Well, how much joy can we expect to get in this life? It's a great question for you, Pastor John, who joined us over the phone today. The question comes from Cameron in Northern Ireland. "Dear Pastor John, I'm reading your book Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. There your description of the three stages of worship have struck a chord in my heart.

I know the lowest stage well, where I feel deep sorrow for not being able to worship my Lord as I should. I'm also acquainted with the second stage of spending much of my devotional time in a state of intense longing for the full joys of God's presence. However, I find myself only rarely able to experience the unbounded joy and satisfaction of worship which you describe, leaving me in what feels like a state of perpetually unsatisfied longing for God.

How much of the Christian life is marked by an unsatisfied longing for joy that we will not fully find in this life?" This question is so important as a clarification of what Christian hedonism really looks like in this life. I know that I might easily give the impression when I speak of God's purpose for us to delight in God above all things that this might mean uninterrupted full satisfaction in this world while we keep our eyes on God.

But from Scripture, from the lives of great saints, from our own experience, we just know that's not the case. So when Cameron says, "I find myself only rarely able to experience the unbounded joy and satisfaction of worship which you describe," my response is, "Such experiences of unbounded joy in this fallen world of sin and misery will always be rare." I hope he's not too discouraged by that.

I don't mean that real and deep joy will be rare, but that the kind of joy that feels unbounded, that is unmixed with sorrows and the limitations of the sinfulness of the world, such a joy will be rare. And I say that even though I know that Jesus said in John 6 35, "Whoever believes in me will never thirst." Now that could be taken to mean that the satisfaction we experience when we come to Jesus never has any limit or frustration, but only constant and perfect contentment.

We never thirst. I don't think that's what Jesus means. I think he means first that when you find Jesus, you have come to the end of your quest for satisfaction. Jesus is the living water and there is nothing better in the universe and nothing that will satisfy more. So the quest is over.

You are home. And the second thing I think it means is that in due time, all frustrations of the fullest satisfaction will be over. They'll be overcome in the resurrection when we sin no more and deal no more with misery and suffering in this world. And in the meantime, we have tasted and we know that Jesus is all satisfying.

We know he is. That's what we've tasted. Sometimes that satisfaction goes very deep and very high and seems to be all encompassing. More often, it seems embattled and compromised by competing sorrows and miseries. And there are a lot of reasons for that. And it might be good just to mention them so that it doesn't feel like we're weaseling here.

Like really, there is there is there's a there's joys we should know. And it's really our fault if we could have them if we just believed more. And of course, that's true. There's always more to be had. But there are real reasons why we will not experience that kind of unbounded, unembattled fullness in this life.

Number one, in Romans 5, 2, Paul says, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. So our present joy is not the full and complete joy of present glory, but an anticipation of future glory, a foretaste of future glory. And Jesus in Hebrews 12, 2, endured the cross for the joy set before him on the cross.

There was joy, I dare say, in the trustworthiness of his father as a faithful judge who wouldn't give him up to Sheol. But it was all but snuffed out by the horror of God's judgment. But the joy set before him sustained him all the way. And that's what it does for us.

We tasted now, but we have a hope of the joy of the glory of God. Number two, Romans 12, 15 says, we weep with those who weep and we rejoice with those who rejoice. And in this age, there always be weepers. And so our joy is always mixed with the sorrow of empathy.

Third, Paul himself showed that he was an example of this in Romans 9, 2, where he said he was in constant anguish over his lost Jewish kinsmen, even though he said that we should always rejoice. Number four, in fact, he described for us what that looks like in 2 Corinthians 6, 10, where he says, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

In Paul's mind, the Christian life is always rejoicing and often, perhaps simultaneously, always sorrowful. Five, then you have the psalmists, right, who cry out continually for renewed joy to God as though it's not constant, as though it has to be made new. Like Psalm 90, verse 14, "Satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love." Well, why would he cry out that if he was already satisfied?

Or Psalm 51, 12, "Restore to me the joy of my salvation." Restore, meaning it's gone, something took it away. And so even the psalmists, at their best, are modeling for us that joy is something we fight for and cry for in its fullness every day. Sixth, Paul describes the whole Christian life as one of progress, not having arrived.

We're being changed, he says, from one degree of glory to another in 2 Corinthians 3, 18. And so if we're being changed from one degree of glory, that means we're seeing new degrees of glory, we're being conformed with new degrees of glory, and there are fresh experiences of joy that we didn't have before.

And finally, John says that when the kingdom finally arrives, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, Revelation 21. So clearly, until that time, our joys are going to be mingled with tears. In fact, one old saying has it, I think it's an old American Indian proverb that says, if the eye had no tears, the soul would have no rainbow, which is just one of the ways that God makes our tears now serve our joy now.

There are kinds of joys we would not know without tears. So we need to be realistic about the fullness and completeness of joy in this life. In fact, it will never be as full as it will be in heaven when it's no longer mixed with sin and misery. Let me add one more thing.

In answer to the question, "Okay, how then do we make it as full as it can be?" Jesus says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." There's a blessing, a happiness, a joy that comes with purity of heart because of seeing God, and seeing God is certainly the key to having our joy be as full as it can be.

Yeah, and that's a day I can hardly imagine right now, a precious hope for our daily living, to see God. And absolutely impossible to put words to what that will be like. Thank you, Pastor John. Well, at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn, you can explore all of our 1,250+ episodes that we have released to date.

You can scan a list for our most popular ones, read full transcripts of those episodes, even send us a question of your own. And of course, to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite podcast app. Well, how do we cling to God when our lives are absolutely easy and everything is going smoothly?

That's a great question, and it leads us into a conversation this summer with our next guest on the podcast, hip-hop artist and poet Jackie Hill Perry. That's on Friday when we return. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We'll see you then.