It’s amazing to me how once you have caught on to the secret of Christian Hedonism, you bump into it again and again and again and again in the word and in books about the word and in life. This morning on my way through the Bible, my program has me reading Ecclesiastes 9. Well, Ecclesiastes is very hard to understand, so I pull Matthew Henry, this old Puritan commentator that has the whole Bible exposited in six volumes. I recommend them to you all. I pulled down volume three, opened it up to page 1034 and tried to figure out what he thought Ecclesiastes 9 meant and I hit this great sentence:

Thy religious services when performed with holy joy are pleasing to God. He loves to have his servants sing at their work. It proclaims him a good master.

Now, I couldn’t have asked him to write anything more in keeping with what I’ve been trying to say than that. When our duties are performed with holy joy, they are pleasing to God. He loves to have us sing at our work because it makes him look like a good master. That’s Christian Hedonism. That’s all I’ve been trying to say, and it’s been said. It isn’t new. I know the word Christian Hedonism is new and you can drop it if you want. In fact, I haven’t used it in one book, I don’t think, since I wrote Desiring God back in 1986. It doesn’t hang on the name. The reality is all.

A Summary of Christian Hedonism

Let me give a couple of words of summary and then our focus tonight is on the big how, the practical steps of how you move forward in this kind of joy. The summary would be possible in terms of vertical hedonism and horizontal hedonism, and I summarized it last week, so I’ll try to keep the summary real short and not rob time from the practical this week.

Vertical hedonism can be summarized under this: God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. Therefore, make it your vocation in life to be satisfied fully in God. Do not despise the yearnings of your heart for happiness and for fulfillment. Just beware of fleeting, inadequate, dying sources of satisfaction and only let yourself be satisfied on the one source. In his presence is fullness of joy at his right hand are pleasures forevermore, namely God. That’s vertical hedonism.

Horizontal hedonism says that joy in God reaches its consummation when we expand it out to include others. There is a grace-driven impulse in the heart of joy in God that wants to enlarge that joy, see others embrace it, experience it, and look to him for it. And when our life becomes a means to other people experiencing joy in God, our joy in God is doubled in theirs. Therefore, you can never be settled here on Sunday morning after a glorious worship experience and say, “That was the end.” It isn’t. The end is when others do it with us. We won’t experience the climax of our joy until all that God has intended, all the sheep that are not yet of this fold, are brought into that worshiping community and we stand before the Lamb and then reflected back to us in their faces, and their voices, and their acts of adoration, our joy will be complete in God.

All the manifold ways of love are instruments of drawing others into the enjoyment of God. Therefore, love is always a God-centered reality in Christian Hedonism. You can’t talk of loving others if you’re not doing it for God’s sake. Love in the Bible is a God-centered reality.

Suggestions for Pursuing Joy in God

Now the question I have is, how do you cultivate a heart like that? I hope there has been help along the way, but I want to spend all the time tonight asking that question. I’ve got about 12 suggestions. I don’t know if I’ll have time to get through them all, but I’ll start and do the best I can. How do you find, cultivate, get, and maintain a heart that is that satisfied in God and that bent on delighting and loving other people?

1. An Ongoing Fight

First, realize that it is a fight to be fought and it is a work to be wrought not just once but every day until the day you die or Jesus comes. Now, I say that to guard you against the misunderstanding that there is a crisis experience to be sought after which you’ve got it. That’s not true in my judgment. There are crisis experiences in life and some of them are glorious — conversion is one — and there are others, and they can bump you up a level in holiness and in enjoyment of God. But if you ever get to the point where you think it’s no more fight to maintain joy, you will be on the downward track. Now let me try to give some biblical explanation and justification for that. In 2 Corinthians 1:24, Paul says:

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.

Now the very least that that means is somebody’s got to work to keep Christians happy. If you don’t think it’s you, then it’s me. There is work for joy. The battle for joy is a fight and a work until the day you die.

In Philippians 1:25, Paul is praying in prison wondering if he’ll be left behind or if he’ll go to be with the Lord, and he says:

Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith,

So Paul’s life, his staying on earth, was devoted to advancing joy. That means he’s an instrument to do it. If he drops out of the picture, somebody needs to pick up the slack to advance the joy of the church. Joy is not an automatic. Once it comes into your heart, it is not there to stay automatically.

