How Do I Stop Rooting My Joy in My Circumstances?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Well, we seem to be hardwired to root our happiness
00:00:07.600 | in our circumstances.
00:00:09.720 | It just comes naturally to us.
00:00:11.320 | We are the happiest when things are going well.
00:00:13.860 | We are the saddest when things are going badly.
00:00:16.860 | Our mood is determined by the up and down roller coaster
00:00:19.440 | of life's ever-changing circumstances.
00:00:22.400 | We do it at age four, we do it at age 24,
00:00:25.800 | we do it at age 44, and we do it at age 14.
00:00:30.520 | Today I want you to meet Tessa.
00:00:31.740 | She's a 14-year-old listener to the podcast
00:00:34.280 | who writes into us.
00:00:35.760 | Tessa writes this, "Dear Pastor Jon, hello.
00:00:38.140 | "Thank you so much for this podcast
00:00:39.520 | "and for the Ministry of Desiring God.
00:00:40.960 | "All of it has been a huge blessing in my life.
00:00:43.480 | "Recently, I have been feeling more and more
00:00:45.700 | "that my happiness depends on the circumstances around me.
00:00:49.480 | "Will you please offer me biblical guidance
00:00:51.700 | "on how I can root my joy in Jesus instead?"
00:00:55.360 | - Well, I feel so thankful for this from a 14-year-old.
00:01:00.360 | My, my, my.
00:01:02.180 | When I think back on the things that I struggled with
00:01:05.400 | when I was 14, I don't think I posed the question
00:01:10.400 | the way I should have.
00:01:12.480 | So let me just encourage you that your very way
00:01:15.940 | of asking this question is a sign of significant,
00:01:20.880 | growing spiritual life and maturity for your age especially.
00:01:25.880 | So take heart.
00:01:28.760 | From where I sit, it looks to me like God is at work
00:01:33.240 | in your life, and that is always a wonderful miracle.
00:01:38.240 | Before I give you some suggestions from the Bible
00:01:43.280 | for how you can shift your circumstance-dependent happiness
00:01:49.080 | onto Jesus-dependent happiness, let me also say
00:01:54.040 | that this battle that you feel right now,
00:01:57.840 | you will be fighting 60 years from now
00:02:02.840 | if you're still alive and Jesus hasn't come back
00:02:06.200 | because that's how old I am.
00:02:09.560 | Actually, I'm one year older than that.
00:02:12.280 | 75, not 74.
00:02:14.040 | And I have to address this issue
00:02:17.840 | of where my joy is rooted every day,
00:02:21.680 | every morning in battle against the devil
00:02:24.720 | and the world and the flesh,
00:02:26.700 | rather than letting the old nature
00:02:30.040 | that the Bible calls the flesh lure me away from Jesus
00:02:34.920 | to earthly things as more valuable.
00:02:37.400 | Every stage in life, a 14-year-old stage
00:02:40.080 | and a 75-year-old stage has its unique allurements away
00:02:45.920 | from Jesus-dependent happiness
00:02:48.320 | to world-dependent happiness.
00:02:49.680 | It does, so you're going to have to fight this
00:02:51.480 | all the way to the end, so it's good to get a good start now
00:02:54.840 | and learn your battle strategy.
00:02:56.400 | So let me make four suggestions for how to root your joy
00:03:00.840 | in Jesus and not in circumstances.
00:03:04.160 | Number one, get to know God's purpose
00:03:07.320 | for the troubles in your life.
00:03:10.280 | God is much more committed to building godly joy,
00:03:14.640 | happiness into his children
00:03:17.400 | than we are committed to finding it.
00:03:20.240 | And one of his ways of doing this is by seeing to it
00:03:24.240 | that we walk through enough trouble
00:03:27.200 | to make us give up on finding our joy
00:03:30.840 | in a trouble-free life.
00:03:33.240 | Get to know the passages in the Bible that teach this.
