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Words Are the Greatest Gifts
Words are the secret of Christmas. Even more important than the gifts we purchase, and the packages we wrap, are the letters we write, and the syllables we mouth. And once you discover the secret, you might even spend less time sweating what to buy, and give more energy to crafting what to say.
Jesus’s own words are what would make us pause and ponder the power of words at Christmas, and all year long. In John 15:11, he says to his followers,
“I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
It’s one thing to feel happy for a fleeting moment. It’s quite another to have Jesus’s own joy burning inside of you — to not only taste joy, but experience fullness of joy. How does that happen? How does Jesus’s own delight — dwelling in him, empowering him, filling his own soul — become ours? How does his own happiness come to dwell in and empower and fill us?
The answer, he says, is the wonder of words. Words are God’s vessel for passing joy from one soul to another.
Jesus’s Own Joy in Us
Our lives are awash in words. We encounter (and produce) literally tens of thousands of them every day. We’re prone to take their function and power for granted, when we should regularly marvel. Jesus’s own joy in us through words! How can we not exclaim with John Wesley, “Oh, give me that Book”?
And Jesus has more to say. In John 17:13, he turns to his Father and prays about his disciples,
“Now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
Jesus said what he did in the world to be captured and preserved for us in the Gospels, not just that we would have joy, but that his own joy in his Father might be in us. It’s almost too precious to say. If Jesus himself had not said it, we would not presume to walk on such holy ground.
But Jesus means to share his own joy with us. And he does so through words. He designs that his followers hear and receive his words, and feed their souls on them, like the prophet Jeremiah, and taste them as their joy and delight (Jeremiah 15:16).
And in doing so, Jesus models for us how we can pass his joy on to others, at Christmas and year-round. As joy fills and expands in a soul, it rises to the level of expression. The voice box sounds, the lips and teeth form invisible words, which pass through the air and then into these open holes in the sides of our head called ears. Invisible words pass into the open receptacles, and down into our souls, and one person’s joy feeds another’s. Not just from Jesus to us, but from others to us — and from us to others. All through words.
“Magic” Words of Joy
If we weren’t so familiar with words, and were to learn about their power for the first time, it might all sound like magic. You mean someone with a full heart of priceless joy in God can exhale, sound and shape these invisible vessels of joy (which pass through the air, into my head, and down into my soul), and by faith give me real and lasting joy? Yes, it is amazing.
And it gets even better. As we draw from a full tank of joy, to transmit into words our joy to fill another’s tank, our own joy doesn’t go down but up! “Praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment,” as C.S. Lewis famously said.
When we stay quiet about what makes us happiest, we don’t preserve our happiness. Hearts don’t stay full by keeping the lid on them. Our joy dwindles when we stay quiet. But when our joy inspires us to expend energy to express it in understandable words — which can be hard work — our joy actually ripens, deepens, expands, and “completes the enjoyment.” Giving ourselves to the effort it takes to carefully say it (or write it) both sweetens our delight and makes it more contagious. Others can share in it when they hear about it.
Which makes us want to tell others not just that we’re happy but why. What is the fuel on our fire? Instead of just saying, “I’m happy,” say instead, “Messiah has come.” Instead of just saying, “I’m hopeful,” say why you have hope. Instead of just saying, “Jesus is my treasure,” say what specifically makes him feel so valuable.
God’s Own Joy in His Word
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that words hold such power — not just for spreading discontent and ruining Christmas, but also for passing joy and making it what it is.
After all, when God himself reaches into our world, in human language, to communicate to us a vital aspect of his relationship with his Son, he calls him “the Word” (John 1:1). God’s Word in Jesus to us is so rich and deep and full and personal, that it is not just a word-thing, but he is a Word-person. God has spoken to us, not just through prophets and apostles, but “by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). Jesus’s person and work is the very embodiment and climactic expression of what God has to say to humanity — and the grace, and joy, he has to offer.
