Joy at the Heart

With Memorial Day weekend as the annual kickoff to summer, I’m excited to introduce a new series of articles coming over the next several weeks on the topic of our witness. 

For months now the pastors have been praying and dreaming about the future of our church, and a “top-of-the-list” desire is that we grow in sharing the gospel. We want our witness, our evangelism, to be a kind of explosion of joy — the overflow of us talking about what we know and love. 

As Jeff Vanderstelt has put it, 

We should remind one another regularly of the good news of Jesus, but I think many believers are not that impressed with Jesus. They’re not overcome with affection for him. I’ve never had to tell somebody to talk about someone they love. If you have to train people how to talk about someone they love, they don’t love them, or they don’t know them.

We all know that this is true. It’s why I’m convinced that the greatest help to sharing the gospel is simply coming back to the joy of our being saved. It’s remembering that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, without hope in the world, but God, rich mercy, made us alive together with Christ. He spiritually raised us from the dead and gave us a new living identity — not lost, but found; not dirty, but clean; not stranger, but son. We call God our Father!

You’ve heard me say before that a barrier to Christian witness is when you have a bunch of sad Christians trying to convert ‘happy’ sinners. Of course that’s a barrier, but that’s also out of touch with reality. 

When God is our all-satisfying treasure — “God my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4) — the sadness we experience does not define us. It is real, and it’s part of life in this broken world, but though “weeping may tarry for the night, joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Joy wins. Always.

And as for the ‘happiness’ of sinners … it’s a sham, and sooner or later that becomes clear. The stories are endless to prove this point. The joy of the Lord does not compare to the cheap thrills of Vanity Fair — “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” (Psalm 4:7).

Central to our witness is joy — to out-joy those around us with joy in God, the only joy with which our souls can be satisfied.

With this at the heart, I’m eager for us to dig into the topic of sharing the gospel.