00:03:37.200 | For example, Romans 5:3, "We rejoice in our sufferings,
00:03:43.080 | knowing that suffering produces endurance,
00:03:45.640 | and endurance produces character,
00:03:47.320 | and character produces hope,
00:03:50.160 | and hope does not put us to shame
00:03:52.600 | because God's love has been poured into our hearts
00:03:55.880 | through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us."
00:03:58.360 | In other words, the joy of hope is intensified
00:04:02.880 | when our faith endures through trouble.
00:04:05.640 | Or 2 Corinthians 1:8, Paul says,
00:04:09.000 | "We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength
00:04:13.040 | that we despaired of life itself,
00:04:15.360 | but that was to make us,"
00:04:18.240 | this was God's purpose, in other words,
00:04:20.000 | "that was to make us rely not on ourselves,
00:04:24.960 | but on God who raises the dead."
00:04:27.760 | In other words, the joy of complete reliance upon Jesus
00:04:32.760 | is God's purpose when he brings us
00:04:36.200 | to the very brink of death.
00:04:38.380 | So, suggestion number one,
00:04:40.980 | get to know this biblical teaching
00:04:44.100 | for the rest of your life.
00:04:45.180 | It will serve you very well.
00:04:48.180 | Number two, it's a little unusual.
00:04:51.300 | Think it through with me.
00:04:52.660 | I suggest that you take all the natural pleasures
00:04:57.660 | that God gives you, which are not sinful,
00:05:01.920 | and make the conscious effort to see and to savor,
00:05:08.300 | or taste, God himself in and behind those pleasures.
00:05:13.300 | In other words, the best way to keep a God-given pleasure
00:05:20.540 | from becoming your God is to push into the pleasure
00:05:25.540 | and through the pleasure to the giver of the pleasure
00:05:30.320 | who is trying to show you something about himself
00:05:34.540 | and how satisfying he is.
00:05:36.880 | So, for example, the Bible says that God's word
00:05:40.780 | is sweeter than honey.
00:05:42.880 | And the Bible says that Jesus is the light of the world.
00:05:48.180 | And the Bible says that he's like living water.
00:05:52.300 | So, when you taste anything that is really delicious,
00:05:56.980 | or when you pass out of a scary darkness
00:06:00.180 | into some beautiful light and brightness,
00:06:02.820 | or when you really, really, really are thirsty
00:06:05.740 | and you drink a glass of cold water,
00:06:08.620 | at every one of those points, say to yourself
00:06:12.700 | that Jesus is sweeter than honey,
00:06:15.620 | and he wants me to taste him in the gift of honey.
00:06:19.840 | Say to yourself that Jesus is brighter
00:06:24.020 | than this beautiful light,
00:06:25.820 | and he wants me to enjoy him in his brightness.
00:06:28.380 | And say to yourself that Jesus is more satisfying
00:06:31.560 | than this great thirst-quenching water,
00:06:35.340 | and he wants me to be satisfied in him
00:06:38.320 | like I feel right now with this water, only better.
00:06:41.660 | In other words, form the habit of finding God everywhere
00:06:46.660 | that there is goodness in this world.
00:06:51.340 | This will keep you from treating the goodness as God,
00:06:56.160 | and it will keep you from scorning the goodness of God
00:07:00.200 | by rejecting the gifts.
00:07:02.100 | All God's good gifts are meant not for idolatry.
00:07:07.100 | They are meant to give us a taste
00:07:11.400 | of the one who created them and show us something of himself.
00:07:16.400 | And I find it helpful to add this.
00:07:19.900 | Since I'm a sinner and deserve nothing
00:07:23.340 | from God but judgment, therefore,
00:07:27.380 | every good thing that comes to me as a child of God
00:07:32.380 | was purchased for me by the blood of Jesus,
00:07:38.160 | without which I would only be condemned.
00:07:41.860 | I would base all that on Romans 8:32.
