The million dollar question: How do we have “complete” joy (1 Peter 1:8)
even when our circumstances, relationships, situations, etc.
DON’T CHANGE?
I’m thinking this over and found 1 Peter 1:1-9 and
John15:9-17. Here are a few of my thoughts!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfPx3rbc1ts]
1 Peter 1:1-9
Praise to God for a Living Hope
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power
until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you
may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—
of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in
praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
8 Though you have not seen him, you love him;
and even though you do not see him now,
you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,
9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
John 15:9-17
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this:
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant
does not know his master’s business.
Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I
learned from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you
so that you might go and bear fruit—
fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
17 This is my command: Love each other.
We just need to learn to receive. So many of us struggle with really accepting God’s love and joy for ourselves. We can say the words but living it is a whole different thing. It’s like I received your prize package. (THANK YOU) but if I ever opened the package I could never use it. I could “say” I’m a winner, but it really isn’t a part of me until I open it and use it. So I’m asking God, the God who created me and love and joy to make me able to accept it, soak it in and ooze it out on those around me.