The Relationship Between joy and Faith

Now to get at this, let me try to describe for you the relationship between joy and faith. What I’m saying here is really that joy is an essential component of faith. And then we can see that faith is a fight to be fought to the end of life. Now listen to John 6:35. Jesus says:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Now, mark that, “He who believes in me will not thirst.” What would you give as the definition of faith from that sentence? Here’s mine: Faith is a being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. That’s my definition of saving faith and I get it from that verse. Jesus is the bread and he’s the fountain and water. The one who comes to him will not hunger and the one who believes in him (that’s faith), or feeds and drinks from him, will no longer be hungry and thirsty. Believing then is so coming to Jesus with hunger and thirst that you find in him a satisfaction for the soul hunger and a satisfaction for the soul thirst that you never have to look in another place again to know where it is to be found. And every day as the thirst rises, you know where the drink can be found. And every day as the hunger is awakened again, you know where the bread of life is to be found. You have found him. And faith is resting on him as we just sang, feeding on him, and drinking from him.

So joy, which is almost synonymous with satisfaction, is a component of my definition of faith. And therefore, if the Bible teaches that there is a “fight of faith” — a fight to maintain satisfaction in Jesus, — then there’s a fight for joy, which is the satisfaction in Jesus.

The Fight of Faith

So let’s talk about for a minute the fight of faith. In 2 Timothy 4:7, at the end of his life, the last letter he wrote just before he is martyred, Paul says:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

That’s where I get the idea that it’s a fight to the finish. He says, “I’ve fought it all the way along. I never stopped fighting the fight of faith. It’s a fight to believe every day.” In Timothy 6:12, Paul says:

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called . . .

It’s not once, not over one hump, not one battle, but every morning I fight before I get out of bed. Do you? I don’t know what your mornings are like. I wake up and thank God. I praise him for it every day. The first thought on my lips is help me. That’s the first thought on my lips, help me. I don’t feel like getting up. First of all, I don’t have the strength to read the Bible. I know I’m going to fall asleep if he doesn’t help me. My first thought in the morning is, “Help me because I’m not really strong in faith right now.”

Psalm 23 is very familiar. It’s many people’s favorites. I want to use it to show you that there’s a fight of faith continually. It says:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
     He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
     He restores my soul (Psalm 23:1–3).

How often? Did you see it? He restores my soul. For me it’s daily. It’s a daily reawakening to God, a fight to be fought every day. There is no plateau after which you fight no more.

Keeping Our Love Warm

Listen to Matthew 24:12–13. He says:

And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Now put those two together. He is saying, “Because lawlessness is multiplied, the love of many will go down that hill of negligence and indifference to the battle, to the pit of ice.” Remember that poem by Robert Frost? He says, “Some say the world will end by fire, some say by ice.” It will be both. Down that hill people go as lawlessness is multiplied, but those who endure to the end, in non-coldness, will be saved.

I said on Sunday in the second service, at least maybe I’ve said it here, that I’m thinking of my life more and more in these days as a calling to torch the glacier, to put my torch in the fire of the Spirit and the word and then do the best I can to torch the glacier of coldness all around me. It’s a fight and we are to help each other. That’ll be one of my points later on.

When you ask me the question, “How can I get this kind of joy? How can I maintain this kind of delight and satisfaction in God?” I want to make it really clear that none of my answers is a once-for-all answer. Tonight it could happen to you. You could walk out of here on cloud nine, more satisfied in God than you’ve ever been before, and if you were to come back and thank me, “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for what I saw,” I would warn you. I wouldn’t say only, “Great, all right. You’re fixed.” I would say, “Tomorrow morning you probably won’t have it, but I have got some clues for you for how to stoke it every day.”

I’m 47 years old and God has been faithful to me, and I hope that I can stand here when I retire at whatever age I want to be like the old Polycarp. When he was about to be martyred, they said, “Will you renounce the Lord?” And he just held out his old aged trembling hands and said, “How can I renounce one who has been faithful to me for 87 years?” That’s the way I feel at 47. He has come back again and again. My fire is always going out. Therefore, there’s only one reason today it’s burning: God. He lights it. He’s gracious. He’s faithful. He comes back again and again and restores my soul. That’s point number one. Take heart from the battle, in other words, for the battle too.