00:07:44.980 | Therefore, every good thing not only points me
00:07:49.360 | to the goodness of the giver,
00:07:51.340 | but it points me to the infinite price
00:07:55.080 | that was paid by Jesus so that I could have the gift.
00:07:58.880 | And the giver, this helps me love him as I ought.
00:08:02.740 | I hope it does you too.
00:08:04.020 | Number three, make your Bible reading every day
00:08:07.580 | very personal.
00:08:08.980 | Don't just think about learning how to live
00:08:12.420 | from guidelines in the Bible, which are important,
00:08:15.820 | but every day, think about what you can know of Jesus,
00:08:20.820 | the son of God, and God the Father,
00:08:23.980 | and God the Holy Spirit,
00:08:25.700 | what you can know about them as persons.
00:08:28.180 | In other words, read the Bible
00:08:31.380 | to get to know the person of God.
00:08:35.000 | Always think, I love a person.
00:08:37.840 | I love a person.
00:08:39.420 | God is admirable.
00:08:40.840 | God is strong.
00:08:42.120 | God is wise.
00:08:43.280 | God is kind.
00:08:44.600 | God is patient.
00:08:45.820 | God is just.
00:08:46.660 | God is merciful.
00:08:48.400 | And as you see these traits in God,
00:08:51.360 | love him because of them.
00:08:54.340 | Find the person himself to be your treasure.
00:08:59.260 | Make Bible reading personal.
00:09:02.380 | And finally, number four, even though you're only 14,
00:09:07.380 | keep death regularly in your mind.
00:09:11.760 | Not all the time, just regularly return to the thought
00:09:16.380 | that you're gonna die.
00:09:17.780 | And the point of this is not to make you scared.
00:09:20.100 | It's not to make you sad.
00:09:21.300 | It's not to make you morose, just the opposite.
00:09:24.120 | Everybody is going to die unless Jesus comes back first.
00:09:28.160 | Might happen when you're 15,
00:09:29.640 | might happen when you're 95, but it is gonna happen.
00:09:33.140 | And when that time comes,
00:09:34.960 | everything but Jesus will lose its comforting power.
00:09:39.960 | All our possessions, all our accomplishments,
00:09:45.240 | all our personal looks and intellect,
00:09:48.580 | all our family and friends,
00:09:50.740 | all of them will fail as a foundation for hope
00:09:54.880 | and joy in our dying.
00:09:57.700 | But if you know Jesus personally,
00:10:02.540 | the day of your death will not be a day
00:10:07.540 | of just leaving things behind that you're familiar with,
00:10:11.720 | but it will be a day of stepping into the presence
00:10:14.840 | of the one that we care about most.
00:10:18.020 | So thank you for asking such a very good question at age 14.
00:10:23.020 | I'm really excited about what God is gonna do in your life
00:10:28.460 | between now and when you're 24.
00:10:30.920 | - Yeah, amen.
00:10:31.760 | Tessa, thank you for the question at age 14.
00:10:34.140 | And Pastor John, thank you for these insights from age 75.
00:10:38.180 | Very helpful.
00:10:39.020 | Thank you for joining us today.
00:10:40.200 | You can ask a question of your own
00:10:42.260 | and search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast.
00:10:44.860 | You can do all that at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:10:48.820 | Well, speaking of circumstances,
00:10:51.140 | we're going to pick up on this theme next time
00:10:53.340 | and look at the story in John 11 about Lazarus
00:10:56.740 | and look at the circumstances around his life and his death.
00:11:00.400 | This story will jolt your brain and heart in a good way
00:11:04.060 | as we try to understand what does it mean to know
00:11:06.240 | that God loves me?
00:11:08.060 | John 11 is where we will be next time.
00:11:10.140 | Feel free to read it ahead of time, the whole chapter.
00:11:12.900 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:13.780 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:11:15.340 | See you then.
00:11:16.180 | (upbeat music)
00:11:18.760 | (upbeat music)
00:11:21.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]