhortation for myself, one an important reminder, and the other a truth that I take comfort in.

1. Fighting to marvel at the Gospel cannot be passive:

Jeremiah 29:13 famously says this: “¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” We do not wait around lazily for joy to arrive. No, we fight hard for joy. As I established earlier, enjoying God through the Gospel is the purpose for which we were made. Christ did not die to rescue us into a life of dreary intellectual knowledge. He saved us so that we might look upon Him, and be overwhelmed at His glory. He saved us so that our affections would burn for him alone, and our emotions would be passionately joyful and thankful in his presence. We cannot lose this battle. A Christian that is emotionless, and unaffected by the Gospel is not a Christian at all. If I find that I struggle to marvel at the Gospel, I must not take it lightly. I must be active, passionate, and focused on fighting to marvel in the Gospel. I must diligently seek joy in His Word, and earnestly plead for eyes to see his beauty in my prayers. I must fight with every ounce of my being, while still knowing that what I’m seeking comes from God alone.

2. It is the Gospel that allows us to see:

A few weeks ago I spoke on “The Marvelous Gospel” from Psalms 118:21-24. In that message, I spoke on what makes the Gospel so amazing: Jesus’ unfathomable humility, our total depravity, God’s unexplainable love at the Cross, His power in the resurrection, and His glorious plan all wrapped in this thing we call the Gospel. Intellectually, we must understand why the Gospel is marvelous, but that is only half the battle. One can understand everything mentioned above and still be cold to it. Our hearts and heads must work in unison.

So where does the heart marveling, and the deep emotional response come from? Ironically, the way we marvel at the Gospel is through the Gospel itself! We were dead in our trespasses, with no ears to hear, eyes to see, or tongue to taste the goodness of God. Dead. Dead people don’t feel anything, nor are they affected by anything. But God being rich in mercy, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ — by grace you have been saved! (Ephesians 2:5) It is Christ who fulfills what is foretold in Ezekiel 11:19: “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.” This is as true now, as it was at the moment of salvation. Christ brings joy. He does what no amount of intellectual knowledge could ever do: he transforms hearts of stone into hearts that feel, and hearts that are affected by the Gospel. In this fight to feel, and to be affected,  may I never stray far from the Cross.

3. God is all about His Glory:

This is important to remember as we seek to respond afresh to the Gospel everyday. God is infinitely beautiful, and the origin of all joy and He is not interested in keeping it to himself. The saint who honestly seeks to love the Gospel in his heart asks for a noble thing, and it is a request that God will be faithful to fulfill. God loves for his glory to be seen, and rejoiced in by his people. And as Piper famously says, “God is most glorified, when we are most satisfied in Him.” If God is all about his Glory, we can be confident that when we seek His beauty He will be faithful to show it to us.

To those of you along with myself who are entrenched in this daily battle, let me end with a quote by Spurgeon. He says:

If you long for him, he much more longs for you.  No sinner was ever half as eager for Christ as Christ is eager for the sinner; no saint was ever one-tenth as anxious to behold his Lord as his Lord is to behold him.  If you are running to Christ, he is already near you.  If you sigh for his presence, that sigh is the evidence that he is with you.  He is with you even now; therefore, be glad!

—

quick note: I realize emotions and affections may not be the best choice of words to encapsulate what I’m trying to talk about. We cannot rely solely upon emotions; they come and go, and are no substitute for faithful commitment. However, I feel too often we downplay, and thus neglect this aspect of the Christian Life. Why? We fear the disconnect between what we intellectually profess, and what we actually feel. The battle to be emotionally affected is at it’s core a battle to find joy and marvel in the Gospel. If we proclaim the Gospel is the most beautiful thing, the greatest news, and our only hope; should not our emotions and affections be in tune with that?

Part 2’s coming soon!

Our lives are full of pursuits. Be it marriage, a prestigious job, or the appreciation of our peers we all have things we seek after. We desire, and hope for these things. We expend our resources, and sacrifice to attain them. Ultimately our lives are characterized and defined by what we pursue. But why do we pursue things? and what makes something worth pursuing? Behind every search, every chase, and every dream is the hope of lasting satisfaction. When we try hard in school, or buy a new toy, we do so because we hope it will somehow amount to something worthwhile. So the logic follows that what makes something worth pursuing or not is how much lasting satisfaction we expect it will bring.

Not every pursuit is the same; each one carries differing levels of expectations of the payoff. The bigger the hope of reward, the higher we’ll place the pursuit in our lives; the more we’ll sacrifice, and work to get it. The ambitious student will place the pursuit of education, and career at the forefront of his life, because he believes it will make him happy; he’ll put in the effort, sacrifice, and energy required is in order to attain his goal because he trusts that in the end it will be worth it. At the same time, his pursuit for something like recreation, and immediate fun will be less, because it does not seem as worthwhile as his long term goals. You get the point.The same process goes for every person, just with different goals, and different ways of going about it.

