JOY-GOD

God is not a cosmic killjoy. I know some people who believe He is. They think God runs around saying, “There’s one having fun; get him!” They believe God wants to rain on everybody’s parade. But that isn’t so. God made you. He knows how you operate best. And He knows what makes you happy. The happiness He gives doesn’t stop when the party’s over. It lasts because it comes from deep within.

John MacArthur

You Can Trust the Bible, Moody Press, 1988, p. 19-20.

Joy in God is the happiest of all joys. There are other sweets, but this is the virgin honey dripping fresh from the comb. Joy in God is also a most elevating joy. Those who joy in wealth grow avaricious. Those who joy in their friends too often lose nobility of spirit. But he who boasts in God grows like God. It is a solid joy, and he who joys in God has good reasons for rejoicing. He has arguments which will justify His joy at any time. It is an abiding joy. In a word, it is celestial joy.

C.H. Spurgeon

Sermons, 18.215.

As Christian hedonist preachers we know that every listener longs for happiness. And we will never tell them to deny or repress that desire. Their problem is not that they want to be satisfied but that they are far too easily satisfied. We will instruct them how to glut their soul-hunger on the grace of God. We will paint God’s glory in lavish reds and yellows and blues, and hell we will paint with smoky shadows of gray and charcoal. We will labor to wean them off the milk of the word onto the rich fare of God’s grace and glory. We will bend all our effort, by the Holy Spirit, to persuade our people:

1. That “the reproach of Christ [is] greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt” (Heb. 11:26).

2. That they can be happier in giving than receiving (Acts 20:35).

3. That they should count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus their Lord (Phil. 3:8).

4. That the aim of all of Jesus’ commandments is that their joy might be full (John 15:11).

5. That if they delight themselves in the Lord He will give them the desires of their heart (Ps. 37:4).

6. That there is great gain in godliness with contentment (1 Tim. 6:6).

7. That the joy of the Lord is their strength (Neh. 8:11).

We will not try to motivate their ministry by Kantian appeals to mere duty. We will tell them that delight in God is their highest duty. But we will remind them that Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him (Heb. 12:2), and that Hudson Taylor, at the end of a life full of suffering and trial, said, ‘I never made a sacrifice.”

John Piper

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 51-52.

The root of our sinfulness is the desire for our own happiness apart from God and apart from the happiness of others in God. All sin comes from a desire to be happy cut off from the glory of God and cut off from the good of others.

John Piper

God's greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of His grace by making sinners happy in Him.

John Piper

Our joy in God is insatiably greedy. The more you have, the more you want. The more you see, the more you want to see. The more you feel, the more you want to feel.

John Piper

Desiring God, 1996, p. 119, Used by Permission, www.desiringGod.org.

You can’t escape your passion for pleasure. It will haunt you in the night. It will whisper to you in the day. You will feel its impulse in all you do and think and say. The problem is not that we desire. The problem is that we desire sin rather than God. The problem is that we have been duped by the Devil. We have believed what is perhaps the most pernicious lie ever told, namely, that the pleasures and delights of the world, the flesh, and the Devil are more enjoyable and satisfying than who God is for us in Jesus.

Sam Storms

Do you fear that it might one day run dry, that the capacity of God to “entertain” and “thrill” your soul with Christ will soon dissipate as eventually do all earthly pleasures? Then you have not yet considered the inexhaustible resources for joy in the inexhaustible heart of God.

Sam Storms

God has, as it were, placed Himself on display in the art gallery of the universe. He beckons His people, you and me, to stand in awe as we behold the symmetry of His attributes, the harmony of His deeds, the glory of His goodness, the overwhelming and unfathomable grandeur of His greatness; in a word, His beauty. God is infinitely splendid and invites us to come and bask in His beauty that we might enjoy Him to the fullest.

Sam Storms

My principal motivation in life must be to increase my pleasure in God. In fact, my prayer every day is “Oh God, mobilize all Your power on my behalf to maximize my pleasure and delight in You.” Don’t misunderstand what I’m suggesting. I’m not saying that pleasure is put above God, nor that pleasure is God. I’m saying that our pleasure must be in God. The pleasure or satisfaction we seek is God Himself. God is not a tool for finding pleasure. God is not the shovel, so to speak, with which we dig for buried jewels. God is Himself that treasure. The Christian’s pursuit of happiness is consummated when we find in God our all in all. He and He alone is our exceeding great reward. He is not a means to a higher end. He is the end.

