Exceeding Joy
By: Misty Grimes
Day One
Scripture: “Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise is in the assembly of the faithful. Let Israel be glad in its maker; let the children of Zion rejoice in their King. Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre For the Lord takes please in his people; he adorns the humble with victory. Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches. Let the high praises of God be in their throats” (Psalm 149:1-6)
Introduction:
For many months now, through the many trials that have come my way and the darkness that has tried to overwhelm, my heart has been filled with something that is new to me: joy, exceeding joy! There was a time not so long ago that wilderness experiences (trials, difficult situations, and the like) filled me with a lot of negative emotions that would stick around for much longer than I wanted them to or that they needed to and it made the wilderness experiences even harder to navigate through. While the negative emotions do still come, a natural part of the process, they don’t stick around very long and I’m able to say, “Okay, just another bump in the road that I know God will get me through.” In these times I am now able to sing as Casting Crowns does in their song “Praise You in This Storm”: “I will praise you in this storm, and I will lift my hands, for you are who you are, no matter where I am. And every tear I cry you hold in your hand, you’ve never left my side and though my heart is torn, I will praise you in this storm.” The difference in how I handle adversity now compared to even six short months ago is that now I am able to see, and embrace, just how faithful God has been to be through it all. And I’m not just talking about the last six months, or the last year, I’m talking about throughout my entire life, even before I knew Him because He has always been there but it is only now that I am able to see that, believe that and embrace that because of the deep healing He has given me over the past year. It is when I am able to focus on my past victories because of his faithfulness rather than get lost in the present darkness that I can say, “It is well with my soul” and embrace joy in the midst of trial because I know that even in this He will remain faithful. And what a difference it makes.
We have much cause for gladness in God and can sing with David when he said, “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God” (Psalm 43:4). Over the next several weeks I will be focusing the devotionals on various attributes of God that, once understood and embraced, should become a fresh ray of sunlight in our reason to be glad even in the midst of dark times, even when we are walking through a wilderness experience, because we serve a God who gives us so many reasons to be able to say, “it is well” and to be able to say as David said in Psalm 52:9: “I will thank you forever, because of what you have done. In the presence of the faithful I will proclaim your name, for it is good.”
Lesson
Today’s lesson is short, simple, and straight to the point. Before we can even begin to understand or experience exceeding joy, before we can even begin to understand or experience the attributes of God, we must first come to know God in a deeply personal way and that is through salvation. Without accepting the free gift of his Son, the forgiveness of sin, eternal life, a new life in Christ where the old is gone to be replaced by the newness of all aspects of Him, to become a child of God, we can know no joy no matter its source for our very life comes from Him. The best part is, it is the easiest, and by far the most rewarding and life changing decision you will ever make in your life in your life because all you have to do to receive it is this, “because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame’. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’’ (Romans 10:9-13). Salvation is free and open to everyone.
It should not be hard to commit our life to God. He is the one who gives us salvation and helps the humble and the needy – people just like us. Knowing that he cares enough to send his only Son to suffer and die on the cross for us, should cause us to rejoice and sing his praises. God always wants what is best for us and that begins when we turn our life over to him.
Conclusion/Application:
Have you surrendered your life to Christ? Are there areas you are holding back from Him, areas you are still trying to deal with on your own when you know they need to be surrendered to God? Are these areas preventing you from experiencing the exceeding joy God wants you to experience? Take time to pray and ask God to reveal to you the areas of your heart, your life, you need to surrender to him so that he can fill you with exceeding joy not only today but in the future as well.
Day Two: Grateful for Love
Scripture: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19).
Introduction:
We are all created with basic needs that need to be met throughout our lives. The most basic are water, food, shelter, clothing and as long as we have these basic necessities we can pretty much make it in life. However there is one need we are all born with that if we never obtain it, experience it, it leads to the death of many through addiction and/or suicide or even murder as we search for it in all the wrong ways. So what is this need? The need to be loved. We were not created by God to be alone: “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner” (Genesis 2:18). Yet so many people grow up in homes where they never experience love or they experience a twisted love, a love displayed in ways God never meant for it to be expressed (emotional/mental, physical, sexual abuse). As a result we spend our lives searching in all the wrong places for that hole to be filled in our lives. For many that leads to addiction, years spent in one abusive relationship after another, prostitution, and the list goes on because, as the 80s and Foreigner sang, “I wanna know what love is.” Today we will look at the first attribute of God that should give us cause to have exceeding joy – love.
