How Do I Feed My Joy in Jesus Every Morning?

00:00:00.000 | Today we celebrate the compounded effect of human labor in America. We call it Labor Day.

00:00:10.040 | Happy Labor Day to everyone out there, in the States at least. In fact, day by day we

00:00:14.360 | can invest our lives in what becomes a major enterprise over the years, like in reflecting

00:00:19.480 | on the effect of daily habits and disciplines over the course of a whole life. Today's question

00:00:24.600 | is from a listener named Kate.

00:00:26.320 | Hello, Pastor John. I want to start by thanking you for your ministry to the saints. Your

00:00:30.520 | podcast has been helpful in my own life concerning Christian living. I've recently been quite

00:00:35.600 | intrigued and curious about Christian hedonism, something that you are so passionate about

00:00:40.520 | and I have come to believe is beautiful. My question is, what are the little things I

00:00:46.080 | can do throughout my busy day to find joy in God, the joy you so clearly know and experience?

00:00:53.460 | You know, as simple and as practical, even humdrum, as this question sounds, it is one

00:01:05.680 | of the most important questions in the world. Maintaining our joy or our satisfaction, our

00:01:12.960 | contentment in God is absolutely essential because without it we will be swept away from

00:01:23.700 | Christ with affections for other things. If we don't find Christ of supreme value, if

00:01:31.680 | he is not our supreme satisfaction, something else will be, and we will be drawn away from

00:01:40.800 | the Christian faith. It's not a small thing to ask the question and find the answer, "What

00:01:46.780 | are the little things I can do throughout my day to find and preserve my joy in God

00:01:51.660 | so that I don't find greater joy in other things?" Because our hearts will not rest

00:01:58.660 | until they find contentment in something. Our hearts are a desire factory, and if we

00:02:04.840 | think that we just fall into delight in God or satisfaction in God without any pursuit

00:02:13.100 | of it or conscious maintenance of that flame, we're kidding ourselves. Our flesh and the

00:02:22.220 | devil are active all day long to draw us into pleasures that are anti-God. If we have no

00:02:33.420 | strategies for awakening and cultivating and preserving and intensifying our joy in God,

00:02:40.580 | we will be drawn away by our flesh and the devil into alternative pleasures which are,

00:02:47.340 | as Paul said, idolatry. Listen to Colossians 3.5, "Put to death, therefore, what is earthly

00:02:53.720 | in you, sexual immorality, purity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry."

00:03:02.100 | Now what's the point of killing, putting to death, killing all that passion and evil

00:03:10.900 | desire and covetousness? If you only kill it, what you have is an empty soul. And you

00:03:18.140 | remember what Jesus said about an empty soul. What has been driven out will return sevenfold

00:03:23.540 | as bad. In other words, the point of killing passion and evil desire and covetousness is

00:03:30.260 | not so that we would have empty souls with no passions, no desires, no zeal for anything.

00:03:37.780 | It's that they may be filled and brimming with alternative passions and alternative

00:03:42.940 | desires. Desires for Christ, desires for godliness, desires for nearness to God, desires for all

00:03:51.300 | that is good and pure and true and right and lovely and excellent. So Kate's question—I'm

00:03:57.620 | saying, "Yes, Kate, way to go!"—so Kate's question is, "What are the little things

00:04:03.820 | we can do?" And I'm just going to mention one. Sorry, we can do this again sometime,

00:04:09.540 | but I'm going to just mention one thing that became very clear to me even this morning

00:04:16.700 | as I was—actually, it was yesterday morning, come to think of it—yesterday morning as

00:04:21.220 | I was working in my devotional time to maintain my memorization of 1 Peter. Now I taught 1

00:04:29.220 | Peter several years ago and memorized the whole book, all five chapters. I recited it

00:04:34.060 | to the class, and since then—that's about three years ago—since then I've tried

00:04:39.780 | to say it once a week to not lose the memory of it. But sometimes it needs a concerted

00:04:47.300 | refreshing. So I was working on chapters 4 and 5 yesterday morning just to make sure

00:04:54.820 | I could say those two chapters without stopping and looking at anything. And here's the

00:04:59.980 | question that hit me. When I have recited from memory 1 Peter 4 and 5, sitting in my

00:05:07.020 | chair in my living room, what have I got in my conscious mind for spiritual use—this

00:05:15.620 | is what Katie is asking about—for spiritual use during the day to help me fight for joy?

00:05:24.740 | And it hit me again, as it has many times, that I simply do not have the dozens—yes,

00:05:34.100 | dozens—of wonderful faith-strengthening hope-sustaining joy-awakening assurance-preserving

00:05:43.780 | truths in my conscious mind. They're not there. There are too many. The mind doesn't

00:05:52.100 | work like that. At least mind doesn't work like that. And I think I'm average in this.