2. Fight with Gutsy Guilt

Second, learn the secret of fighting this fight like a justified sinner, namely with gutsy guilt. Do you remember that sermon on Micah chapter 7:7–9? Let me try to review that sermon for you. What I mean is this. It’s easy, I suppose, to draw a conclusion from what I just said that the Christian life is sort of miserable, doubtful, precarious, uneasy, always vulnerable, ready to fall down, and that is not what I mean at all. If that’s what you heard, do a retooling of what you just heard.

Let me read these verses from Micah 7:7–9:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
     when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
     the Lord will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord
     because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
     and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
     I shall look upon his vindication.

Isn’t that amazing? I am jealous for you to have that kind of heart that can say to the Lord, “I have sinned against you, the darkness over me is your indignation, and I accept it as long as you deem it wise for me to be broken and low and dark. But don’t you rejoice over me, oh my enemy, because I’m coming out of this. In his time, he will vindicate me. I am his.” That’s what I mean by gutsy guilt.

There’s a lot of people today who try to solve our problems of lowliness by striking the sentence, “I will bear the indignation of the Lord.” You can’t say that because that makes everybody feel too bad. If you try to solve people’s problems with unreality, you won’t solve anybody’s problems long-term. I’m a sinner. I sin every day, and I’ve got a lot of confidence with God. Now, where in the world does that come from? It comes from one place, the cross, Jesus, and the doctrine, the truth, the reality of justification by faith. I am a justified sinner. Read the biography of Martin Luther if you want to find the lion-hearted sinner. Martin Luther reveled in the freeness of God’s grace offered to him in the cross and knew that he was a sinner.

So my second point is do not fight the fight of faith like a loser. Do not fight the fight of faith as though it weren’t already won for you in the cross. Don’t fight the fight of faith with a sense of precariousness that, “Huh, maybe I’m not saved.” Get that settled. We’ll talk more about that in a minute too. And you get it settled at the cross where every sin is blotted out for those who cast themselves on Jesus. And then you fight as a victor who is hidden already in Christ with God, and one day whose life will be revealed when he comes. So let’s have gutsy guilt among us. That’s a guilt that’s covered by the blood and accepted under the discipline of the Father as long as he wills.

3. Labor to See God

Third, labor to see God. Labor to see God. The battle is mainly — I almost say entirely — a battle to see. It’s a battle to see God, to have our eyes open to God. Another way to put it would be that it’s a battle to taste. Anybody know a verse where those two words occur, “see” and “taste”? I can hear you whispering it. Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” That’s the battle. Do you do that every day? Some days I do. Some days I don’t. I fight for it every day. Some days my taste is so alive that it’s as though he could be here or I could be in heaven. And some days I’m just licking my tongue all over the word and nothing has happened. Taste and see.

Now, the reason I say the battle is a battle to see is 2 Corinthians 3:18, which says:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

If you ask me, “How do you grow in this? How do you reflect the glory of God by being satisfied in him?” this text says, “Behold him.” As you behold him, you are changed into his likeness. See him. The more you spend time looking at something, the more you become like it. The more you admire something and occupy yourself with it, the more your values adapt to it. Look at him. Labor to see him.

Here’s another one. First John 3:2 says:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

Do you see the connection? We will be like him because we will see him as he is. In other words, what has been happening in process, namely the process of looking to Jesus and to God and being changed from one degree of glory to the next, is going to happen climatically when we see him, it’ll be finished and we’ll be totally like him when we see him face to face. So we look through a glass darkly right now and what we see of God transforms us into joyful, satisfied reflectors of his glory. And when he comes, and that glass is removed and we see him face to face, whammo, we will be totally changed forever and ever into his likeness. So labor to see him. Labor to see God.