Lesson:
What is love? The English word for love is: “a strong affection for another”. The English language contains other words implying love such as affection, friendship, attraction, etc. The word “love” is a constantly evolving concept with ever-broadening definitions. Therefore, human love cannot be simply defined, as it is being redefined all the time. While the concept, idea and definition of human love is constantly changing, most of the time to the point where it has little meaning or a twisted meaning (example: a child who is abused and told, “I do it because I love you; to teach you”, etc), what true love actually is, the love given to us by God, is the only true love because it never changes in any form or fashion thus is the only love that can be depended on.
So what does the Bible say about love and how God loves? The Greek word for spiritual love is agape which means: the love of God or Christ for humankind; the love of Christians for others people, corresponding to the love of God for humankind; unselfish love on one person for another without sexual implication; brotherly love. We can break this down to four things love is and isn’t.
Spiritual love is self-sacrificing not self-seeking. “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (I John 3:16-18). When Jesus died on the cross for us He gave us the ultimately example of what it means to love sacrificially – to put the needs of others before our own. We give without expecting anything in return because we do it out of love for the other person and in doing so we show them that we love them. This sacrificial love calls us to sacrifice for those in our families or our fellow believers but also to those who need to know and experience the love of Christ. So many have been shown a kind of love that is self-seeking that to have someone do for them out of a love that expects nothing in return is often a life changing experience. So, what type of love do you show: sacrificial or self-seeking?
Spiritual love is unending, not a temporary feeling, emotion or attraction. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). These verses demonstrate the difference the often conditional love of people versus the unconditional love of God, and unconditional love that we can all not only experience but also give to others when we have accepted Christ and seek to serve him and minister to both fellow believers and those still lost, searching for this kind of love. So often our love “changes” as we change and people change. How many people do you hear say, “I just don’t love you anymore” and use that as a reason to end a relationship (Friendship, marriage, etc). God never tells us that. Is love is never temporary and is never based on feelings that are subject to change from day to day, minute to minute, and based on what someone does or doesn’t do for you (conditional love: “I’ll love you if”). Conditional love is temporary and self-seeking. Is that the kind of love you want to receive? Is that the kind of love you want to receive the love of God that is able to say, “I forgive you and I still love you”?
Spiritual love is undeserving and unreciprocated. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). Herein lies the gospel of Jesus Christ. God loved us (his enemies) so much that he sent his only Son to die for us. Through his death and resurrection (because of God’s sacrificial love) we are reconciled to God (no longer enemies but his children) when we embrace Him as our Lord and Savior. “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). Colossians 1:21-22 goes on to explain in even more detail how much the undeserving love of God changes us when we embrace it, “And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.” We were God’s enemies yet he reached out in love and not only embraced us in his unconditional, sacrificial love, but that love changed every part of us! Given this truth, who are we to deny those we consider our enemies this same love? Who are we to say that this person or that person doesn’t deserve our love? When we have this mindset the love we have is conditional, based on what a person does or doesn’t do to earn it from us and to keep it once they have earned it. We are to hate the sin but love the sinner for it is only through this kind of love that we, and others, came to know the powerful love of God!
Spiritual love is lavish. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (I John 3:1). Once we were enemies of God, but because of God’s great love for us, demonstrated in the death and life of Jesus, we can be called His children! What more can you say other than what this verse says for when you look at this verse and wrap it all together with the three factors above you now know what love is, what it should be and we are able to examine our hearts and determine have we truly received the love of God and is this the kind of love that we give others whom we profess to love?
To sum it up there are three things we need to remember about love.
To know love and understand love you have to experience it.
When we dig deep and let God’s love penetrate every part of our being we are infused with a power beyond our imagination because love gives us meaning, it gives us purpose because it frees us to truly know who we are – beloved sons and daughters of the King whom we call, “Abba, Father” through whom nothing is impossible and whose love endures forever, never changes and is unconditional. It is the perfect love we find no one else, nothing else and nowhere else!
When God’s love fills us we are filled with the fullness of God and then we are able to grow and mature and become who he created us to be because we allow His love to seep into the darkness and heal the wounds that have prevented us from experiencing love both on the giving and receiving ends.
Conclusion:
Without love we are empty vessels, tumbleweeds blown about by every breeze, wandering around in search of meaning and finding none because we are missing the key element: to love and be loved. Thankfully, Jesus is the reason we know what love is. In laying down his life for us, He taught us everything we need to know about true love. Love is self-sacrificing, generous, unending, not a temporary feeling or attraction. Because of God’s love for the world, we can both know and experience love as it was meant to be experienced.
Application:
Humanity has always struggled to define love, and is constantly redefining it, but God’s definition is clear and will never change. Read I Corinthians 13:4-8 below and as you read it break down each quality of love: which do you have? Which do you need to embrace? Which do you give? Which do you need to give more of? Open your heart to God through prayer and let him speak to your heart his love so that you might experience it fully and give it fully…as it was intended to be. Always remember: YOU ARE LOVED!!!!
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.”