what I'm reading: God will never again know perfect and unmixed happiness until he has brought us home

The love of God is no fitful, fluctuating thing, as human love is. It is a spontaneous determination of God's whole being, an attitude freely chosen and firmly fixed.

God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have thought) unloveable. There was nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it forth; nothing in us could attract or prompt it.

The love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused. God loves people because he has chosen to love them, and no reason for his love can be given save his own sovereign good pleasure.

Through setting his love on human beings God has voluntarily bound up his own final happiness with theirs. God's happiness will not be complete till all his beloved ones are finally out of trouble.

He has set his love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by his own free voluntary choice, he will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till he has brought every one of them to heaven.

He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity his happiness shall be conditional upon ours.

Thus God saves, not only for his glory, but also for his gladness.

JI Packer Knowing God 137, 140, 141

be happy in God, O my heart

Be happy in God, O my heart, and in nothing but God,
for whatever a man trusts in,
from that he expects happiness.

He who is the ground of thy faith
should be the substance of thy joy.

Whence then comes heaviness and dejection,
when joy is sown in thee,
promised by the Father,
bestowed by the Son,
inwrought by the Holy Spirit,
thine by grace,
thy birthright in believing? ...

Look not below God for happiness;
fall not asleep in Delilah’s lap.

Let God be all in all to thee,
and joy in the fountain that is always full.


From The Valley of Vision, quoted by Georgianne.

Puritanism: a piety of joy

Today I discovered something exciting - well, exciting to me (and perhaps to no-one else except my mum). The one and only article I wrote about the Puritans is online!1

The Gospel Coalition has published all the old issues of Kategoria, a quarterly journal edited by Kirsten Birkett and put out by Matthias Media from 1996 to 2004.

There, in issue number 10, published wa-a-ay back in 1998, shortly after I finished my PhD and just before my daughter was born, is an article by yours truly:

Puritanism: a piety of joy.

For me, reading it was like visiting an earlier self: a scholarly pre-child self, who had forgotten more about the Puritans than I will ever remember, and who spoke (or wrote, at least) with long footnotes and a knowledgeable tone.

I enjoyed the article. It's not a bad read. You might enjoy it to. You'll find it here, on page 11. Here's a quote to whet your appetite, from the Puritan preacher John Collinges' sermons on the Song of Songs:

Is Jesus Christ precious to you? Is his name to your soul like an ointment poured forth? Is your whole heart filled with the sweet smell of Jesus Christ? Are you ravished with his love? Does the very thinking of Christ ravish your heart? Does the naming of him carry your soul almost above itself in an ecstasy of love? Is he like an apple to your taste, that your mouth is filled with the sweetness of his juice? Are you melted with his love?2.

And if that doesn't puncture your pre-conceptions about the sober-minded, black-hatted, joy-squashing Puritans, nothing will.

I might bring you some more quotes in coming weeks.


1. Thanks, Lionel, for letting me know, and Sandy for drawing his attention to it.
2. John Collinges, Five Lessons for a Christian to Learne, 1650, sermon 1, page 49.

5 books that changed who I am (3) mid 20s

More on the books that changed who I am...

3. mid-20s - learning to enjoy God
All that thinking, and perhaps I still needed to learn to enjoy God. I'd become convinced us evangelicals were great at thinking about God, but not always so good at godly emotions: things like fear and sorrow and, above all, joy. Surely the truth should shape every part of us, including our emotions!

Oddly enough, I learnt about joy during what you'd expect to be a very dry season: while studying for my PhD (lots of microfilm and dusty library catalogues). I learnt it at the feet of the Puritans, especially as I read John Owen's Communion with God. Over many memorable days, Owen fed me with the unchanging facts of union with Christ, taught me (wonder of wonders) that God delights in me, and invited me to enjoy the many facets of communion with Christ. I blogged about what I learnt here.

Runners up: John Piper Desiring God, CS Lewis Surprised by Joy, and Mike Raiter Stirrings of the Soul (later to be joined by Piper's When I Don't Desire God, which helped me fight for joy during tougher times).

Which books have helped you to rejoice in God? Tell us here.