Sam Storms

To say that worship is either about glorifying God or finding personal satisfaction is to put asunder what God has joined together. His glory and your gladness are not separate tracks moving in opposite directions. Rather His glory is in your gladness in Him.

Sam Storms

Now, how would a God like this go about loving us? Would it not be by providing us with the highest good possible? And is not God Himself the highest good? Therefore, if God really loves us, He must work to bring us into the enjoyment of who He is (there’s our happiness) and thereby win from our hearts praise for Himself (there’s His glory). He must do everything in His infinite power to lead us into praise and honor of His name. By winning for Himself our worship as the God of all glory, we experience the greatest possible satisfaction, namely, enjoying God. There’s our happiness again. And God is most glorified by our enjoyment of Him. Or, to put it in words we already heard, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

Sam Storms

If we do not know who God is and how He thinks and what He does, we have no grounds for joy, no reason to celebrate, no basis for finding satisfaction in God. Delight in God cannot occur in an intellectual vacuum. Our joy is the fruit of what we know and believe to be true of God. Emotional heat (i.e., joy, delight, gladness of heart) apart from intellectual light (knowledge of God) is useless. Worse still, it is dangerous, for it inevitably leads to fanaticism and idolatry.

Sam Storms
The Ultimate Aim of Theology, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

I believe that exulting in God is the most biblical and effective means for exalting God! Or to put it in other terms: to prize God is to praise God! Or again, we are His pleasure when He is our treasure! Or again, God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him.

Sam Storms
The Ultimate Aim of Theology, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

Pleasure is the measure of our treasure. How do you measure or assess the value of something you cherish? How do you determine the worth of a prize? Is it not by the depth of pleasure you derive from it? Is it not by the intensity and quality of your delight in what it is? Is it not by how excited and enthralled and thrilled you are in the manifold display of its attributes, characteristics, and properties? In other words, your satisfaction in what the treasure is and what the treasure does for you is the standard or gauge by which its glory (worth and value) is revealed. Hence, your pleasure is the measure of the treasure. Or again, the treasure, which is God, is most glorified in and by you when your pleasure in Him is maximal and optimal.

Sam Storms
The Ultimate Aim of Theology, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

God created us so that the joy He has in Himself might be ours. God doesn’t simply think about Himself or talk to Himself. He enjoys Himself! He celebrates with infinite and eternal intensity the beauty of who He is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we’ve been created to join the party!

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.23. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

The purpose of existence is the pursuit of enjoyment…in God! Our desires, affections, pursuits, all that we say and do, all that we love or hate, are to be measured by this single criterion and subordinated to this one end: happiness in God.

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.17. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

The happiness for which we are eternally destined is a state of soul in which we experience and express optimum ecstasy in God. Happiness is the whole soul resting in God and rejoicing that so beautiful and glorious a Being is ours. Happiness is the privilege of being enabled by God’s grace to enjoy making much of Him forever. I’m talking about the ineffable and unending pleasure of blissful union with and the joyful celebration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a joy of such transcendent quality that no persecution or pain or deprivation can diminish, nor wealth or success or prosperity can enhance.

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.15. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

There is a sense in which the human soul has caved in on itself and is now held captive by a fixation with its own states and conditions and concerns. The soul has become parasitic on itself, feeding on its needs and cravings by excessive introspection and elaborate attempts to elevate its sense of self-worth. Your soul was never meant for this. You were designed for something better. You were built for the contemplation of something infinitely more complex, something incomparably more fascinating than your own “self.” You were created for the joyful contemplation of God.

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.85-86. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

Theological ignorance won’t take us very far, at least not in the right direction. Excitement uninformed by truth invariably leads either to idolatry or fanaticism. If we don’t know the God we enjoy, we may end up enjoying the wrong god!

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.12-13. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

How do you measure the value of something you hold dear? How do you assess the worth of a prize? Is it not by the depth of delight it induces in your heart? Is it not by the intensity and quality of your joy in what it is? Is it not by how excited and enthralled and thrilled you are in the manifold display of its attributes, characteristics, and properties? Is it not by the extent of the sacrifice you are willing to make to gain it, to guard it, and to keep it? In other words, your satisfaction in what the treasure is and does for you is the standard or gauge by which its glory (worth and value) is revealed. The treasure, which is God, is most glorified in and by you when your pleasure in Him is maximal and optimal.

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.35-36. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

If we don’t know who God is and how He thinks and what He feels and why He does what He does, we have no grounds for joy, no reason to celebrate, no basis for finding satisfaction in Him.

Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.81. www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

The reason we resist God’s laws and pursue our own sinful strategies is because we believe that we can do better at securing our happiness than God can.

Sam Storms
Integrity, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure; Where your treasure is, there is your heart; Where your heart is, there is your happiness.

Augustine

There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.

Augustine

How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose!... You drove them from me, You who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, You who are sweeter than all pleasure.

Augustine

True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in You, O God, who are the truth… Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.

Augustine

Confessions.

Man’s happiness was never meant to be determined by his circumstances, and that is the fatal blunder that we all tend to make… Man’s happiness depends on one thing only – and that is his relationship to God!... We cannot get it anywhere else. We must come back to the soul and to God who made it. We were made for Him, we are meant for Him, we have a correspondence with Him, and we will never come to rest until, like that needle on the compass, we strike that northern point, and there we come to rest – nowhere else.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I Am Not Ashamed: Advice to Timothy, Baker, 1996, p. 82-83

They are seated on the highest throne of joy, and revel in the sweetest sunshine of delight, who know that God is their sure possession. They who hold Him as their own by the hand of faith have greater riches than earth can give, and surer property than this world can amass.

Henry Law

Psalm 63, 1878.

Take a saint, and put him into any condition, and he knows how to rejoice in the Lord.

Walter Cradock

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 159.

[Joy results] not in the despairing circumstances, but in the attitude of delightful dependence on a faithful Father.

Bob LaForge

Contemplating the Almighty, Perth Publishing, 1984, p. 128.

A pivotal Christian thinker of our time once said, “Joy is the surest sign of the presence of God... The bottom line for you and me is simply this: grimness is not a Christian virtue. There are no sad saints. If God really is the center of one's life and being, joy is inevitable. If we have no joy, we have missed the heart of the Good News and our bodies as much as our souls will suffer the consequences.”

Bruce Larson

There's a Lot More to Health Than Not Being Sick.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly hope for the enjoyment of 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 around 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 the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased

C.S. Lewis

God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn… That is why it is no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us happiness apart from Himself, because there is no such thing.

C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity.

Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose…only (upon) the Beloved who will never pass away.

C.S. Lewis

The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.

C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms, Brace and World, 1958, p. 90-98.

No power in the universe can rob you of it; none, but yourself, can even diminish it. “Your joy no man takes from you.” What the power, or love, or presence of man can create – the power, or hatred, or absence of man can destroy. But, the joy of the believer has a different origin, and, as no man bestowed it, so no man can take it away. It has God for its author – the living Rock of Ages for its ever-flowing fountain – the Holy Spirit for the golden channel, which it conveys into the heart. Thus, coming from the fountain of joy, it is of immortal origin – and, is far above the reach of mortal enemies. All the sorrows of earth – all the temptations of hell, are vain against this joy. So far from being diminished by what would crush earthly happiness, and reduce the stoutest heart, without Divine grace, to hopeless dejection – it is only realized more fully, amid the raging fury of the hurricane, or the dreary gloom of a starless midnight.

John MacDuff

The Throne of Grace, Alexander Strahan Publishers, 1865.

He will know neither rest nor joy – until he shall have heaven for his home, and sit forever beneath the smiles of that gracious God, who is at once the author of his existence, and the source of his felicity.

D.R. Thomason

Fashionable Amusements,1831.

God and eternal things are my only pleasure.

Henry Martyn

The soul's deepest thirst is for God Himself, who has made us so that we can never be satisfied without Him.

F.F. Bruce

Trying to find happiness on our own terms, rather than on the terms our Creator has built into our nature, is an exhausting and disappointing undertaking.

Ken Myers

The Pursuit of Happiness? September 2008, Tabletalk, p. 20. Used by Permission.

They are the happiest Christians, who have the lowest thoughts of themselves, and in whose eyes Jesus is most glorious and precious.

John Newton

John Newton's Letters.

Thou canst not make me happy with Thyself, till Thou hast made me holy like Thyself.

Author Unknown

The Valley of Vision, ed. Arthur Bennett, 1975, p. 93, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.

The strength and happiness of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going that way too.

Henry Ward Beecher

Prayer is the nearest approach to God and the highest enjoyment of Him that we are capable of in this life.

William Law

Wise leaders should have known that the human heart cannot exist in a vacuum. If Christians are forbidden to enjoy the wine of the Spirit they will turn to the wine of the flesh... Christ died for our hearts and the Holy Spirit wants to come and satisfy them.

A.W Tozer

True joy comes only from God and He shares this joy with those who walk in fellowship with Him.

Jerry Bridges

For my part, I had rather enjoy the sweet influences of the Spirit. I had rather show Christ’s spiritual divine beauty, infinite grace, and dying love. I had rather draw forth the holy exercises of faith, divine love, sweet complacence, and humble joy in God. I had rather experience all this for one quarter of an hour than to have prophetical visions and revelations the whole year.

Jonathan Edwards

God glorifies Himself toward the creature also in two ways:1. By appearing to...their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in and enjoying the manifestations which He makes of Himself... God is glorified not only by His glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart.

Jonathan Edwards

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows, but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.

Jonathan Edwards

The Christian Pilgrim, Works of Jonathan Edwards, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 1974, 2:244.

Now what is glorifying God, but a rejoicing at that glory He has displayed? An understanding of the perfections of God, merely, cannot be the end of the creation; for he had as good not understand it, as see it and not be at all moved with joy at the sight. Neither can the highest end of creation be the declaring God’s glory to others; for the declaring God’s glory is good for nothing otherwise than to raise joy in ourselves and others at what is declared.

Jonathan Edwards

Miscellanies 3; Yale 13:200.

The change that takes place in a man when he is converted and sanctified, is not that his love for happiness is diminished but only that it is regulated with respect to its exercises and influences, and the course and objects it leads to when God brings a soul out of a miserable state and condition into a happy state of conversion, He gives him happiness that before he had not (namely in God), but He does not at the same time take away any of his love of happiness.

Jonathan Edwards

The pleasures of loving and obeying, loving and adoring, blessing and praising the Infinite Being, the Best of Beings, the Eternal Jehovah; the pleasures of trusting in Jesus Christ, in contemplating His beauties, excellencies, and glories; in contemplating His love to mankind and to us, in contemplating His infinite goodness and astonishing loving-kindness; the pleasures of [the] communion of the Holy Ghost in conversing with God, the maker and governor of the world; the pleasure that results from the doing of our duty, in acting worthily and excellently;…these are the pleasures that are worthy of so noble a creature as a man is.

Jonathan Edwards

Christian Happiness, Sermons and Discourses 1720-1723.

God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory…both [with] the mind and the heart. He that testifies his having an idea of God’s glory [doesn’t] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation [i.e., his heartfelt commendation or praise] of it and his delight in it.

Jonathan Edwards

One design you are to pursue to the end of time – the enjoyment of God in time and in eternity. Desire other things so far as they tend to this; love the creature, as it leads to the Creator. But in every step you take, be this the glorious point that terminates your view. Let every affection, and thought and word, and action, be subordinate to this. Whatever you desire or fear, whatever you seek or shun, whatever you think speak, or do, be it in order to your happiness in God, the sole end, as well as source, of your being.

John Wesley

If man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

Blaise Pascal

It is only through God’s Holy Spirit that we can find true joy (Psalm 51:11-12; Galatians 5:22; 1 Thessalonians 1:6). We can do nothing apart from the power of God (2 Corinthians 12:10, 13:4). Indeed, the harder we try to be joyful through our own efforts, the more miserable we can become. Rest in the Lord’s arms (Matthew 11:28-30) and seek His face through prayer and Scripture. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Author Unknown
Got Questions? www.GotQuestions.org. Used by Permission.

Delighting in worldly things – effectually prevents our delighting in God. Therefore it is often the case, that the Lord strips us of these things, or incapacitates us to enjoy them – in order to bring us back to delight in Himself.

James Smith

The Believer's Companion in Seasons of Affliction and Trouble, 1842.

I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.

George Muller

Autobiography of George Muller, 1906.