Christianity is all about mystical fellowship with the Trinity, which is always available as we realize and enjoy God’s actions upon us.
Draw near to God by joining Him at His side. 1) Delight in Your destiny with God so much that being en-route brings you joy (the trials are achieving the coming glory). 2) Enjoy the journey by joining God in His affections and work.
9 They who seek my life will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth. 10 They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. 11 But the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by God's name will praise him, while the mouths of liars will be silenced.
*******
Introduction
Throughout this study we have been learning ways to take greater delight in God and to have more intimate fellowship with Him. If you want to be close to God; if you want to walk with Him and keep in step with the Spirit and be nearby God; if you want to live in the most profound awareness and experience of His presence as possible; if you want Him to take the most possible delight in you so that at the end of this particular day when you lie down in bed His thoughts toward you are, “Well done my good and faithful servant;” if you want your joy and delight in God to be maximized to the highest possible extreme; if you want to have supernatural power at work through you in your life; and if you want to be right at the center of God’s will for you - all of that come through fellowship with Him.
And fellowship (communion) with God, is a mystical thing; that is, it is a direct experience with God. When you have a direct experience with the favorable presence of God, that is fellowship with Him. And it was for that purpose that God called you to be a Christian in the first place.
1 Cor.1:9 God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.
So being a Christian is all about having fellowship with the Lord - not just fellowship with Christ, but fellowship with each member of the Trinity.
2 Cor.13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Php.2:1-2 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete
1 Jn.1:3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
So we are to have fellowship with each member of the Trinity, and Scripture does speak of fellowship with each of them in slightly different ways. There is a lot of overlap, but there are certain things that are emphasized with regard to communing with Jesus Christ, other things that are emphasized with regard to communing with the Father, and still other things with regard to the Spirit. Hopefully someday we will have a chance to do a study on that. But for now just realize that Christianity is all about fellowship with God.
And there are a lot of ways to do that. If you think the only time you can have direct, intimate fellowship with Him is during prayer and worship, you need to expand your understanding. You can have mystical communion with God – direct, relational experiences with the Lord Himself that increase your love for Him - at any time of the day every day because His presence is always near.
Jn.14:18 I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.
Mt.28:20 surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
Ps.139:8-10 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
There are numerous ways to have a direct experience of God so you can enjoy fellowship with Him. The most obvious, of course, is prayer. However, not even prayer is automatically fellowship with God. Just because one is saying prayers does not necessarily mean she is having fellowship with God or enjoying His presence. But if, while saying a prayer, she is enjoying the experience of being listened to by God and enjoying being attended to and listened to by someone who is taking a keen, serious interest in what she is saying and feeling and desiring and who really cares about it; when she is aware that that is going on and she is enjoying the experience – at that moment she is having a direct encounter with God. She is having fellowship with Him.
But that is not the only way. Besides being listened to by God, another way to have a direct interaction with God in fellowship with Him is to be spoken to by him. When your eyes are opened to see what is beautiful and wonderful about some truth in Scripture, and you can understand it and accept it and love it, that can only happen when the Holy Spirit does a special act of enlightenment inside you. When that happens, you are having a direct experience with God. You are being personally tutored by Him.
However, that experience in itself does not necessarily mean there is fellowship with God. It is possible for God to teach you and enlighten you and for you to have no conscious awareness or appreciation of it. You might just walk away and think, “Hm – for some reason I am thinking really clearly today.” Obviously if you do that nothing will have happened to endear God to your heart more. It is not going to make you love Him more. If you are aware of it, on the other hand, and you enjoy the experience of being personally taught by God - you realize that at that moment you are having a direct, mystical experience with the Lord Himself, and you enjoy that experience – that will endear God to you. He speaks to you and you enjoy that experience with Him – that is fellowship.
So you can have fellowship with God by enjoying the experience of being listened to by Him or by enjoying the experience of being spoken to by Him and taught by Him. But those are not the only ways. Another thing God does is shelter and protect us from danger. Again – the mere act of protection does not mean fellowship. If you drive away from a near miss and think, Wow, that was close. I am glad I didn’t crash, but you have no sensation of being in the protective hand of God, no awareness of the fact that you are safe because at that moment you are personally experiencing the Lord as your Shepherd whose rod and staff are keeping you safe in the valley of the shadow of death, if you do not have conscious awareness of and enjoyment of that; there is no fellowship. However if you do experience and enjoy God as Your shelter and refuge, being delivered from physical harm or being delivered from evil, and you delight in that experience, you are having fellowship with God at that moment.
