This Joy of Mine

...The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:29-30)

I want to learn and experience more fully the kind of joy that John talks about here. This is obviously very different from the happiness that we typically think of when we hear the word joy. Most of the good inside feelings that we long to experience in conjunction with what we think should be joy comes from things that happen to us, things people say about us that make us feel good, material blessings that make us feel more important or valuable or even physical sensations that stimulate us emotionally.

But the kind of joy described here in John's experience is radically different than most things we are usually looking for. In fact, if we are not careful this description can easily slip into the sterile realm of clichés from religion that still don't produce the real joy that we were designed to thrive on. I was raised for much of my life being told to be unselfish, to give generously to those in need, to be self-sacrificial, to deny myself and somehow all of this was supposed to result in my being happy. But about all that resulted from it was me becoming bitter and resentful and rebellious and even suspicious of the authenticity of my religion. Forcing one to go through the motions of unselfishness never produces love and joy, whether that one is someone else or yourself. It is only like pinning fruit onto a tree and trying to believe that the tree is finally producing fruit.

But John is authentically describing a real joy that he experienced and that was intensifying as He watched Jesus' popularity grow and his own popularity wane. This is rather backwards to what we typically believe will bring us joy. But that is why I want to really know what is involved in experiencing this genuine joy that John experienced. I want to listen to what he says about it because I believe he understood and participated in something far deeper than nearly anyone else has ever encountered in relationship with God.

John says that the friend stands and hears. That reminds me of another text that says nearly the same thing. Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! (Psalms 46:10 NKJV) I am impressed even more with another translation of this verse. Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalms 46:10 NAS95)

But I never really thought of this verse in connection with joy before. It was usually used as a weapon to force people to be quiet in church which never really produced feelings of joy inside of me. But as I ponder on this I realize that in my own life many times God has asked me to be still, to let go of my whirling thoughts and fears and plans and to empty my mind of all distractions so that I can more clearly hear the quiet voice of His Spirit speaking to me at the heart level.

Intimacy requires quietness much of the time. Most people know this intuitively but we sometimes fail to apply this principle to our relationship with God. But knowing God from a Biblical perspective involves having a very close intimate relationship of love with God even more than any humans can ever have with each other. Intimacy with another human almost always requires that we spend considerable time in quiet moments listening to the other opening up their heart and sharing their deepest soul with us. Effective and bonding intimacy also requires that both people are willing to open up and become vulnerable and transparent with each other, not just one side. When only one party is willing to open up and the other just listens and gives opinions or advice, that is the model of a counterfeit relationship often known as professional or counselor. It appears to help people at times but it does nothing to foster the kind of close-knit bonds at the heart level required to experience the joy of intimacy and true love.

Be still and know – stand and listen. Both of these things are the ingredients necessary for creating an atmosphere where joy can grow and thrive. And I know that I need to learn this lesson myself much better.

But I also am reminded that this intimacy that John is talking about that produced so much joy inside of him is not necessarily in the context of an exclusive two-way bond between him and his best Friend. For John is clearly talking about a situation where his best Friend is using John to draw others into intimacy with Him, attracting more people into close fellowship and love with this Friend. And a real friend of the Bridegroom will find that participating in drawing others into this close intimacy with his best Friend results in a kind of joy that is exhilarating and fulfilling.

What is it that he is listening to as he stands still? Is it the words addressed to his own heart by his Friend or is it when he hears the voice of the Spirit of Jesus speaking words of comfort, love, assurance, conviction and hope to those John is bringing into closer proximity to be attracted to Him? This is a joy that is reported by many people who have discovered this kind of experience in doing a similar work to what John was doing. It is a joy that seems to come indirectly through watching the hearts of others begin to respond positively to the attractions of heaven. It is a joy that is ignited whenever one sees the lights come on inside someone else as you share with them the potential for life and peace and hope that hearts have been yearning for and missing all of their lives. It is a joy that can happen because the family of God is being enlarged as souls are warmed with new hope and faith and an awakening to the real truth about God's feelings towards them.

There is certainly a need to experience the two-way bonds of joy in love and intimacy with Jesus that is so needed early on in the genuine Christian experience of new life. And this kind of intimacy and joy must be continued and nurtured all throughout our experience. But it will begin to wither and go stale if we do not respond to the invitation of Jesus to enter into a more dynamic phase of our growth and allow Him to work through us to attract others into that same kind of closeness and richness that we are beginning to enjoy. But when we do participate and cooperate with God's plan to enlarge and enrich the body of Christ in this way, we begin to tap into much deeper and broader dimensions of joy that is the driving force of all of heaven.

