How Active Should We Be in the Pursuit of Joy?
00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, how much of joy in God is willed by the Christian, and how much of
00:00:09.080 | it is just given as a gift from God? And how do you balance that distinction
00:00:13.160 | between willing the joy and receiving joy as a gift from God? That's a great
00:00:18.520 | question, absolutely great question, because I think we err on both sides of
00:00:24.400 | this fence. That is, we become willpower people, and we become passive waiting
00:00:29.440 | people, and there's no doubt that authentic joy cannot be immediately
00:00:37.480 | willed. In other words, if you're feeling rotten, you can't say, "Not a problem. I'll
00:00:43.720 | just decide to be happy. Boom, I'm happy." That doesn't happen. And people
00:00:49.840 | draw the inference from that that you don't ever try to will joy, but that's
00:00:55.360 | not true. You should do the kinds of things you can do to put yourself in
00:01:01.320 | the way of joy. I think when Paul says, "Sow to the Spirit," I've tried to figure out for
00:01:08.120 | years, what does he mean, "Sow to the flesh and sow to the Spirit?" And I think
00:01:13.400 | sowing to the Spirit means taking steps to put yourself in the way of the
00:01:21.480 | Spirit's activity and pray. So when the psalmist says, "Open my eyes that I may
00:01:31.080 | behold wonderful things out of your law," and then he prays, "Satisfy me in the
00:01:36.480 | morning with your steadfast love," clearly he is willing that something happen which
00:01:43.500 | isn't now happening. He doesn't see wonderful things in the Word of God. He's
00:01:47.960 | asking God to show him. He doesn't feel satisfaction. He's asking God to give it,
00:01:53.120 | and in that sense he's willing to pursue the satisfaction. So there are
00:01:58.720 | remarkable things you can do with your brain to put out of your mind things
00:02:02.960 | that are self-defeating, put in your mind things that are joy-producing, but in the
00:02:08.800 | end, joy is a gift. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit. So I'm going to encourage
00:02:15.880 | everybody to realize how helpless we are to have true spiritual joy, and therefore
00:02:21.760 | to expect it to be a spontaneous work of the Spirit, that's one side, and I'm going
00:02:27.360 | to pursue everybody, do everything you can by way of using the means of grace
00:02:33.000 | in order to awaken, kindle, and quicken, and pursue that joy. Thank you, Pastor John,
00:02:42.600 | and thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have a question for
00:02:44.920 | Pastor John, please send it to us via email at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:02:48.560 | Please include your first name and your hometown in that email. You can find
00:02:51.960 | thousands of other free resources from John Piper online at desiringgod.org.
00:02:55.680 | I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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