The same goes for the experience of being provided for by God, which is another way to have fellowship with Him. If you see the food in your house and your material possessions and your paycheck, and you realize that at that moment you are right in the middle of a mystical experience – the experience of being provided for by God, and you delight in that; that is fellowship with God.
Another way is when you are being strengthened by Him. Another way is when you are being chastised by Him. Another is when you are being healed and restored by Him. Another is when you are being conformed to Christ’s image by Him as you are shaped on His potter’s wheel. And another is when you are suffering with Christ. So many ways to draw near to Him: at His feet as you learn from Him, before His throne as you praise Him, in His lap as you pray to Him, in His fortress or under His wing as He cares for you, in His storehouse or at His table as He provides for you, on His potter’s wheel or operating table, in His woodshed, or by His cross as you participate in the sufferings of Christ.
Draw Near By Joining God at His Side
In addition to all those means of experiencing fellowship with God, there is yet another way. In addition to drawing near to Him at His feet or under His protective wing or on His lap, you can draw near to Him by His side. One of the most important ways we have fellowship with God is by enjoying being on His side in the great spiritual war and being at His side as we walk alongside Him in all He is doing.
And there are two parts to joining God as His side: 1) Delight in your destiny and 2) Enjoy the journey. One focuses on the future and the other on the present. Those should be two sources of joy in the Lord – getting excited about where He is taking you and enjoying the process of getting there.
This can be seen from the last three verses of this psalm. David is on the run and his enemies definitely have the upper hand at this point. But he knows that is going to be reversed, and his confidence in that promise brings him joy. Not only will he ultimately enjoy victory, but it will be decisive victory. Verses 9,10 are a little out of character with the rest of the psalm. Throughout the psalm David moves very rapidly from point to point and never gives much detail on anything. But when he talks about the defeat of his enemies he slows way down. Notice how emphatic he is about the decisiveness of this victory that is coming.
9 They who seek my life will be destroyed; they will go down to the depths of the earth. 10 They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. 11 But the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by God's name will praise him, while the mouths of liars will be silenced.
The summary of that is this: God is going to win big. His enemies are going to lose big. And David is happy because he is on God’s side.
Joy at His side
This is a psalm that is all about joy. The last lesson focused on the link between joy and praise. Praise is joy. There is no such thing as non-joyful praise. In Reflections on the Psalms C.S. Lewis makes a great observation about praise. He notes that praise is not just our response to enjoyment; it is the completion of it. When you experience something wonderful, the experience is not complete until you tell someone. If you see some amazing magic trick, or some fantastic thing happens to you, going home and telling someone about it is a major part of your enjoyment of it. Suppose tomorrow a radio station called you and said, “We picked your name out of the phone book and you won our grand prize – all expense paid trip to the Superbowl with tickets plus a new car plus $10,000.” What would be the first thing you would do? You would call someone and tell them about it. Part of the way God designed us to enjoy wonderful things is by talking about them. That is what praise is.
This psalm is all about praise which means it is all about furthering our enjoyment of God by talking about how wonderful our experiences with God have been. Right now it is mostly a discipline for me to talk about the great things God has done in everyday conversation. My goal is to get to the point where I can’t wait to do that just like when I see some spectacular game or amazing sunset.
Being on God’s side
David loved the fact that he is on God’s side. It is so good to be on the side of a strong victor. I remember as a kid encountering a bully who normally terrified me but who didn’t this particular time because I happened to be with my big brother. What a difference there is in encountering a powerful enemy alone or with a protector! Most of us would come a long way in our spiritual life if we could ever get to the point where we could get as excited about God’s victories over Satan as we do about the victories of our favorite sports teams.
There is no question David is full of joy – we see it twice in v.11. David will rejoice and all who swear by God’s name will praise. Those are two ways of describing joy. So where does that joy come from? It comes from David’s delight in his destiny and his enjoyment of the journey. First let’s consider delight in destiny.
1. Delight in Your Destiny
Some of my most pleasant childhood memories are of times when we were in the car headed off to a vacation. I remember getting out of the car at a rest stop and smelling the humid air and I loved it because it reminded me that we were on vacation. We were traveling in a CJ5 Jeep. A CJ5 has two seats up front and a tiny little jumpseat in the back. They are designed to comfortably seat zero people. If you have ever ridden in one for more than about 30 miles, you were probably pretty uncomfortable. We had a canvas top flapping in the wind, with a family of 6 at that time.