But the thing about all pursuits apart from Christ is that they never live up to their expectations; and the greater the expectations the greater the loss when the pursuit fails to fulfill its promise. What seemed so enamoring while we were chasing it,  turns out to be disappointing once we get it; our pursuits don’t bring us the satisfaction we long for. Toys grow old quickly, the praise of man is fleeting, people disappoint, and careers don’t satisfy.

As Christians, we are called to pursue Christ. Not only that, we are called to pursue Christ above all things.  God calls us to commit the entirety of ourselves to love him with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul, and to abandon everything to know him more. And so, the important inescapable question arises: is it worth it? Following Christ is the riskiest decision anyone could ever make because one must forsake all things, in order to gain him. Jesus himself, in Matthew 13:44 describes the pursuit of the kingdom of heaven in this way. saying, ⁴⁴“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (emphasis mine) The greater the pursuit, the greater the possibility of loss; and so the possibility for disappointment is enormous. Paul speaks of the crushing implications for the Christian if the pursuit of Christ proves useless: “¹⁴And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain… ¹⁹If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Yikes. As was said earlier, what makes something worth pursuing is the hope of lasting satisfaction. In the same way, we follow Christ because we believe he is worth it; we know that all other pursuits fail to live up to their billing, but we are confident that in Jesus Christ alone is everlasting satisfaction, and fullness of joy. And with that settled in our hearts, we can follow him full-tilt with passion. We can boldly say with Paul: “⁸Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

Ah! This is so hard for me! In fact, my whole thought process on this topic (aka. this post) stems from a lingering doubt that haunts me with each pursuit counted as loss for the sake of gaining Christ. My unbelief tells me what if you count all things as loss in order to gain Christ, and find that he’s not worth it; that he does not bring lasting satisfaction, or fullness of joy? This lack of faith is not doubt in the happiness of heaven, but rather it is doubt in living my life full-on for Christ here on earth.  I often struggle to believe the all-sustaining,  power of God in everyday life. I think the dilemma is best captured in this question: if I were to lose everything: possessions, friends, and status, and had only Christ would that be enough? Or in other words, would Christ be enough to satisfy us if we lost the pleasures from all other pursuits?

It is a difficult question to answer, and ultimately one that is all hypothesis until I experience it for myself. Tim Keller captures it well when he says, “You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” I draw encouragement from something Paul says in Philippians 1: 20-22: “²⁰as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Here was Paul, a man who had truly given up everything to follow Jesus. Heck, he writing Philippians from prison! And yet he could say with confidence that he would not be ashamed for living all-out for Christ.

Is it worth it to follow Christ? Is it worth it to count all things as loss, so that I might gain Him? These are not hard questions to answer. Of course it’s worth it! Not only in the eternal life too come, but also in earthly life now.  The problem isn’t knowing the right answer in my head, but settling it in my heart. It’s having full courage in this glorious fact, trusting in it, finding comfort in it, dropping all rival pursuits for it, and having it seep into everything I do; that when I read my bible it would be with full courage that Christ is worth it, when I pray, and serve, and strive to be more like Him it would be with the eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed. Why? Because Christ is worth it, and it is a glorious thing to live for him! He is the one worthy pursuit, the one pursuit that brings lasting satisfaction.

I’ve decided to start blogging. Why? Certainly not because I’m particularly insightful, spiritual, wise, or anything like that; I’m none of these things. I can think of four reasons off the top of my head. First, I want to encourage you all! I know from personal experience that I’ve been thoroughly blessed by the blogs/writings of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and I want to do the same! Second, it will help keep me accountable, especially as I jet off to college. I’d imagine that the things I write here will contain goals, struggles, and ways I need to grow; I would love it if you all would challenge me, and check up on how I’m doing in those regards. Third, I’ve recently realized the benefits of being able to articulate my thoughts to myself. Too often I let ideas float around in my head, half-formed and hazy. Writing them out helps me to crystallize my thoughts, and to make them more real and clear to myself! And finally…well, I’m crossing my fingers that this’ll make me a better writer! Hopefully this blog will help kill four birds with one stone (it started off as two) and serve quadruple purposes as an encouragement to those reading, accountability for me, a helpful tool for my own growth, and a jump-start for my iffy writing skills. whew!

So why the title ‘Joy Inexpressible’? The truth is I’m  miserable at thinking up names for things (which is why this post is entitled what it’s entitled, and why my tumblr is still called “:)”). I’ve always been scared that if your site didn’t have a cool name, and a witty description that people would scoff and dismiss it; so I jumped the first moment I thought of a respectable title!

But in all seriousness, these words, ‘joy inexpressible” hold a lot of meaning for me. Everything I long for, and hope for are wrapped up in these words. The phrase comes from 1 Peter  1:8: ‘⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, ⁹obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Though I have not seen him and even now do not see him, I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe that in him is joy inexpressible, filled with glory, and that in him there is salvation for my soul! And that’s what I want this blog to be about! About Christ, the pursuit of his likeness, and the joy found in his love 🙂 (There is a lot more that could, and should be said about this passage, but I’ll save it for another time!)

In closing, I’m still not quite sure how this will turn out. To be honest, I don’t really know anything about blogging at all other than you post stuff up, and people read it. So that’s what I’m going to do. And we’ll see how it goes.