I like to think of myself as a relatively joyful person. In fact, I do much more laughing than crying. If you could laugh too much, I would probably be more on that end of the spectrum. However, I do struggle with joy sometimes. I am someone who loves to have things planned out. Let me give you an example. Sometimes in high school I would sleep through my alarm (okay, this was possibly a regular occurrence) and I would be in that weird dream state that happens when you’re half-awake, half-sleeping. I would go through my whole day, get dressed, drive to school, go through classes, go to work, do my homework, and get ready for bed, only to wake up and realize… I was extremely late for school. It would all start out by planning in my head about how my day was going to go.
While this may be a lame example, I can assure you, I like having control, or at least the idea of control. At the same time, I also hate having control. I hate making decisions. That statement probably doesn’t even begin to express how much I hate decision making. I am absolutely terrible at it. I think it is because I hate knowing that things rely on my decision. My choice has the power to affect not only my life, but others’ lives around me. And I hate that, it scares me. These things closely relate. I like having a plan for things and how they are going to work out, so I hate making a decision because…there is an infinite amount of ways my decisions could pan out.
Right now, I am at this stage. I did make a decision. I want to serve God in Guatemala. I would argue that this was really God’s decision, that it was He, working through me, who decided, Jessica, you need to go to Guatemala this summer. However, things at this moment, aren’t “panning out” as I would have hoped. I am a scary amount away financially from where I need to be, and the amount of stress that this has been causing me is…rather large. I don’t want to rule out the possibility that maybe this is God telling me that this trip isn’t what He has planned for me, but it is still hard to ignore this great opportunity that He has given me. This past week I lost a great amount of my joy, worrying about what it is that I needed to do. Should I throw the towel in? Should I start looking for another plan for this summer? Or should I stick this out? Should I keep asking people for support?
I couldn’t have said this a few days ago, but now I have decided (yes, decided) to press on towards this goal. I have no more control though. It is as far out of my hands as it can be. God will either provide a way for me to be in Guatemala in two months…or maybe not. It always was that way, but He has given me a much greater peace about this.
And joy.
Really, the reason I’m writing this is because of this great realization about joy that I’ve experienced. I’m reading Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper (and it’s blowing my mind), but in the chapter I just read it was talking about our joy that we have in life. We tend, or at least I do, to separate the ideas of seeking to glorify God and seeking to fulfill our life with joy into two separate categories. Which is ridiculous when you think about it, how could that even be possible to have one without the other? God created us with two aims: to fully display His glory and for His people to delight in Him with all their hearts. If we don’t join Him in these two things…we waste our lives.
We need to have a passion for God’s glory, but if this doesn’t bring us joy, then how are we bringing Him glory? If we preach the Gospel in a lifeless manner and our lives show no joy from this good news, then how does that make God look glorious?
Being reminded of this today was a good wake up call. How was my stressing out over my “situation” glorifying God? Yep. It wasn’t. It was showing that I didn’t trust God enough to provide. It was showing that I didn’t have faith in whatever plan God has made for me to follow.
Adding to all this, if I end up going to Guatemala or not, one of the main things that I should be doing there and also here now is loving others in a way that spreads His glory and displays the joy that I have in Him. Our messed up idea of love is that to be loved is to be made much of. So do I love others by building up their self-esteem? I could do that. But that’s not truly loving them. This is what Piper says,
“We were made to see and savor God-and savoring Him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of His presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them.”
Ouch. By not reflecting joy in Christ and not bringing glory to Him means I’m also…not loving people. Not to say that we are always going to be happy, but we do need to have a deep sense of joy that goes past our outward feelings.
I should probably try to reel this all back in. To reiterate what I just said, glorifying God and our ultimate joy and satisfaction go hand in hand. Also, to love others, we need to show them the glory of God. It is what they need, and it is what will give them this deep, deep joy.
I’ll end with two more quotes from John Piper:
“What makes the good deed an act of love is not the raw act, but the passion and the sacrifice to make God Himself known as glorious. Not to aim to show God is not love, because God is what we need most deeply.”
“Love has to do with showing a dying soul the life-giving beauty of the glory of God, especially His grace.”
These things are so important, whether they be in Guatemala or not in Guatemala. I pray we continuously do these things, remember these things, remind each other of these things, and encourage each other in these things.
Love,
Jessica
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