Carolyn was a baby. I think I was in 1st grade, and we drove a CJ5 2000 miles (each way) from Colorado to Florida. We didn’t have video games, or a VCR, or Walkmans – we didn’t even have a radio. And yet I have nothing but wonderfully pleasant memories of that trip. So how could a 6 year old kid have only fond memories of a trip that long in such a crowded, uncomfortable vehicle? I think the reason I was that happy is not because the circumstances of the travel were the funnest thing I had ever done, but because of where we were going. No matter how uncomfortable the journey, if you have enough delight in the destination, you will have joy in your heart on the way.
David was full of joy because of his destiny. Right now he’s traveling in the desert, but he’s on his way to final victory in God, and that filled him with joy.
The problem is, when you are a kid it is easy enough to get excited about going to the ocean or going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, but how can I get that same sense of joy over going to heaven? I know in my mind that heaven will be wonderful beyond my wildest imagination. But without having experienced it, it is hard for that to get from my intellect into my affections, so that it actually generates real joy that really does make me feel happy now.
In fact, I don’t know that it is even possible to get excited about heaven in your affections unless you do experience at least a sample of it now. Whenever God describes heaven to us in Scripture He does so by comparing it to something in this life that we can experience. If you want to have joy in your heart over the anticipation of going to heaven, the best way to do that is to experience as much of heaven as possible in this life. And the thing that will make heaven a wonderful, satisfying paradise is the presence of God. The presence of God is what makes heaven heaven. And so the more experiences you can have now with the presence of God, the more excited you will start to be in your affections as you contemplate being in His unveiled presence. The more time and effort and labor you have put into seeking hard after Him – sometimes for long periods of time – just to get a few moments of that incredible experience of close communion with Him; the more sweat you have put into that, the more delighted you will be at the thought of seeing Him face to face. And the more delighted you are at that the more delighted you will during the journey – even when it passes through the desert. I took delight in the road trip because it was a trip to Grandma’s. I loved being at Grandma and Grandpa’s so much that I loved being en-route. For the Christian, this life is a trip to God. You are en-route to intimacy. It is a road trip that leads right into His presence. This current situation of distress, sickness, burdens, cares, hard tasks, fatigue, irritations, dangers, threats, sorrows, failures – they are all part of this blessed car ride toward this marvelous destiny of God’s house.
A Highway, not a waiting room
Do not just think of this life as a time of waiting for heaven. It is not just waiting; it is traveling. Scripture speaks of the events, and growth, and (especially) the suffering of this life as vehicles that are transporting us – bringing us toward heaven. This life is not a waiting room for heaven. It is a highway to heaven.
2 Cor.4:17 our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory from excess to excess.
Underline those words “are achieving.” It is not just that you are enduring troubles while you are waiting for the eternal weight of glory. The troubles themselves are achieving that glory for you. It is the troubles that are somehow bringing about the glory.
There is a lot about this truth that I do not understand. I do not know exactly what the difference will be at the Second Coming between those of us who have suffered little and those who have suffered greatly. But it seems clear enough that there will be a difference. It does matter – hugely – what happens to you in this life.
How do the trials actually cause the glory? One possible way comes from 1 Peter 4.
1 Pe.4:12-13 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
The amazing words in that verse are “so that.” Rejoice in your suffering now so that you will be overjoyed at the Second Coming. What will enable me to be overjoyed when Christ’s glory is revealed? The degree to which I rejoiced in the suffering in this life. The happier I am now in my suffering the happier I will be when His glory is revealed.
I can only guess at how that works. One possibility is this: When I suffer some painful ordeal in this life, and I am able to find joy in Christ through that ordeal, the only way that happens is by the Lord Jesus Christ coming to me in a special way and comforting me with His presence. And the more of those kind of experiences you have, the more tears of joy there will be that will come to your eyes when He appears. He will be more dear to you than He is to the Christian who has not had those kinds of experiences.
I used to think we would all be exactly the same at the Second Coming. Sin would be gone, and so we would all have the same capacity to rejoice in Him. But now I am questioning that. Sin will be completely gone; I know that much for sure. But that in itself does not necessarily prove that we will all have exactly the same joy. It seems to me that in order for Paul to say that our present sufferings are causing the eternal weight of glory; and in order for Peter to say that we need to rejoice in our suffering now so that we will be overjoyed then, there must be a difference between those who endure much suffering for Him (and rejoice in it), and those who endure little suffering or who fail to rejoice in their suffering.