For a few moments this morning I felt a slight sensation, like a glimpse of reality from heaven's perspective of what the fundamental assumptions are in heaven. It is so hard to describe that accurately because assumptions are almost always subconscious and to describe them to others means that their assumptions are applied to the words and the meaning is often largely lost in the process.

But I sensed, at least for a few moments, how vital it is for me to enter into a completely different mode of thinking, of relating, of desire if I am to be emotionally prepared to become integrated into the society and joys of the angels of God. That atmosphere, as many people talk about, is full of praise and worship and singing and joy. But because of our earthly perspective and the influence of false ideas about religion that permeate everything we think and feel, we often get the subtle idea that this is a requirement instead of something spontaneous. Of course it sounds silly to even say that, but that is the very nature of subconscious lies – they become silly when exposed to the open but deep inside they still feel true and we make many decisions based on them.

The more that I sense God revealing to me that true religion has far more to do with the condition of my heart than the information subscribed to or contained in my head, the more I can begin to understand a little bit what this praise, gratitude and worship is really about. I have observed that much of our praise experiences are often rooted in selfish desires to feel good or maybe to impress God or others around us. Much of our thanksgiving exercises are likewise based on a gratitude focused on the externals, the material benefits we enjoy, the nice things that have happened to us or even the good answers we sometimes receive to prayers tainted with selfish desires. And our worship is so confusing that I sometimes wonder if anyone really understands the real focus of worship. When I step back a bit and think about many of our worship exercises I realize that much if not most of our worship is focused more on our own traditions, our own feelings or on the performers who are supposed to be leading out in our worship rather than an intentional focus on God Himself.

As I have become a little more aware of what is really involved in worship I realize that real worship of God happens very little in a church setting despite all of our claims to the contrary. Much more worship of God I believe occurs spontaneously at times and in places where we might least expect to find it. In fact, I have sometimes been overcome with a desire to express genuine worship to God in the middle of situations where it seems almost bizarre and even embarrassing. It is then that I am chagrined to realize how much I still am intimidated more by what other people think about me than I am confident and bold in what God thinks about me.

I am learning that true, authentic worship, praise and gratitude need to come from a reservoir of joy that fills the heart of the worshiper. I have also learned in the past few years that the real meaning of joy is always that inspiration and feeling of value that one gets from knowing you are special to someone else and that they genuinely and intensely desire to be with you no matter how you are feeling at the moment. This kind of joy imparts an amazing amount of power into the heart and soul of a person and is like a breath of fresh air that can cause them to thrive and grow in love and grace. What I am seeing here is that this is the kind of joy that John was talking about, a joy that came from a heart connection with God and that made John an extremely bold friend of God, publicly declaring the real truth about God to awaken other hearts to come and experience for themselves the Heart that was giving him so much joy.

And it is only in this context that a person can authentically say from the heart that He must increase, but I must decrease. This is not something that can be put on from the outside and be truly effective. This must be an expression of the true belief of a heart that has been enriched and fulfilled with the love that he wants others to experience. John is not saying here that his own relationship with God must decrease – not in the slightest. His own joy would ever continue to intensify as he saw more and more people responding to the Source of all love and healing and salvation. What he was saying was that in the eyes of others and in their hearts, Jesus would become more and more important and intimate to them while the one who had initially attracted them into the relationship to start with would become less and less visible and noticeable to them. This is the mark of a true and loyal friend of the Bridegroom. And this is what will produce the kind of real joy that John was experiencing and that I too can experience as I learn to follow his example.

I Want to be a Safe Friend

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. (John 3:29 NIV)

I just can't pull myself away from this verse yet. It is compelling to me and keeps opening up important things that my heart really wants and needs to learn. I sense deeply that I crave to have this experience for myself, this relationship with the Bridegroom, this joy that is full, complete and satisfying.

Too often I have tried to get some of this joy by stepping in between the bride and the Bridegroom. I have been jealous of the potential joy between them and have misappropriated the affections of the bride for myself. It has always ended in disaster repeatedly but I seem to be a slow learner. What I am seeing here is that finding genuine joy that will really last and will not disappoint my heart needs to be found in a third-party relationship with the bride and Groom.

Satan has lied to my heart (no big surprise there) telling me that if I don't receive affections the way I want them that I can't have any at all. But that is not true. The alternative to receiving affections the wrong way is not a complete break in relationships with the bride of Christ. Jesus never says that I can't be very close friends with His bride, all those whom He is attracting to Himself. In fact, He wants to make me into a much more effective messenger of His attractions and allurements and inducements to help others see the real truth about His beauty much more clearly so they too can let go of the lies about Him that prevent them from trusting His heart. He wants to make me a safe friend to deal in the arena of people's hearts and be able to pass along His love notes for them without having my own emptiness complicate my relationship with them.