00:05:57.500 | Those two chapters are simply unconscious to me, or a haze of words, until I make an

00:06:09.860 | effort to reach back and grasp something with my conscious mind, my memory. Maybe just one

00:06:20.700 | phrase emerges. The mind really doesn't work like this. You can tell the mind to go

00:06:26.580 | find something on the hard drive of those two chapters. Yes, you can. Even if you don't

00:06:32.020 | memorize them, you just read them. You can tell the mind, "Now go back and find something

00:06:35.640 | there that you just read." So it's not all blank and a haze. And then the value

00:06:41.820 | of memorizing, for me, is that my mind can take that phrase that comes to my mind and

00:06:47.820 | put in place the sentences before and after it so that I can properly say it, grasp it,

00:06:54.580 | preach it to myself for the sake of my joy. So here's my specific suggestion. Ask yourself

00:07:01.540 | how your mind works with God's Word. When you are done reading, what do you have present

00:07:11.140 | and ready for use? My guess is you will have very little present to your consciousness

00:07:19.700 | and ready for use to fight your spiritual battles and strengthen your joy. Then ask

00:07:27.540 | yourself, "Okay, what can I do about that?" And one of the things you can do is to pick

00:07:34.180 | out from the chapters that you worked on and you pick it out by telling your brain to go

00:07:39.980 | find it. And your brain will do that for you. It's amazing. The brain is amazing, amazing,

00:07:45.340 | amazing. I'm just amazed at the human brain that you can tell it to do things just like

00:07:50.540 | you can tell your hand to do things. Hand, pick up that pencil. Hand, do that. Lips,

00:07:55.660 | shut up. Stop talking, etc. Or if you have a good memory, you might be able to pick out

00:08:02.940 | two or three phrases, not just one, two or three verses. Then make those the main message

00:08:12.220 | you will preach to yourself during the day. Set yourself a reminder on your phone to go

00:08:18.460 | ding every hour or to vibrate on your wrist to tell you to pull out that sword from your

00:08:27.660 | morning reading. Say it to yourself. Preach it to yourself. Tell Jesus, "Thank you for

00:08:34.420 | it," and that you really believe it. Tell Him you believe it. Tell the devil, tell the

00:08:38.620 | devil that this blood-bought truth from the Bible—and they're all blood-bought, by the

00:08:44.540 | way, for Christians—tell the devil that this truth is more precious to you than anything

00:08:50.860 | this devil has to offer. Tell your discouraged soul to be strengthened. Strengthen your knees,

00:08:58.060 | soul. Lift up your hands, soul. This is wonderfully true, soul. Very specifically, what I did

00:09:04.620 | this morning—this is just by way of example—when I was done with 1 Peter 4 and 5, everything

00:09:09.140 | was a haze, and hardly anything was conscious to my front-burner brain where I do my battle

00:09:14.860 | against joylessness. I reached back, I told my memory, "Now go find something in those

00:09:20.700 | two chapters." And what my brain found—now this is—I don't know what you call this,

00:09:27.540 | spiritual serendipity? It just—boom. Let's call it the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit led

00:09:33.460 | me to the phrase, "called to his eternal glory in Christ." Those words came to my

00:09:40.460 | mind. I know where they come from, so I let my memory finish it, and I surrounded them.

00:09:47.460 | And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his

00:09:53.180 | eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. And

00:09:59.300 | I said to myself, several times to encourage my heart, "God called you, John Piper. He

00:10:06.900 | called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus. He called you, John Piper. He called

00:10:16.780 | you, John Piper. He called you to his glory. He called you to his eternal glory." I'm

00:10:24.100 | squeezing every word like a grapefruit into my spoon at the end of eating it to make every

00:10:31.180 | good drop of this verse land with tastiness on my soul. It doesn't matter if you have

00:10:39.200 | to walk through much suffering, John Piper. Whatever you lose, he's going to restore.

00:10:45.060 | He's going to confirm. He's going to strengthen. He's going to establish. Get up now. Get

00:10:49.140 | up. Get up out of that comfy chair and get to work on APJ, because you're going to record

00:10:53.300 | tomorrow with Tony. Now be strong. Give yourself wholeheartedly to this work today. Amen. And

00:11:00.620 | I had a great day preparing for this, as you can tell. I'm loving this. So that's my suggestion.

00:11:09.340 | Recognize that once you've read a lot of the Bible, most of it is a haze, a muddle in your

00:11:15.940 | mind. Indeed, it's not even in your conscious mind. You have to tell your mind, like a muscle,

00:11:23.260 | like you tell your hand to do something. You tell your mind, like a muscle, to go find

00:11:28.780 | it. Go find it. Pick it up. Put it before your consciousness. Then you have to tell

00:11:34.900 | your mind to set it in context so you understand it rightly. And then you have to preach it

00:11:40.700 | to yourself and against the evil one. This is how you wield the sword of the Spirit and

00:11:46.740 | slay the demonic temptations to discouragement and feed the fires of joy in Jesus.

00:11:54.660 | That's really good counsel. Thanks, Pastor John. And listeners, thank you for listening

00:11:58.180 | today. Over at our online home, you can explore all 1,250 of our episodes. You can scan a

00:12:02.220 | list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own. Go to

00:12:07.180 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And to get new episodes delivered to you three times

00:12:12.660 | per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John Podcast in your favorite podcast app. I am

00:12:17.100 | your host, Tony Reiki. We will return on Wednesday. I'm not sure what we'll be talking about,

00:12:21.020 | but we'll be back and we'll see you then.

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