CS Lewis on longing

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

CS Lewis A Mind Awake

image is from stock.xchng

from my back verandah: the joy of cockatoos

On summer evenings, when my husband and I watch a DVD, we have to shut the windows or turn up the volume. Outside, the sulphur-crested cockatoos are coming home to roost in the lemon-scented gums behind our house.

They wheel and circle, screeching, as they descend from the sky. They fly in flocks, screeching, from one tree to another. They cling to the branches and raise their yellow crests, screeching, as they argue over the best roosts.

In the morning, as the sky lightens, they stretch their wings, utter an experimental squawk or two, then wake the dawn, screeching. They rise into the air, lemon-tinted wings catching the sun, screeching. They race one another to the day's food source, somewhere north-east of here, still screeching.

I love the cockatoos. I love their squat white bodies and ridiculous yellow crests and knobbly grey feet and beady intelligent eyes. I love their abandoned playfulness and complete lack of self-consciousness and swaggering confidence. I love their joy.

They remind me that God was playful when he made the world. He didn't just make serious, imposing, beautiful animals like tigers and whales. He made ridiculous animals: elephants with their sagging skin, chameleons with their rotating eyes, cockatoos with their throaty screams.

The cockatoos remind me that God made the world, in part, for the sheer joy of it - his joy, the joy of his Son, our joy, the joy of every creature. We don't see it that way now, with the world shattered and broken (Rom 8:18-22). But one day that perfect playfulness will be restored. One day every creature will romp together in his new creation (Isa 65:25).

The happy screeches of the cockatoos, shattering the evening serenity, scattering the morning stillness, remind me to lift my eyes from my all-too-serious preoccupations and remember, if only for a moment, that we were all made for joy.

images are by SouthernAnt and Valley Guy from flickr

for those who didn't read (and those who read) When I Don't Desire God

I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted after all those EQUIP book club posts! My copy of When I Don't Desire God is looking very dog-eared, not to mention thoroughly scribbled in.

What a month it's been! While I've been writing about prayer and the Bible and rest and walking in God's world, these are exactly the things I haven't had much time for! It's a relief to get back to my normal routine. You can probably expect a quiet week on this blog.

In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about joy, or keeping the cross central, or engaging with the Bible, or prayer, or enjoying God's world, or depression, you don't need to read When I Don't Desire God: many of the posts stand alone. Here's some quick links for you to follow.

an overview

does God really want me to feel joyful?

when I don't desire God

why joy is both a gift and a fight

keeping the cross central

4 weapons for the fight for joy

1. preaching the gospel to ourselves

2. reading, reflecting on and remembering the Bible

3. prayer

4. enjoying God's world and keeping our bodies fit for joy

depression

my story of joy

I hope you'll join me in the fight for joy!

my story of joy

There was a time when joy came to me as easily as falling in love. I was 15, and for the first time the wonder of God in Christ opened before me. I read the Bible like someone thirsty gulping down water. I escaped to my room to pray. I closed my eyes, and slipped into joy like a second skin.

There was a time when joy was lost to me with the suddenness of unexpected grief. I was 17, and praying felt like staring into darkness. The Bible seemed to be only dry and dusty paper. Having lost joy, I pursued emotional "experiences" instead, but they were as fleeting and meaningless as an empty look from an old boyfriend. ...

Read the rest at EQUIP book club today.

image is from stock.xchng

depression and the fight for joy

There have been times when I woke to series of days filled with dreary dullness. Every movement had to be forced against a resisting heaviness. Joy in God was like something seen through the small end of a telescope: impossibly remote and endlessly receding.

I say this knowing that my experience is a tiny, salty drop in the ocean of what you may have experienced. If depression ranges from mild to severe - or "situational" to "clinical" - then I have only been at the very mild end of the spectrum. I have friends who have been in and out of hospital fighting relentless darkness for many years, and other friends for whom anxiety is debilitating and depression a horror which visits and leaves without warning.

Piper is too experienced a pastor not to know about such times. And so he writes this final chapter. So relevant is its message that it's been printed as a separate booklet, When the Darkness Will not Lift.

