Well, isn't a drug user and a God-were joy seeker just two different kinds of junkies both seeking after a new high, a new spike in an experience for which they cannot sustain beyond a fleeting moment? Well, now there's an interesting question and it comes to us from a listener named Brian.

"Hello Pastor John, I live in Greenville, not far from where you grew up. My question is one I've wrestled with for a long time. How is there not any difference between 1) returning to substances like drugs, alcohol, and sex once the fulfillment of those things has withered away, and 2) returning to Jesus once His joy has withered away in us?

It appears as if both things, substances on one hand and communion with Christ on the other, offer effects that then wear off over time, neither permanently fulfill, both call us back for another dose or hit. How would you respond to this apparent parallel? Is it right or wrong?" It's wrong.

It's wrong. It's wrong in all the ways that ultimately matter. Now of course, Brian, there is a surface parallel that you're pointing out. It's true that the intensity of our pleasure in physical experiences and the intensity of our pleasure in spiritual experience of fellowship with Jesus both rise and fall.

There's a parallel. Both rise and fall. Pleasures go up, pleasures go down in drugs and in relation to Jesus. In this life, while we are still in this body and while indwelling sin remains a reality, there will be, till we die, a conflict between flesh and spirit, Satan and God, old man that needs to be reckoned dead, and new man in Christ.

So there is a superficial parallel between the experience of Christ and our experience of physical pleasure. They both rise and fall. But in spite of that superficial parallel, there are at least four profound differences between our communion with Christ and all of his pleasures and our physical high from substances.

Number one, Jesus Christ is a living, eternal, supernatural, divine, morally beautiful person. We love him. He's not a thing. He's not a substance. There is an infinite difference between encountering a person and the physical material impersonal effect of drugs. And there's an infinite difference between encountering a merely human person and encountering a divine person, the Son of God.

When Jesus calls us, he calls us to himself, not to a generic experience that can be duplicated with substances. He calls us not into a physical reaction to substance, but into a personal relationship with himself. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life. I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst." He is the bread. He is the water. We're not comparing substance and substance. We are comparing a created substance with the person who created it. That's the first difference—massive, infinite. Number two, the second difference in the parallel is that the experience itself is qualitatively different between the physical and psychological effects of a drug on the one hand and the spiritual effects of communion with Christ on the other.

Paul said, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new creation has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17. When you use drugs, you are not a new creation. You're not born again by using drugs. You do not have a new nature by using drugs.

When you are united to Christ by faith, you become a new kind of being forever and ever and ever. And your experiences are qualitatively different. You're not yet perfect, but you are being renewed. Ephesians 4:23, "You are being renewed in the spirit of your mind." Your mind is now spiritually, qualitatively doing a different thing.

Number three, the third difference between the experience of a drug and the experience of communion with Christ is that the reason we keep returning to Christ is because he himself, as a person who loves us, has chosen to make sure that we return. We're not being sucked back by addiction.

We are being drawn back by a Savior. He has laid hold of us and made us his own forever. He does not bring us back mechanically, but personally. Listen to this, one of my favorite verses, Philippians 3:12, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, I press on to make it my own." You could paraphrase that.

I press into Jesus again and again. I press back in again and again because Christ Jesus has made me his own. He has personally owned me, bought me. When he sees me drifting away, becoming lukewarm, he draws me back because he's made me his own. And here's number four.

The more we are brought to him by his personally compelling beauty, the more we become like what he created us to be. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next by coming back to Jesus and seeing him again and again and again until our fellowship is totally unbroken when he comes or when we go.

The more we return to him, the more we fully become whole and rational and free and joyful. But the more we return to substances, the more we become broken, irrational, enslaved, and miserable. In other words, coming to Jesus makes us more alive, more real, more able to put ourselves resourcefully at the disposal of others for their everlasting good.

John 7, 37, "The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life." Or John—oh, that was John 4, 14. Here's John 7. "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." In other words, drinking from Jesus doesn't draw us into ourselves and make our own private substance experience.

It fills us with overflowing, spring-like, fountain-like love for others and capacities, new capacities to love others. And then maybe I should add one more fifth difference. The fact that there is a superficial parallel between the ups and downs of experiencing Jesus and the ups and downs of experiencing drugs, the fact that there's that superficial similarity, parallel, may mean something very different than that the experiences are leading to the same outcome.

They aren't. Suppose you suddenly experience a spiking fever which fades slightly and then spikes again and then fades slightly and then spikes again, and you suddenly realize because of the epidemic in the town, you've got a fatal disease. You are going to die. That's what happens to everybody. Spike, fade, spike, fade, spike, fade, die.

This spiking is a sure sign you're a goner. Then the medical team arrives, sent by some merciful Red Cross, and they've got an antibiotic, and it works. It always works. And they give it to you. And they tell you, "Now, you're going to notice tomorrow that the fever will rise, and then it will fall, and then it will rise again a little less high, then it will fall, and then it will rise, and then it will fall, and then it will go away.

You'll become better. When it falls, you'll become better, even though the return of the fever tomorrow several times will make you think you're in the same position you were before, and you're not. That's a superficial parallel. It's not where you're going. That's the way antibiotics work. You're going to be well." The same similarity with the spiking and falling of pleasure in drugs and the spiking and falling of pleasure in Christ.

The ups and downs have a totally different meaning. You're on your way to healing in Christ. So it is the ups and downs of our experience in Christ that mean we are on the way to an everlasting, uninterrupted joy. Amen. Yes, thank you, Pastor John. And this is our 48th episode on the theme of joy.

We talk a lot about joy because it's at the very heart of what we do at Desiring God. You can find all of those past episodes in our archive at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. There you can explore all of our now 1,200 past episodes. You can scan through a list of our most popular episodes all time, which is a list that's updated every single day.

And you can read full transcripts of episodes, even send us a question of your own. Again, that's at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And of course, you can get new episodes delivered to you three times per week. Subscribe to Ask Pastor John on your favorite podcast player or follow along with us in YouTube.

Well, every penny we own is God's money. And that profound reality raises all sorts of questions about stewardship. So how do we live as though our money is all his? It's a great question coming up on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Ranke. We'll see you on the other side of the weekend.

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