The Names of God

I preached a series of sermons a few years ago on the names of God. The text that was like an arch over the names of God was Psalm 9:10, which says, “Those who know your name put their trust in you.” I remember reading it at my mother-in-law’s and father-in-law’s house in Georgia and saying, “That’s a sermon series.” Those who know thy name put their trust in you. Or we could say now, “Find their satisfaction in you and their delight in you.” So what’s the key to putting your satisfaction in God? It’s knowing his name, his character, his reality, and seeing him. And so I preached on the names of God that fall. It is a battle to see. Seeing is becoming.

4. Meditate on the Word

Fourth, meditate on the word of God day and night. In other words, the place that you are going to see God mainly is in the revelation of his Son, the revelation of his work, and the revelation of his character in his word, in the Bible, in this precious, precious Book. I remember an old Puritan was preaching one time about the preciousness of the word and he held up his Bible and he closed his eyes, and he said:

Father, take our houses, take our children, take our health, but don’t take your word from us.

Do you feel that way about this book? I’ve been reading Wycliffe’s statistics these weeks and looking at the thousands of languages that don’t have it. I must have 12 Bibles in the house at home. This is a precious book. This is God’s word. When he speaks, we know God. Meditate on his law day and night.

The Delight of His Words

Now let me give you some reasons. Let me try to stir you up. Cammy and I were talking about these things just this week and we were having a good conversation about reasons to stir us up to be in the word. And that conversation, Cammy, helped me get ready for tonight. Psalm 19:8 says, “The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.” Do you want joy? The Bible says the precepts of the Lord rejoice the heart.

Jeremiah 15:16 says:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
     and your words became to me a joy
     and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
     O Lord, God of hosts.

I read that a few weeks ago on my way through Jeremiah and memorized it. John 15:11 says:

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Why did Jesus teach? That our joy might be full? The four Gospels are written that your joy might be full. Do you want joy? How much time do you spend reading the Gospels? I really get very frustrated with people who come and talk about all the problems in their lives and the joylessness and when I ask them how much time they’re in the word, they say almost nothing, zero, maybe five minutes or 10 minutes. I say, well look, let me give you some reasons why you should change that pattern of behavior.

Psalm 1:1–2 says:

Blessed is the man
     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
     and on his law he meditates day and night.

You can’t do that if you don’t memorize the Bible. You have to memorize Scripture. I don’t know any strong saints who don’t memorize Scripture and I don’t know any weak ones who do.

Life from the Word

How does the Lord use the word to produce this joy? He does it in seven ways. Number one, the word produces life. How I wish on Sunday morning last I had quoted 1 Peter 1:23. It would have answered some questions. It was right there in my notes and I just overlooked it in both services. I stressed the sovereignty of God in causing us to be born again, and 1 Peter 1:23 says, “We were born again through the imperishable seed of God, the living and abiding word.” The word brought you life. You can’t have joy if you don’t have life, and the word produces life.

James 1:18 says:

Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth . . .

You were saved by the word. Not a person in this room as born again without the instrumentality of the word of God, whether you read it, whether you heard it on the radio, whether it was preached, whether it was in a tract, whether it was on TV, it was the word that was the instrument that God in his sovereignty used to bring you to himself, and nobody is saved apart from the word or born again apart from the word. That was the missing link on Sunday morning.

Matthew 4:4 says:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

The context there is Jesus being tested in the wilderness and his physical hunger, and Satan is saying, “Here make a stone bread. You’ve got power.” And instead of arguing about the stone or anything, Jesus simply quotes Deuteronomy and says, “You can’t live without the word of God. And if you’ve got the word of God, you can live without bread forever.” Every word that comes out of his mouth is important for life.

New Birth by the Word

Let me give you some examples. Some of you remember a missionary of ours. I’m giving an example now of how the word produces life and converts people. He told me one time as he was learning some of the doctrines of grace, “I never had really understood my conversion until I began to study and understand the doctrine of God’s sovereign grace. Because I can remember the day when I read Matthew 11:28–29 here at the University of Minnesota.” It says:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

And he said, “When I read that I was born again. It was a miracle. I was born again by the word of God. From that moment on, I knew it was true. I knew I belonged to Christ and I came to him.”