So this life is a CJ5 ride to heaven. And sometimes you are putting along at just a few miles an hour, and other times you are making great progress. When painful trials break in on your life, and you respond by seeking hard after God, and He comforts you by revealing His presence to you in a special way, you can look out the window and see that a whole bunch of mile markers have passed and you are a lot closer now.
This life is a trip to God’s house.You are en-route to intimacy, and the more tastes you get of intimacy with Him now the more delight you will have in your destination. Just learning the fact that heaven is a paradise does not fill me with very much joy in anticipation. It’s too abstract, too far from my experience, too hard to imagine. The joy comes when you get samples of what it will be like to be in His presence. Those samples are limited, so they cause a limited kind of joy, but they make you happy to be en-route to God’s house like I was happy on the car ride to Grandma’s.
Scholars debate over whether the psalmists looked forward only to victory and vindication in this life, or if they also looked toward a greater victory in the next life. But wherever you come out on that debate, the principle of this text is clear. David was full of joy in the desert because he delighted in his destination. And if we as Christians apply that same principle we will seek joy by delighting in our destination, and we know much more about our destination than David knew about his.
2. Enjoying the Journey
It wasn’t only that he was so happy about his destination that he was happy to be en-route. All that was true, but in addition to that, he enjoyed the journey itself. He took pleasure not just in the progress of the mile makers, but actually enjoyed the driving and the rest stops and all that was involved in the journey.
Since we are talking about a journey, let’s shift from the image of a car ride to a more biblical way of describing travel – walking. The Bible often describes God in terms of movement. It talks about God’s way, or His path. God is moving along a certain track. And Scripture speaks about walking with God. God is walking. He is moving. He is not dormant – He is actively doing things. And if you want to have intimacy with Him the way to do it is to walk with Him - to be at His side, joining Him in what He is doing.
And there are two parts to that that I see in these verses: Join with God in His affections, and Join with God in His work.
A. Joining God in His affections
David delighted in the impending defeat of his enemies. People have often wondered how it is that David could be a godly man and still have such ill-will toward his enemies. It is because of David’s motive for opposing them. The reason David opposed them was not because they were against David; it was because they were against God.
David was a man after God’s own heart; he felt the same way about people that God did. And so when someone was a bitter enemy of God that was synonymous with being an enemy of David. You can see it as clear as day in the psalms that the psalmists’ distain for the wicked was a function of their loyalty to God. Ps.119 is a great example.
Ps.119:139 My zeal wears me out, for my enemies ignore your words.
When people opposed God it ate David up inside because of how much David loved God – not because of how much he loved himself. If you despise someone just because they hurt you, that is evil, and Scripture forbids that.
But Scripture also forbids loving that which God hates. If you want to walk through this life close by God’s side you will have to join Him in His affections – love what He loves and hate what He hates. Take seriously what He takes seriously and minimize what He minimizes. Regard highly what He regards highly and disregard what He disregards.
The affections are the most important factor in godliness. If you do the right thing you may or may not be godly (depending on your motive – if your motive was bad, then doing the right thing was not an indication of godliness). If you think the right thing you may or may not be righteousness (if you know the truth and hate it; that is not righteousness). But the affections never lie. If you love the good, that is an indication of godliness in your heart – period. Nobody loves the Lord out of a bad motive. If it is genuine love, and if it is love for the true God, it is godliness.
So nothing is more important in your spiritual growth than your affections becoming as they should be. And that will happen when they move toward being like God’s affections. You are righteous when you truly love the things God loves and hate the things He hates.
Not only that, but the act of loving what He loves, and the act of hating what He hates are acts of fellowship and communion with Him - just like prayer or praise or learning from Scripture.
We have been asking the question – what can you do to have fellowship with God all through the day every day? How can a person learn to live in His presence so that every action throughout the whole day is a little act of fellowship with God? One way is to join God in His affections. If you want to walk with God – to be near Him, by His side, stride-for-stride with Him in His way, the way to do that is to join Him in His affections.
The more at odds you are with God’s affections, the more relational distance you place between yourself and Him. If there is something God hates that you do not hate; you are at odds with Him. Imagine you had an enemy who hated you and whom you hated - someone who did all kinds of horrible things to you and your family; someone who routinely broke into your house, destroyed priceless things that had sentimental value and that couldn’t be replaced, burned your photos, erased everything on your computers; and worse than that he would hurt the people you love. He would kidnap your children and your spouse and torture them in the most horrible ways. I am talking about a real enemy. And suppose you and I were good friends, and my other best friend, who I loved hanging out with, was this enemy of yours. Wouldn’t that put some strain on your friendship with me? I know that not very many things break my heart as much as when people I love are attracted to evil people.