So it comes back again to my own need to relate to Jesus personally as part of the bride myself and be filled up with His personal attentions and affections so that my own heart enjoys that needed peace, satisfaction and joy in His presence. The more my own heart can rest, relax and be ravished in His love the safer I will be in sharing the same opportunity with others to experience the same relationship with Him. It is not safe to offer to others an intimacy with God that I am not yet experiencing myself. When I do then I may be venturing into the arena of hypocrisy which is a very hazardous place to live. The gospel that I offer to others must be the same gospel that is healing and saving my own heart, soul and mind.

To be an effective friend of the Bridegroom, a safe friend that can be trusted to speak convincingly of this intimate love relationship to others, I have to be experiencing the joys of being a responsive bride myself. It is the most effective witness program that demonstrates the effects of joy, intimacy, trust and peace when I am living from a heart captured by the affections of God myself. Just talking about it without really experiencing it can be very fascinating and intriguing but it will not have the compelling force that experiencing it myself will have.

So my heart yearns for a much deeper encounter and an ongoing, deepening love affair with my Savior and my God. I have long been tired of religion that talks all around these subjects (or worse yet, disdained them) but has generally brought me more confusion than peace. My heart craves to be loved and to respond in genuine, spontaneous love with a being that really knows how to do it right. And by what I've heard we are all hard-wired to feel this way and we know that when we finally get completely honest about our hearts.

Father, Jesus, I plead with You to draw me much deeper into this intimacy of love in my heart that I hear more and more about. You know my heart far better than I can ever understand and You know how intense these longings are beyond the ability of any words to express. I have repressed these feelings and yearnings for all of my life because every time I try to deal with them I get deeply wounded. Fear has overtaken most of the atmosphere in my heart and surrounds the memories of these bad encounters.

But Your Word says that perfect love expels all fear. That is what I really want to experience, not just once or twice but on a continual and unbroken basis. I plead with you to heal me from my wicked spirit of faultfinding and negative thinking and the many lies I still believe about You. Replace all of this with real life and the love that can only be found in Your heart and in close fellowship with You. Make me a safe and reliable friend of Yours to awaken interest and longing in the hearts of many others who may see what You are starting to do in my heart. Train me, especially my heart, to know how to work in close proximity to the hearts and affections and fears of others who are being drawn to you without becoming overwhelmed and improperly entangled in them myself.

Keep my heart full of Your love and help me to keep my mirror clean so that Your light and love can be reflected through me without distortion. I know this is a very big order, but I also believe You are an even bigger God capable of anything. And by what I have been learning this is the kind of thing You love to specialize in. So continue the work of transformation You are doing in me and keep me close to Your heart. Protect me from the hateful, deceptive and vicious attacks of the great liar who has spoiled everything You have created here. Grow me into full maturity in Christ as I learn to rest fully in Your arms.

I ask all of this in the authority and name of Jesus Christ, the one who came to reveal the real truth about Your heart and allowed us to torture and kill Him without ever resisting or getting defensive. Thank-you so much for what You are revealing about Yourself through Jesus. I am learning that all of this is taking place to vindicate Your reputation and character in the final outcome. Keep me close to You so that I can be part of the great cloud of authentic and truthful witnesses so that Your reputation can be fully honored.

Wrath of God Abides on Him

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36)

I have been learning a great deal about the wrath of God over the past few years and this verse I find quite interesting. The impression that comes to my mind about this has to do with the basic nature of the difference between counterfeit religion and true spirituality. Sin originated in heaven when Lucifer externalized religion, moving it away from a heart-based response of love to our heavenly Father to a focus on external appearances and power. When his mind made the shift from inward beauty rooted in the condition of the heart to a belief in value based on outward beauty, the track was laid down for all the rest of the deceptions of sin to be formulated in his brilliant mind.

Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. (Ezekiel 28:17 NRSV)

The thought came to me this morning that when I resist allowing God full access to every part of my heart, not just my mind; when I continue to fail to surrender some part of my desires or plans or will to His plans and His ways, then I will inevitably find myself in resistance to the passion that comes from the heart of God which is His love for me. In the Bible the same word is often used for wrath as for passion. God's passion is always completely pure whereas man's passion is corrupted with selfishness and sin. So when I refuse to allow God's pure and holy passion to take over every part of the inside of my heart and completely rule my life, then I am keeping it on the outside in the external arena. When God's passion is kept out of the heart where it really belongs, then it takes on the appearance of wrath because it is not resting where it was designed to live and thrive, in a heart. It is sort of like removing the skin from an apple and then seeing it oxidize in the air. It quickly takes on a different appearance because it is not supposed to be in that kind of environment.