What does God have to do with depression? ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club today.

image is from Megyarsh at flickr

praying for joy

How do you feel about prayer? Do you enjoy it (this miraculous opportunity to talk to your heavenly Father!) or do you find it hard (staring into space, speaking into silence)? Do the words "prayer" and "joy" go together?

What are your temptations when it comes to prayer? Here are mine:
- I'm tempted to treat prayer as a time to work myself into a state of trust and joy, instead of asking God
- I'm tempted to be lazy about the bread-and-butter of prayer: intercession for my family, community and world
- I'm tempted to pour my heart out to others and not to God
- I'm tempted to get it all together before I pray

One thing I'm learning is to come to God as I am. Not to put it off until I haven't been quite so sinful. Not to avoid God because I've been avoiding him recently and I feel guilty. Not to wait until my thoughts and emotions are together enough to frame a clear request. To come to God confused, unhappy, doubting or angry. To come to God with the guilt and the mistakes and the pain and the questions. To come to God because of his grace, not my goodness. To come to God messy.

Until I do this, I deprive myself of a great weapon in the fight for joy. Joy becomes something I achieve (or don't achieve!) through my Bible reading, my sought-out encouragement, my biblical counselling techniques. Joy shifts sideways into smaller goals: a happy family, an organised life, a friendship. Joy turns into something I try to feel before I pray. Instead of going to God, crying out my emptiness to him, and seeking his fullness, I fill myself with the fruit of my own efforts.

Which is pretty stupid. Try as I might, I can't fill myself with joy. I can't make myself desire God: only God can do that.

How then do we fight for joy when our desires languish... ? ... The key to joy in God is God's omnipotent, transforming grace ... [T]he great purpose of prayer is to ask that - in and through all his gifts - God would be our joy. (p.138)

So how do we pray? What will keep us real and keep us praying? ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club - just click here.

image is from stock.xchng

preach the gospel to yourself

I think you'll really enjoy EQUIP books this week. Today's post is about how to remember the gospel, on Wednesday I'll write about the Bible, and on Friday I'll talk about prayer. There'll be lots of practical ideas, and links to what other people have written, in a kind of extended online meandering. Here's how today's post begins (click here to read the whole post).

Preach the gospel to yourself. Ever since I was first encouraged to do this, it's become one of my most important weapons in the fight for joy.

Preach the gospel to yourself. Women especially need to heed this call. We hear a talk on biblical womanhood, and are burdened by a hundred ways we need to change. We're self-aware, and emotionally and relationally aware, so we're often very sensitive to our faults and weaknesses. We need to be reminded, over and over, that God's love doesn't depend on what we do, that change is motivated and enabled by grace, and that obedience isn't about rules but love. We need to keep returning to the cross.

Preach the gospel to yourself. This is the first and central strategy in the fight for joy. Any helpful spiritual practice is really just a way to make this happen.

Hearing the word of the cross, and preaching it to ourselves, is the central strategy for sinners in the fight for joy. Nothing works without this. Here is where we start. And here is where we stay. We never outgrow the gospel. Here we see the glory of Christ more clearly than anywhere. ... And here in the cross is where every enemy of joy is overcome. ... What could stop our joy if we really believed this truth: Everything we need to be satisfied in God, the cross has made certain. It cannot fail. (pp.91-92)

... How do you preach the gospel to yourself? Tell us about it in the comments! Here's my ideas ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club - just click here.

image is by abcdz2000 at flickr

weapons for the fight

If you were asked to list the "spiritual disciplines" which help you fight for joy, what would be on your list? Stop for a minute and think about it. ...

How does your list compare with Piper's? Here are the "means of grace" he encourages us to use in the fight for joy:

1. the gospel - hearing it preached, preaching it to ourselves
2. the Bible - reading, memorising, musing, sharing it with others
3. prayer - when, how, where, praying the word
4. the world - creation and our bodies ...

Piper's chapters on the "means of grace" are pure gold. They're rooted in the Bible and historical evangelical piety, and they're so practical and helpful that I follow Piper's advice every day. ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club - just click here.

image is from stock.xchng

keeping the cross central in the fight for joy

Every year I rediscover the gospel. Every year it sweeps over me again like a breaking wave. Every time it's startling, as if I've discovered it for the first time, so that I wonder if I could possibly have understood it before.