And in the same way, a relationship will also not be very close when two people do not love the same things. If I don’t like your kids, I don’t care much for your wife, I can’t stand the people you love the most – you and I will never be very close.
But on the other hand, have you ever felt a rush of love and affection for someone just simply because they showed great love to someone you love? When someone really loves my kids, that makes me love that person. When a person shows great kindness to my wife, that makes that person become dear to me.
Intimacy comes when two people’s affections align. It’s amazing how having affections in common can make you close to someone. Even at trivial levels – if you meet someone who has the same favorite food as you, same favorite movie, same favorite color, same favorite song, same favorite kind of soda, same favorite book, you feel and kinship with that person right away. Intimacy and relational closeness with God come when your affections align with His.
Psalm 15:1,4 LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill?
4 He who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the LORD
God says, “Who is it that has the privilege of living in My presence? Only those people who despise what I despise and love what I love.” When something happens in front of you and you see it and you like it, and God also sees it and He likes it, that endears you to God. It makes Him pleased with you. And if you are aware of it, it can endear God to you and increase your love for Him – if you are aware of it and you enjoy the experience of it.
This is one way you can have fellowship with God while watching a movie or reading a fiction book. When something that is good in the story touches your emotions, like when a mistreated person finally gets treated well, or when a lonely person finally receives love from someone, or when an injustice is corrected, or when a hero emerges victorious, or anything else that is good, and that is portrayed in a way that moves your heart - anytime a tear comes to your eye during a movie - you can sit back at that moment and tell yourself, “This is touching my heart because it is good. I feel this way about it because God feels this way about it.” And then just enjoy the fact that God is that way.
You might be thinking, “But what if the things I like in the movie are things God does not like?” That means you have an evil desire in that area. And watching something that feeds that evil desire and deceives you even further into feeling like that evil thing is a good thing is extremely foolish.
But when you see something lovely and realize that you are feeling the same way as God about that thing, that can be a moment of wonderful enjoyment of God and fellowship with Him. On the other hand, when there is something that God takes great delight in, and you see it and you are indifferent about it – it does not really do anything special for you, that alienates you from God relationally.
When there is something God hates that you love – that destroys intimacy with Him. Isa.55:7-8 says that when we have thoughts that are not God’s thoughts and ways that are not His ways, we need to forsake that sin. When what’s inside me does not match up with what’s inside God, that is evil and I need to repent.
Search your heart for things like that, so you can repent of them. Some people are so proud of the fact that they abstain from some sin, and it never occurs to them that their love for that sin is itself an evil that they need to repent of. Look into your own heart and find those things that the Bible says are evil but that are not repulsive to you. There are some things the Bible calls evil that my heart is repulsed by and recoils from. But there are other things the Bible calls evil that my soul is drawn to and inclined toward, and that I struggle to see the ugliness of it. When there are sins like that – things that you abstain from, but that you can’t really understand why they are included in the list of evil things, that is an indication of some ungodly affections that call for repentance.
This is an issue of faithfulness to our Husband.
1 Jn.2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
Jas.4:4-5 You adulterous people, do not you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
When we love the world God is jealous. It causes pain in His heart – the same kind of pain you would have if your spouse fell in love with someone else. When you see a party where people are getting drunk and engaging in revelry. The main question is not so much are you going to join them or not. The question is, How is your heart inclined? Are you drawn to that or repulsed? When someone hurts you and you are tempted to tell them off or hurt them in some way, the main question is not so much whether you will give in to that temptation; the main question is is that how your heart is inclined? In your heart do you savor revenge or do you love mercy? When you are tempted with gluttony, when you drive by a topless bar, when you are confronted with materialism on a TV commercial; which way do your affections lean? Are you by God’s side or at odds with Him?
The same goes for things the Bible says are beautiful that do not seem all that beautiful or wonderful to you. The Bible gives some truth that is supposed to thrill your heart and fill you up with joy, but it just does not. That puts relational distance between you and God.