When passion is out of place it always takes on incorrect attributes and causes problems. That is part of the problem with sin. Sin is getting things, even good things, all turned around and placed in wrong relationship with each other. So when I fail to obey/believe the real truth about the Son of God who is the truest revelation of the heart of God, then the passion of God that He came to place in my heart to bring me life and joy and peace remains on the outside and takes on the color of wrath instead of love.

It is then that I find that the wrath of God abides on me, not because God Himself has changed His love into anger but because my perception of His passion is transformed into believing that what I am experiencing is anger no matter what His real feelings about me are. If I don't have the passion of love in my heart then I am going to have the wrath of God on my life. It is not because God has changed His feelings toward me but that my perception of His feelings is changed in my own beliefs.

It is very clear here that the core issue is belief verses non-belief. But this issue of belief is also one of the most hijacked words in Christianity. We have externalized this word just like nearly everything else in the Bible and have come to think that it is some sort of intellectual belief that we must have in order to get saved. Some people insist that we must say certain words like a mantra in order to invoke some supernatural change that suddenly ensures us of permanent salvation. Others insist that we must add good works, penance or any number of other additional external requirements in order to convince God that we should be saved. But all of this misses the core issues involved in sin and salvation. If we don't have a proper understanding of what is really going on in the big picture we are sure to be confused about the details.

The belief that is talked about here in the books of John is a belief that is deeply rooted in the heart much more than in the head, a belief firmly experienced by the right brain and not just professed by the left. The right brain is the base of our experiential beliefs which is what really counts in life. Our professed beliefs may be ever so provable and we can spend years filling our minds with factual truths, but when a crisis comes and the pressure is on it is the deep, sub-conscious beliefs that fill our right brain, our heart, that will suddenly be exposed in the way we respond under extreme situations. And that exposure very often is a shock and surprise to most of us when it happens.

This kind of belief is also much broader than the use our western culture generally has for this word. In the Hebrew usage this word was considered to include much more than simply a belief as we think of the word. In Hebrew thought it fully embraced the idea of acting on a belief, a belief that is so real that you will always rely on it whenever making decisions or acting out externally. It is a settled belief that becomes an fundamental assumption of reality. This is the kind of belief that God is leading us back to, a life rooted in a genuine heart connection with the Source of all love and passion and truth, the kind of existence that Lucifer turned his back on in heaven and that the whole plan of salvation is designed to restore in our lives.

The exciting news here in this verse is that we do not need to wait until the Second Coming of Jesus to enter into eternal life. We can live in eternal life and assurance of faith right now when we allow God's passionate love full access to our hearts and become filled at the heart level with the kind of belief and submission to His desires that can transform us into looking and acting like Jesus. If we try any other option the results can only be the absence of eternal life which is a destiny of pain, fear, torment and death.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

Receiving What?

John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven." (John 3:27)

I would like to look at this from John's perspective. What may have been in his mind when he said these words? What was it that he did or didn't receive relative to what his disciples were talking about?

His disciples were feeling disappointment and some jealousy over the fact that Jesus was starting to get more attention and more disciples than John at this point. After being baptized by John in the Jordan, instead of becoming one of John's disciples like many other people had done, Jesus disappeared for awhile and then when He reappeared, instead of hooking up with John it appeared that He had started up a competing ministry to draw people away from John. This is easily what it might have looked like to the loyal disciples of John the Baptist.

But John would not allow that kind of self-serving thinking infect his own spirit or ministry. He viewed himself in a totally different light and his job and role from a very different perspective than most others around him. He had spent his whole life preparing for this brief and intense work of cracking open the hard hearts of God's chosen people and creating an environment more conducive for the Messiah to have access to His people. It was very clear in John's mind that he himself was not the star here and never should be. Popularity was one of the greatest desires for him and he was keen to not allow it to neutralize his real destiny as a true friend of the Bridegroom.

John demonstrated a spirit and attitude that I need to learn far more deeply. He was living in passionate devotion to God and seeking to attract as many as possible to become hungry to know God through his messages and his example without getting them too closely attached to himself in the process. It is a tricky business to draw out another's affections without succumbing to the intense temptation to have those affections become a means of making one's self feel better and enjoying them for your own self-esteem. To awaken someone else's affections for the sole purpose of then pointing them to attach them to your best friend instead of yourself is the highest form of service and dedication that can be accomplished. That is the role of a true, loyal friend.

