I Will Bless the LORD at All Times

So, it’s been a week around here. The reading of When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight For Joy by John Piper is a little slow going for me right now. I’m only on page 40 (Chapter 3), and I started it a while ago, got sidetracked and am now back to it. It is slow going because it is hard reading – takes a lot of thinking. And I picked it back up at an interesting time, personally speaking.

I think January is probably my least favorite month. I also think I do not share the boys’ wish that it snowed here, because for all that I really like the first snow of the year and how beautiful it is coming down on a quiet wintry night, I do not like the many long, gray, dreary, drab, dark depressing days of winter that are the trade off of experiencing snow. I also do not like driving in snow and dealing with it on and on after that first snow. I like sunshine and light and lots of it and often. So, I feel for you all who live in those snowy places. Truly I do. Because just a day or two of those gray dark days are enough for me to go into a real slump. Hence last week’s blog break. It has been cold and dreary and I had no energy and was just mentally tired. And here we are today, and it is bright and sunny and in the upper sixties and I was loving it outside this afternoon. There are benefits to living here after all.

Something else I really hate about myself is how sensitive I seem to be to hormone fluctuations. Combine dreary days and hormones and, well, sometimes it isn’t pretty. I can be going along fine and then, wham, I’m struggling not to let unfounded depression flood in. I hate how when that happens, I tend to have a very quick fuse and if I don’t guard my tongue, my tone can get to be nasty before I even think about it on my poor unsuspecting family. I do not want to be one of those women who blames her own lack of self-control and sinful selfishness on you-know-what, however. I am really embarrassed to even mention that particular struggle because it seems so silly to be slumping when there is just no external reason for it. But I will say that it is at times like those that I have to be much more diligent to guard my heart, tone, and behavior. When the feelings I cannot control threaten to overwhelm, it is imperative to fight to turn my eyes off of me and fix them firmly on Jesus. It is precisely those times when I don’t feel like reading the Word that I must get in there and keep on and hide His word in my heart and prayerfully ponder and apply what I am reading, for this is how I know Him. It is at times like these that the fight for joy seems even more real, even more necessary.

When slumps like this come around and my energy level suddenly seems to be about zero and it is all I can do to get up and do what has to be done with little emotional zip left for anything else, it seems that it is at those times, too, that I start to feel like a huge hypocrite. I had several posts I was working on writing about the great hope I have in Christ, and I just felt I was fighting this huge battle with my emotions, knowing that I truly believe in that hope and am holding on to it in spite of feeling like a real wretch and feeling like I had no right to be writing such things when just that morning I had demonstrated spectacularly how not patient, how not kind, how not slow to anger I can be sometimes. I hate how once the emotions get involved I can hear myself saying things that need to be said, but, oh, not in the way I’m saying them, and it is so hard to ratchet back the volume. I hate it, hate it, hate it. Oh, to guard my sharp tongue!

I think part of what I’m struggling with in reading Piper’s book is an insufficient understanding of joy. I struggled with this when reading Desiring God, too. At first, I was struggling with the idea that if I did not feel happy all the time that I must not be obeying the command to rejoice in the Lord. After thinking on this a bit, I see that this is not really what Piper is teaching. At least I don’t think he is. Here is what I’m coming to understand and believe: It isn’t that we’re always going to necessarily feel like dancing and celebrating, but that deep down, in spite of circumstances, in spite of hormone wackiness, in spite of anything else, to know and love and obey and worship Jesus is my greatest desire. And even when I do not feel particularly joyful, I will wait on the Lord. No matter what lies my hormone addled emotions lead me to feel, I know that I am in Christ, and in Him I am righteous, accepted by God. It is amazing to me that He knows what a wretch I really am. He knows all the embarrassing things about me I don’t share on my blog. He knows my sinful, fickle, selfish heart. He knows that on my own I cannot even love Him as He deserves to be loved. He knows that even on my best day all I have to offer is filthy rags. He knows it all, and He died so that those sins would be nailed to the cross. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. (Gal. 2:20) He grants me the will and desire and faith and strength to live and walk in newness of life. That will take your breath away if you really think about it!

That joy is what motivates the decisions I make. That joy is what leads me to want to control my tongue and guard my actions carefully when physically and emotionally I am tempted to just give in and lash out, because I do want Christ to be glorified in me, I do want to be a joyful witness of His wonderful grace. That joy is why I am so ashamed when I let the flesh dictate my behavior and I find myself having to apologize to my family and repent for words and tone I hate having used. It is in learning to desire Christ more than anything else and learning to trust Him in the midst of every situation. It is learning not to let anyone, anything, or any circumstance take the place in my affection that rightfully belongs to God alone. It is learning not to be controlled by my disappointments and struggles and burdens and hormones and circumstances, but to lay all of that at His feet and trust Him with it all. It is seeing Him for who He is - His beauty and His righteousness and His awesome wonderfulness. It is recognizing that apart from Him I am nothing – and recognizing that I have no desire to be anything but what He would have me be, whatever the cost – and that is such a hard thing to say. It is having a taste for Christ and His way that is growing as He sanctifies me. It is learning what it means to love the Lord my God with ALL my heart, with ALL my soul, and with ALL my mind. It is not easy. In fact, it is impossible apart from His Holy Spirit working in me.

I am beginning to understand why there is so much discussion in this first part of the book where I’ve been stuck for a week or so about fighting for joy. It doesn’t come naturally to the flesh, and too often I try to fill up my joy with things that cannot satisfy. Only in Christ Himself can my thirst be sated. When I first began reading this concept that Piper calls Christian Hedonism, I was unnerved. I knew that I don’t love God as He deserves to be loved. I knew that I fail daily to truly live like He is first in my affections. And it frightened me. But I have come to realize that I cannot do this in my own strength. And I have come to realize that, though I have a long way to go still, God has graciously given me the taste for Him and His way. It is growing as I soak my heart and mind in His word and learn to fight for that joy. That is what this fight is about – learning to know and desire God. Sanctification is the life-long process of growing toward that maturity which causes me to lay aside every weight which so easily entangles that I may run the race with endurance. The weights are anything which would try to steal my affections and attentions away from the prize, which is Jesus Himself. As I look back over my life I can see how He is working in me to produce that consuming love for Christ. I can see how things that used to matter so much to me no longer even have any appeal – the things of this world are growing strangely dim as I learn to fix my eyes on Jesus.

May I live a life worthy of Him. May my affections be tuned to His will. May I truly be able to say with all my heart that this one thing I seek, to dwell with the Lord and seek Him and know Him and worship Him.

Psalm 34:1
“I will bless the LORD at all times;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.”

Psalm 33:20-22
“Our soul waits for the LORD;
He is our help and our shield.
For our heart shall rejoice in Him,
Because we have trusted in His holy name.
Let Your mercy, O LORD, be upon us,
Just as we hope in You.”