Just think how much damage we do to ourselves because of our failure to hate what is evil and love what is good. If your physical taste buds got messed up so that you hated food and loved battery acid, you would probably destroy yourself in a short period of time. That’s what happens to us spiritually - which is why God’s promise to redeem our affections is such a wonderful promise. God only loves that which is best and most beneficial, which means this promise that I am going to be conformed to the image of Christ is really a great and precious promise, because it means my affections are going to be adjusted more and more so that I am going to start really liking things that benefit me the most. And I am going to stop liking things that harm me. That promise can cause great joy.
So we rejoice in being on God’s side. We rejoice in our victorious destination so much that it makes us happy to be en-route. And we also rejoice in the journey itself as we draw near to God by joining Him at His side on this journey. And there are two parts to that. The first part we just talked about – joining God in His affections – feeling the same way God feels. The second part of joining by God’s side during the journey is joining Him in His work.
B. Joining God in His work
Notice how David refers to himself all of the sudden in the last verse of the psalm.
They will become food for jackals. 11 But the king will rejoice in God
He has been deposed from his throne, he’s in the desert on the run, and suddenly he refers to himself as the king. He doesn’t do that because he’s searching for word variety. It is an important point. David took delight in being what God called him to be, which was the king. David delighted in his calling. He delighted in it because that is the only way to join God at His side in His work.
The only thing you could ever do that could possibly matter or amount to anything is to do what God called you to do. Anything else puts distance between you and God. We need to learn to be like Paul, who always identified himself by the only credential that mattered. “Paul, called by the Lord Jesus Christ…” There is nothing more to your identity than your calling. Anything you become, outside of what God called you to be, is worthless. But everything you are within that calling is eternally and infinitely important and significant.
Learn to delight in your calling. If God called you to wipe the runny nose of a 2 year old, that is divine work – the only kind of work that matters. If your calling on your life involves taking out the garbage or paying the phone bill or talking to coworkers about the Gospel or calling a friend to encourage her in the Lord, then when you do those things, make sure they are fellowship with God.
It is not enough just to carry out your calling. For that to be fellowship with God you need to enjoy it as communion with the nearness of God. Don’t just change a diaper. Enjoy being at God’s side carrying our what He called You to do.
God’s calling on your life rose up out of the purposes of His heart, so when you are carrying out that calling – if you do so with an awareness of that - you can rejoice in being close by His side. Don’t just get your oil changed; delight in the fact that you are carrying out one of the purposes of God’s heart for you specifically. That goes for every aspect of your calling.
Conclusion
So delight in your destiny, and enjoy the journey. And enjoying the journey has two parts: drawing near to God’s side by joining Him in His affections, and drawing near to God’s side by joining Him in His work.
Make it your goal for every moment of every day to be an act of fellowship with God, so that every day you go to bed with a litter more powerful love for God than you woke up with that day. When you pray, enjoy being listened to by Him. When you learn, enjoy being taught by Him personally. When you are protected and sheltered by Him, enjoy His presence. When you see all that you have, enjoy the experience of being provided for by Him. When you are strengthened by Him, enjoy that direct action of God on Your soul. Realize all your strength is an alien strength – from another source, and enjoy the experience of having His strength in you. When you suffer the sting of His rod in chastisement, make sure you feel His displeasure so you learn to fear His anger. And enjoy the fact that it is all redemptive – none of it is mere judgment. And as you are restored and healed, realize that is also a direction action of God on your soul and enjoy His presence in that way. When you suffer, enjoy it as a participation in the sufferings of Christ. And when you have a powerful love for something or a distain for something, realize that those very feelings are a closeness to the heart of God. And when you do any of your daily work, enjoy the sensation of being a tool in His hand. Enjoy being close by His side as you carry out the purposes of His heart. Every moment of the day one of those things is taking place, giving you the opportunity for fellowship with God at every moment, no matter what you are doing.
The greatest joy – joining God in love
Hopefully soon we can do an entire series on this one principle, but let me just state it quickly here. Of all these ways of enjoying the presence of God, there is one that is the greatest of all. There is one way of communing with God that is the greatest of all and the will generate the most profound, satisfying joy of all. And that is this – allowing God’s love to flow through you to someone else. Whenever you see a needy person, joyfully anticipate the experience of having God’s grace flow through you to that person.
We see that in passages like John 4, where Jesus didn’t accept any food after sharing the Gospel with the woman at the well because His food was to do God’s will (v.34). We know from Jn.8:29 that Jesus always did the Father’s will. But there is something about those moments when God’s will for you involves ministry to a needy human being that the joy from God is the most satisfying of all. You can enjoy fellowship with God most when you are ministering to another person in love.