So what was it that John received from heaven that he was referring to here? All of his popularity, all of the apparent success in his ministry by the many people who were aroused and convicted in their hearts by his straight preaching, all of the attentions and affections awakened in the hearts of people all around him were all given to him by heaven. John was in the position of a broker of sorts, a broker who dealt in hearts and souls. He was entrusted with the confidence, affections and trust of thousands of people and what he chose to do with all those valuable assets would demonstrate what kind of character he really had inside.

The more I think about this the more I realize how unqualified I have been to do this kind of work. Repeatedly throughout my life I have at times drawn out someone's affections only to have it all blow up in my face and have them turn on me unexpectedly leaving me wondering what I did wrong. Because of my own lack of a father's blessing from childhood that should have imparted to me a strong sense of identity, value, worth and confidence, I have gravitated toward trying to find value and identity in what others think of me. I have been hungry for affections while at the same time unable to receive them from those who may have wanted to give it to me properly.

When I read the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel from heaven sent to give him the blessing he craved so deeply, I see myself in stark relief. I can easily identify with Jacob's intense feelings of emptiness and longing, fear and desire, passion and yet confusion. Instead of freely accepting the hug from God that the angel was sent to deliver to him, he found himself fighting all night long against the very thing that he longed for the most while not realizing what he was doing. In essence I perceive that what he was really fighting all night was not just a stranger in the night but he was really grappling with his own confused pictures of God, his own fears, his own longings and conflicting emotions that had blocked him all his life from being able to rest in the love of His God with peace.

John the Baptist had a very different story in his life. He demonstrated what it looks like to live with purpose and passion knowing who he was and living fully within the blessing of his father's – both his earthly father and his heavenly Father. He had bold confidence to stand against all odds, to face bitter opposition, scorn and hatred from those who opposed him without flinching because he kept ever before his heart the face of the One who gave him true value and identity.

It was because of this position of confidence in who he was and how valued and cherished he was by God that he could be a safe person to handle the hearts and affections of so many people and transfer their attention away from him toward the Messiah who had come to demonstrate the original Source of all love. John's ministry was destined to pale in contrast to the vivid presentation of the love, passion and goodness of God as revealed in the life of Jesus, God's representative on earth as a human. John was sent ahead of him to awaken interest and hunger and desire in people's hearts for something much better and more satisfying than the shallow religion that they were experiencing. John was sent to awaken and intensify this hunger and then to point everyone to the only One who could satisfy that hunger effectively with a love as big as eternity itself.

So again, what did John receive from heaven? He had received the hearts and affections of the thousands who had flocked to hear him and be baptized upon the conviction of their true empty condition. He had received popularity and notoriety in order to awaken as much attention as possible for Jesus to pick up the ball and carry it from here on. John was given the privileges of being the first to touch the hearts of many but not in order to bless his own heart with their attentions but to direct their affections to the real Lover who only could ravish their hearts and fill the deepest longings of their souls.

Then he said what I believe is a very important phrase in verse 29. He who has the bride is the Bridegroom. John was not the one who could love the bride of God – the people called to be loved by God – anything like God Himself could do. A friend of the bridegroom would become a betrayer if he began to flirt with the affections of the bride for his own pleasure and misuse his advantages and the trust that the potential bride began to place in him. His role was strictly to awaken interest in the potential bride for the Bridegroom and then to introduce her to the real truth about the one who wanted to marry her. The friend's job was to sweep away the lies in the potential bride's mind about the Suitor seeking to draw her to Himself. The friends role was to help correct her mental pictures of the potential Bridegroom so that she would more readily respond to His invitations to come closer and get better acquainted with His heart.

Heaven had given John the highest honor that it can impart – a friend of God who could be trusted with the delicate and powerful emotions and affections of others for the purpose of passing them on to another without exploiting them for his own pleasure or benefit. To do this John had to constantly be aware of his true role in all of this and keep clearly in his mind and heart what his true purpose was for living. He was to receive the hearts of people awakened by God for the purpose of then connecting those hearts with the very heart of God as revealed in the person of Jesus the Messiah. In doing so his reward in place of enjoying the affections and attentions of the bride directly was the joy that he would experience as he saw the deep bonds growing between those he had attracted to be the bride and the heart of his best friend, the very Son of God. This is what he says repeatedly in the rest of verse 29.

The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled.