GOD’S WORD FOR JUNE 25

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

JESUS, YOU…….. PROTECT MANKIND AND ANIMALS…PS 36:6

JESUS, YOUR….. MERCIES ARE OVER ALL YOUR WORKS (CREATION) PS 145:19-10a

JESUS, YOU………..WILL MAKE WISDOM KNOWN TO ME IN SECRET…PS 51:6

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THE WORD FOR TODAY

John 16:22

“Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.”

 Continuing in “That Your Joy May be Full” in  the book Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray

He (Jesus)  spoke of this joy as abiding – a joy that is never to cease or to be interrupted for a moment:

“……your heart will rejoice, (In other words, ‘My will abide in you’) and your joy no one will take from you.”(John 16:22).

This is what many Christians cannot understand.  Their view of the Christian life is that it is a succession of changes ~ ~ now joy and now sorrow.  They appeal to the experiences of a man like the apostle Paul as a proof of how much there may be of weeping and sorrow and suffering.

They have not noticed how Paul gave the strongest evidence as to this unceasing joy!  He understood the paradox of the Christian life as the combination at one and the same moment of all the bitterness of earth and all the joy of heaven. 

2 Corinthians 6:10 ~ ~ “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

These precious golden words teach us how the joy of Christ can overrule the sorrow of the world, can make us sing while we weep, and can maintain in the heart, even when cast down by disappointment or difficulties, a deep consciousness of a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.  There is but one condition:

“I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man will take from you.” (John 16:22).

The presence of Jesus, distinctly manifested, cannot but give joy. 

Abiding in Him consciously, how can the soul but rejoice and be glad?  Even when weeping for the sins and the souls of others, even while grieving the death of a loved one,  there is the fountain of gladness springing up in the faith of His power and love to save.

And this, His own joy abiding in us, He wants to be full.  Our Savior spoke three times on the last night of full joy.  Once here in the parable of the vine in John 15:11

“These things have I spoken unto you …that your joy might be full” and every deeper insight into the wonderful blessedness of being the branch of such a vine confirms His word.  Then, He connects it with our prayers being answered in John 16:24:

“ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.”

To the spiritual mind, answered prayer is not only a means of obtaining certain blessings, but something infinitely higher.  It is a token of our fellowship with the Father and the son in heaven, of their delight in us, and our having been admitted and having had a voice in that wondrous interchange of love in which the Father and the Son hold counsel and decide the daily guidance of the children on earth.  To a soul abiding in Christ that longs for manifestations of His love and that understands to take an answer  to prayer in its true spiritual value as a response from the throne to all its utterances of love and trust, the joy that it brings is truly unutterable.  The word is found true:  “Ask, and your shall receive that your joy may be full.”

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