Enjoying God - Week #7

(Just a reminder that the next two books will be Deep Unto Deep (Dana Candler) and The Pursuit of God (A.W. Tozer). We will start the first one in September after a break in August when I will post some simple words of encouragement during the month.)

Chapter Six – Love-Empowered Holiness (through p. 105)
Jonathan Edwards: “…there is no man upon earth who isn’t earnestly seeking after happiness, and this appears abundantly by the variety of ways they so vigorously seek it (happiness); they will twist and turn every way…to make themselves happy…”

This chapter of Enjoying God is about discovering a life of holiness that is rooted in the love and joy of God. (By the way, I have come to understand that this kind of holiness is the only true holiness there is because it is how God is. That which is rooted in performance and religion isn’t biblical holiness; it’s contrary to the nature of God.)

The author points out that we Christians tend to shy away from the idea of seeking happiness. I would say that this tendency is for a couple of reasons at least. One is that we legitimately don’t want to be seeking our own comfort at the expense of others, but the other reason is that we have the erroneous notion that the most heroic and spiritual things are measured purely by the amount of pain and sacrifice attached to them.

As a preacher who I heard recently said (my paraphrase), “In the evangelical and missions world we believe that rather than pursue an encounter with God (which includes His coming to us with tender emotions that touch our emotions) we should be content to live and work without encountering God in intimacy.” This is how we tend to measure true faith; the less we feel of God, the more spiritual we are.

But we were designed to feel and experience God in all areas of our life. We can’t manipulate nor force this, but we can pursue Him wholeheartedly with our heart open to receive His tenderizing touch on our hearts. I’m not referring to “emotionalism” which is a state in which my emotions control me, but I’m referring to being fully alive – mind, will, and emotions. I don't want to be controlled by my emotions any more than I want to be controlled by my mind, but I do want to live with the faculties of my soul (mind, will and emotions) as fully alive and in touch with the Spirit of God as possible.

And so in talking about seeking happiness, the author is referring to how God created us for pleasure and happiness. Seeking pleasure is not sin; the places we go to get pleasure is where sin enters the picture. Adam and Eve were deliberately placed in a garden called Eden which means "delight". God wanted joy and pleasure for them, and as long as God Himself was the Source of their joy, they could enjoy fully the gifts He brought with Him for them. Their sin and misery came when they looked to another source for pleasure and peace.

Psalm 16:11 says, “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” David knew the Source of joy and pleasures – the Father’s presence.

“No human relationship can ultimately satisfy us. Taking drugs…getting drunk…illicit sex can’t do it. Money can’t buy it. Only knowing and experiencing the Father can give us the happiness and pleasure that our hearts so desperately crave.”

The author quotes one of my favorites from C.S. Lewis: “The NT has lots to say about self-denial, but not self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

S.J. Hill says, “The belief that holiness and happiness are at odds with each other is a serious twisting of Christian truth…holiness can best be attained by finding our ultimate happiness and pleasure in God. Why do people sin? They sin because they enjoy the pleasures that it brings…The traditional approach to discouraging people from sinning is negative…but if a man’s heart is not being warmed by the passions of God’s personality, his heart will be captivated by the red-hot flames of temptation…just saying no alone doesn’t work. There must be something more appealing to which a person can say yes.”

The Transforming Power of Beauty
This “more appealing something" is the Person of God in all His beauty and holiness! David knew this and expresses it eloquently in Psa. 27:4, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

This beautiful God is what we are made for, and He seeks for worshippers who will seek His beauty above all else. We need to help new believers step quickly into the wonderful discipline of meditating on and contemplating the beauty of God and His Word, because it is in this practice and habit of contemplating/beholding His Person that we are transformed (II Cor. 3:18).

At the end of this section of the chapter the author says, “Overcoming sin is not about gritting your teeth and holding on for dear life. The only way for you to successfully resist sin is by maximizing your pleasure in God.” While there is a place for making the hard core choice to say no, just saying no will not carry us into full transformation of our inner life. Only finding the higher pleasure (God Himself) will fully satisfy the human desire and need for pleasure.

I’ll close this week’s posting out with an admonition in relation to this. In this process of growing to enjoy God, you must allow Him to enjoy you. I want to reiterate what I’ve said before, which is that the flesh will protest His enjoyment of you, and you may not like hearing that He enjoys you in your immaturity and failings as well as when you feel you are doing well. In some ways it‘s much easier to declare my love to God than to hear Him say that He loves and even likes me.

A few years ago I was leading a small team of Bethany students on a 3-week short-term missions trip to Mexico. I have rarely been sick in my life and was taken by surprise by a reaction to an antibiotic that contained a substance that I was allergic to. It hit me so hard that I was sidelined the entire first week of the outreach; I was desperately ill one night in particular and hardly able to move. In the middle of that night I really thought I might die; in the face of that, things got crystal clear and I sensed the Lord asking me, “Nita, what is the one thing you are most sure of in life?” Without hesitating, I answered, “That I love You, Lord.” I sensed His smile over me in that answer, but then heard His tender and loving word to follow up on that: “There’s something greater and more fundamental/sure than your love for Me, Nita, and that is My love for you.” In that simple exchange between us, worlds of understanding began to open to me, and I haven’t stopped discovering the depths of the truth of I John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

I think it’s perfectly ok to apply this truth of His being the Initiator in all areas and say, “I enjoy Him because He first enjoyed me…I am committed to Him because He first committed to me”, etc. It’s all in the cross where God took the initiative to do whatever it took to win our love, and the greatest human pleasure is to encounter this love firsthand!

A warning – the capacity to be enjoyed by God and to enjoy Him may take a long time to develop because of years of wrong thinking about Him and ourselves and the world, because of woundedness, because of unforgiveness and hidden bitterness, etc. You must be patient and persevering in your pursuit. God is patient, and we must agree with His patience with us, thanking Him that transformation is happening even if we can’t see the incremental growth going on in us.

God bless you and be with you this week…for next week, we’ll finish this chapter on Love-Empowered Holiness.