Jonathan Edwards told the story of how he was alone as a teenager and he was reading the Bible. He had of course grown up in a pastor’s home and he knew all the facts but he didn’t feel like there was grace in his soul and he read this verse. It’s 1 Timothy 1:17:

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

He was born again. He said there flooded into him such a sense, a taste of the reality of God that from that day forward, the glorious doctrines of God’s sovereignty and of his atoning work and the nature of faith and the hope of heaven were as real to him as anything. One verse on an afternoon broke him open.

Saint Augustine, you know that story? He was absolutely lecherous, probably the greatest theologian in the church after Edwards. He was a playboy all over the Roman Empire, a womanizer. His mother was faithful and she was praying for him constantly. And sitting in a garden, he heard a little child singing, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” He didn’t know where this child was coming from. He picks up a Bible and he opens a flop to Romans 13:12–14, which says:

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

He was born again. From that day on, it was over, the fight was over, the flight was over and he was born again. It’s amazing what God did.

Martin Luther had such a struggle. I didn’t bring the quote but I can almost remember it because I’ve read it so many times. He was in his study. He was laboring under the weight of works and legalism from his past. He had been called to be a lecturer in theology. He was lecturing on Romans and Psalms and Galatians, and he got to Romans 1:16–17, which says:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

He said suddenly the meaning of the righteousness of God as wrought for him and not worked by him opened and he felt as if he walked into paradise and he was born again by the living and abiding word of God. The point here under this is that you can’t have joy if you don’t have life, and you don’t have life without the word, either at the beginning or as we’re going to see now in any sustained way.

Faith through the Word

Romans 10:17 says:

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

John 20:31 says:

These things were written that believing you might have life.

Joy in the Word

Third, the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, and what’s the next one? Joy. So you have to have the Holy Spirit working in your life if you’re going to have joy, right? You have to have the Holy Spirit there producing joy. Now how do you get the Holy Spirit to do anything? He’s God. How do you get him to do anything? Can you get the Holy Spirit to do anything? It almost sounds blasphemous to talk that way, to take the Holy Spirit and use him as an instrument. But Galatians 3:5 says:

Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith . . .

The answer is the latter. So think, if you want the spirit to be supplied to you, to work miracles in you, you don’t do works of the law as though you could earn it. You hear something and believe. What do you hear? TV? Coke ads? You hear the word of God. You hear promises. You are reading the Bible and you hear:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:11–13).

You read that and you awaken to faith and the Holy Spirit — I think they’re almost synonymous, almost interchangeable — on the flood of faith is there producing joy. The Holy Spirit comes by faith and faith alone.

In our next pastor’s conference in January of 1994, Dan Fuller from Fuller Seminary, my old doctoral father is going to be here and his topic is sanctification by faith alone. I’m sure he will take one of those verses from Galatians 3 and say, “The Holy Spirit does his work by faith, not by works.”

Hope from the Word

Fourth, the word produces hope and you can’t have joy without hope. Romans 15:4 says:

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Hope comes from the Scriptures and you can’t have joy without hope.

Freedom from Sin by the Word

Fifth, Scripture is needed for holiness and freedom from bondage to sin. You can’t have joy without holiness in the Christian life. It says in Nehemiah 8:10–11, “This day is holy to the Lord. Don’t be grieved. For the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Ain’t that a strange thing to say? “This day is holy to the Lord. The joy of the Lord is your strength.” I take that to mean an essential component of holiness is joy in God. So where do you get holiness?

John 17:17 says:

​​Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Do you want to be holy? Saturate yourself with the truth. John 8:32 says:

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

The context is freedom from sin. If you’re struggling with sin, how much of the word do you store in your life? The world is pouring its word into your life all day long. How much of God’s word do you pour in as an antidote to this poison of the world. Is it five minutes? Well then don’t blame God for sin.

Assurance from the Word

Sixth, Scripture is needed for assurance. Somebody used 1 John 5:13 downstairs in the prayer meeting, and I felt it was anointed and right:

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

Without assurance you can’t be happy. If you’re always doubting, wondering whether you’re God’s, you can’t be happy. And the word is the means of assurance and joy.

Victory Over Satan Through to the Word

Seventh, you can’t be joyful if you don’t get victory over Satan in your life. How do you defeat Satan? He’s prowling around like a roaring lion and what he eats is joy or faith. Satan has one craving. He’s pregnant and has one craving, your faith. He eats it. He will destroy it if he can. How do you defeat him? Well, according to Ephesians 6, you’ve got armor and one of the pieces, the only offensive one, is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17). You run him through with a word just like some people did in the prayer meeting downstairs. If you don’t have the word in your mind and in your heart, you will be very vulnerable throughout the day.

Temptation comes from Satan and there are glorious promises with which you can run him through as an antidote to his lies. And if they’re not there because you never spend time putting them in there, then you will be more vulnerable. First John 2:14 says:

I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Now, there’s a connection between those two things. You are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. What’s the connection? The word overcomes the evil one. It’s abiding. Is the word of God abiding in you?

And though this world with devils filled Should threaten to undo us We will not fear for God has willed his His truth to triumph through us

The prince of darkness grim We tremble not for him His rage we can endure For lo his doom is sure one little One little word shall fell him

When I read that and sang that, I used to say, “Which word, Martin? Which word do you mean?” And I think his answer would be any little word will do from this Book. Any little word. Martin Luther, wow. Read his biography.

Hudson Taylor’s Reliance on the Word

Let me use another couple of illustrations here. Hudson Taylor, what a great man. He founded China Inland Mission. Here’s a quote from his son’s memory of how he lived his magnificently painful and triumphant and joyful life:

It was not easy for Mr. Taylor in his changeful life to make time for prayer and Bible study, but he knew that it was vital.

I hope you know by the time we’re done tonight that it’s vital, more vital than eating breakfast. He continues:

Well do the writers remember traveling with him month after month in northern China by cart and wheelbarrow with the poorest of inns at night, often with only one large room for coolies and travelers alike. They would screen off a corner for their father and another for themselves with curtains of some sort. And then after sleep had at last brought a measure of quiet, they would hear a match struck and see the flicker of a candlelight, which told that Mr. Taylor, however weary, was pouring over the little Bible in two volumes always at hand. From 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. was the time he usually gave to prayer — the time he could be most sure of being undisturbed to wait upon God.”

There is a secret to power, and that’s it. How much time do you give him and how much do you take in from him? He is not far from us. He’s not far from you. He’s as close as this Book.

Preach to Yourself

This comes to my mind right now. This seems to be the place to say it. Many of us say, “Yeah, but I read a chapter or two and I don’t get anything.” Wesley Duewel was a great man of God, and wrote his book, Ablaze for God, and he said, “Sometimes when I go on retreat, I must read 50 chapters of the Bible before I am prepared to pray.” So it may be that somebody needs to sow that kind of thought in your mind that we are all so soaked with humanity and with the world and with television and with newspaper and with our financial concerns and our broken cars — my car is driving me up the wall these days — that we think a chapter or two, and if he doesn’t come through, we’re upset at him. And yet we give hour upon hour upon hour to the world.

5. Pray for Joy

My point number five is that you should pray, and I need an hour on prayer. You should pray for faith, pray for hope, pray for a heart for the word, pray for holiness, pray for victory over Satan, and pray for love. You should preach to yourself. I think I’m going to end with that. There’s a great book called Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd Jones. What he teaches here is that when you read the Bible, you must preach it to yourself throughout the day. You must learn to talk to yourself and not listen to yourself. I remember when I read this sentence, I almost ran downstairs to the family. I said, “This is a great sentence.” He says:

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

Let me read the rest of the paragraph so you catch on. He’s expositing Psalm 42:5, which says:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
     and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
     my salvation and my God.

Martin Lloyd Jones says:

Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you. They bring back the problems of yesterday. Somebody’s talking. Who’s talking to you? Yourself is talking to you. Now, this man’s treatment was this: Instead of allowing himself to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, oh my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for a moment I will speak to you.”

Take the word of God and preach to yourself. Christian Hedonism is your strength because the joy of the Lord is your strength. God’s passion is to be glorified. Your passion is to be satisfied. The message I’ve been bringing you in these four talks is that your passion to be satisfied and God’s to be glorified are not at odds. They meet in the cross and they meet in worship and they express themselves in love.