I hoard the memories like treasures cast up by the waves. A talk on Gethsemane which left me in tears. A mind-bending book on the theology of the cross. A realisation, late one night, that I'm free from the iron bands of legalism, loved by God and free to live in love.

What are your memories? What were the moments when the cross and resurrection of Christ impacted you?

There can be no joy without the cross. As Piper says, without it any happiness is self-deluded, small and shrunken, dancing before the Titanic crashes. With it, all obstacles to joy are removed and all joys are made possible. ...

We're about to launch into the wonderful chapters where Piper unveils the practical strategies we can use in the fight for joy. But he's made it clear: these strategies are worth nothing if they don't direct our eyes to the glory of God in Christ.

All strategies in the fight for joy are directly or indirectly strategies to see Christ more fully. ... This is the most foundational strategy in the battle for joy - the strategic battle to see. In all the strategies commended in this book for how to fight for joy, this is always the aim of each. Directly or indirectly every strategy is a strategy to behold the glory of Christ and become enthralled with his beauty above all. (pp.60, 66-67)

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club - just click here.

image is from stock.xchng

turning on joy

It would be nice if you could turn on joy with the flick of a switch, wouldn't it? Imagine waking in the morning, feeling discouraged, and deciding to rejoice in God. Bing! The light goes on and so does joy.

We all know it's not that simple. We can fight tooth and nail for joy, and it can still be beyond us. That's because joy is God's gift. But how do you fight for something which is a gift? ...

My favourite quote in John Piper's When I Don't Desire God, which has comforted me innumerable times, and reminded me to wait for God and keep fighting when joy seems a million miles away, is this:

We are like farmers. They plow the field and plant the seed and cut away weeds and scare away crows, but they do not make the crop grow. God does. He sends rain and sunshine and brings to maturity the hidden life of the seed. ... We must learn to wait for the Lord. ... In obedience to God's Word we should fight to walk in the paths where he has promised his blessings. But when and how they come is God's to decide, not ours. If they delay, we trust the wisdom of our Father's timing, and we wait. In this way joy remains a gift, while we work patiently in the field of obedience and fight against the weeds and the crows and the rodents. Here is where joy will come. Here is where Christ will reveal himself (Jn 14:21). But that revelation and that joy will come when and how Christ chooses. It is a gift. (pp.42-43) ...

Knowing this has helped me a lot over the years. I try to be disciplined in the fight for joy: to battle my emotions, to read God's word and pray, to spend time with his people, to walk in his good world. But when joy proves elusive - as it often does! - I've learned to wait. I cry out to God, I pray, and I wait for God to restore joy (Ps 51:20) in his own timing and in his own way. This isn't easy, but it reminds me that God is sovereign and trustworthy: he knows what is best for me.

This is a slightly edited excerpt from today's post at EQUIP book club - to read the rest, click here.

image is from Jaako at flickr

desire, delight, and when I don't

As I write this, rejoicing in God is the last thing on my mind. I'm exhausted. I didn't get much sleep. I've got a Bible study to write - and this post. So far this morning, I've dealt with no less than three emotional meltdowns. My fourth child was running and jumping around the house, noisily annoying anyone within reach.

Chapter 2 is an odd little chapter. Piper seems to go to a lot of effort to explain that desire and delight are two sides of the same coin (the man does love defining his terms!). His illustration about sex makes a lot of sense to me:

Who could draw a line between the power of sexual desire and sexual pleasure? The desire is part of the satisfaction. We speak of climax not because that is the only pleasure, but precisely because it is not the only pleasure. All the desires leading to it and following after it are part of the one big pleasure. (p. 26)

He's right: desire and delight overlap and merge into one another. But I'm not sure why he's bothering to make this point.

That's until I realise that it has important implications for days like today, when I don't feel delight in God. In fact, if I'm honest, I don't feel desire either - not today! But I'm immensely comforted by Piper's words: ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club today - just click here.

does God want duty or delight?

It's time for another question. I'll give you a few minutes to think about this one (actually, you can take all day if you like) since it's not easy or obvious. Here's my question.

When is God most glorified?
a) when we obey him when we don't feel like it
b) when we obey him with joy

Be honest! You might like to share your answer in the comments. Perhaps, like my small group, you said "both" - and maybe there's some truth in that, as we'll see. ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club today - just click here.

spiritual disciplines and When I Don't Desire God

One thing I haven't told you yet about John Piper's When I Don't Desire God is that it's the best book on the "spiritual disciplines" I've ever read - and I read a number earlier this year for a seminar I was preparing! Today I talk about that and about the month ahead on EQUIP book club.

Today I want to give you a bird's eye view of John Piper's When I Don't Desire God. This isn't a book you want to just launch yourself into! It helps - it would have helped me, anyway! - to have a feel for what lies ahead.

The first third of the book tells us why we need to fight for joy. It talks about how joy glorifies God, how devastating it is to know that God should be our highest joy when he's not, what the difference is between desire and delight, and how joy is both a gift and a fight.

The rest of the book tells us how to fight for joy. You'll find here the best chapters on the "spiritual disciplines" (Piper calls them "means of grace") I've ever read - and I've read a few! ...

Here's the plan: ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club today - just click here.

John Piper When I Don't Desire God

I go to Piper for his breathtakingly enormous view of God and the gospel, his encouragement to a passionate and joy-filled Christian life, and because I think his strengths are often our weaknesses in Australian reformed evangelicalism.*

Here's a book which meets me right where I'm at.

I don't know about you, but I'm all too familiar with days - with months! - when the whole world feels flat and dreary. I know what it is to wake up so exhausted that praying and reading the Bible is the last thing on my "preferred things to do" list. I often feel anxious. I feel irritable. I feel like God is in a galaxy far, far away.

During November, I'll be reading and writing through a book written for times like these: John Piper's When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. I've read and dipped into a lot of Piper books, but this is one of my favourites (the other, if you're curious, is The Pleasures of God).

I especially love the second half of When I Don't Desire God. Here, Piper tells us how to turn to the cross when guilt won't go away (something I really struggle with!), gives some wonderful practical suggestions for praying and reading the Bible, addresses the mind-bending topic of how to use creation and our bodies in the fight for joy (my favourite chapter), and (most significantly for many!) talks about the issue of depression.

So why not grab a copy of John Piper's When I Don't Desire God and read it with me when I write on it for EQUIP book club this November? As usual, I'm hoping you'll enjoy my posts even if you don't read the book, but it will be lots more fun if we read it together!

* Or so I said in a comment on this post.

John Piper on Jesus

Jesus Christ is not merely the means of our rescue from damnation; he is the goal of our salvation. If he is not satisfying to be with, there is no salvation.

He is not merely the rope that pulls us from the threatening waves; he is the solid beach under our feet, the air in our lungs, and the beat of our heart, and the warm sun on our skin, and the song in our ears, and the arms of our beloved.

John Piper Taste and See 406 HT Of First Importance 24 Sep 2009

image is from mikebaird at flickr

John Piper on idolatry, the essence of evil

"My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jer 2:13).

God pictures himself as a mountain spring of clean, cool, life-giving water. The way to glorify a fountain like this is the enjoy the water, and praise the water, and keep coming back to the water, and point other people to the water, and get strength for love from the water, and never, never, never prefer any drink in the world over this water. ... That is how we glorify God, the fountain of living water.

But in Jeremiah's day people tasted the fountain of God's grace and did not like it. So they gave their energies to finding better water, more satisfying water. Not only did God call this effort futile ("broken cisterns that can hold no water"), but he called it evil: "My people have committed two evils." They put God's perfections to the tongue of their souls and disliked what they tasted; then they turned and craved the suicidal cisterns of the world. That double insult to God is the essence of what evil is.

So preferring the pleasures of money or power or fame or sex over the "pleasures ... at [God's] right hand" (Ps 16:11) is not like preferring caramel to hot fudge. It is a great evil. Indeed it is the ultimate meaning of evil. Esteeming God less than anything is the essence of evil.

from John Piper When I Don't Desire God 33-34 my emphasis

images are by @4. and Paul Ponraj at http://www.flickr.com/