In his first advent, the Word became flesh that the very joy of God — eternal, indomitable, unassailable, unshakable — might become our joy. That Word, his words, and our words about him are the greatest gifts of Christmas. Let’s learn the secret. Even more valuable than anything we can wrap in paper is the joy we can capture in words, whether spoken or written, to help fill others with the sweetest delight a soul can taste: Jesus’s own fullness of joy.
Article by David Mathis
David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org and pastor at Cities Churchin Minneapolis. He is a husband, father of four, and author of Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.
All Christians Struggle. So What Do We Do About It?
As a Christian, have you ever felt despondent, depressed, anxious or even questioning God’s love? Sometimes do you feel that God took a sharp turn in life and you fell off the bus? Have you experienced such pain and sorrow as a believer in Jesus that there are times that you wonder if the fog will ever be lifted? Have you ever wanted to share your heart with a sympathetic Christian friend but you’re reluctant to do so lest they think you to be “unspiritual” or “lacking faith?” Have you found that a legalistic mentality has left you feeling that you have to continue to earn God’s favor in order for Him to accept and approve you?
These are the kind of questions and life complexities that confront Christians nearly every day of their lives. We’re the believers in Jesus who are trying to walk out our faith, at times, through a veil of tears and unspeakable heartache and grief. Yet, often we’re hesitant to express our feelings of disappointment and sorrow in life to other believers because our legalistic evangelical mentality makes us feel reluctant and unsafe to share our “stuff” … leery we’ll be judged by the listener. Or, to have a “secret sin” that you’re carrying and would love to get help with, but dare not even mention it out loud in fear of it being plastered on the “prayer chain” or even worse, possibly losing your job if you happen to be in the ministry.
We’ve got to get it … we struggle, all of us! The question isn’t, do we struggle in life as believers? We do, and that’s a fact. However, the real question is, why do we struggle? And through the struggle, is it possible to struggle well in the eyes of God and God be ok with that?
Listen, the struggling soul of man is as old as Adam and as recent as each morning when we wake up to face the day. In reality, the struggle is both a hardship in life as well as a loving, graced filled experience with Messiah. It’s learning how to navigate through life’s highs and lows, joys and sorrows while trying to hold a balance between holiness and humanity, faith and failures. The pain of human suffering doesn’t come to a screeching halt at a person’s door just because they’re a believer in Jesus. And for those who have walked with God for years, surely you know this to be true. In case you haven’t noticed, life doesn’t always fit neatly into a prepackaged Christian dream of “God is good all the time, all the time God is good.” Though God is a good God, a loving, just and gracious God, still that little phrase doesn’t always cut it when you feel like your past your last prayer and the saltwater of life is now beginning to spill into your nostrils.
God gets our suffering. He understands the pain, disappointment, sorrow and questions that we go through. Jesus understands the systemic collapse of our human condition. He empathizes … identifies with our fallen humanity. Why? Because, as crazy as it sounds, Jesus was both fully God and fully man. He had to be born through a natural means (a woman) and grow up experiencing both our struggles as well as our joys in order to connect with those He had come to redeem.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.”
-Hebrews 4:15
And the cool thing is this, as we travel this struggling road called life, God has made available to us this amazing Agape filled gift called “Grace” to help us get through the struggling, difficult times. In short, grace is a heart of love that is unconditional and sacrificial. It’s a hand lifting us up when we do fall rather than a boot on our neck keeping us down. Grace lovingly leads us to a place of righteousness. It doesn’t “beat” us into righteousness, it “leads” us … it doesn’t “pound” us, it “pardons” us on the journey toward righteousness. That’s’ the difference between grace and legalism (The Law). What a beautiful picture of God’s patience and unending love toward us as the Holy Spirit moves us to a closer, intimate relationship with the Father.
To be honest, we’re all present and accounted for on this fallen and corrupted planet. We’re a motley crew of the standing and the fallen, the confident and the fearful, the victorious and the defeated, the strong and the weak, the faithful and the faithless, the stable and the unsteady. We all make up His glorious crippled church. We’re the lovers of Jesus and His Word who will, one day, no longer be subject to the human corruption that has befallen these frail mortal bodies as a result of Satan’s death grip.
Sin is a far-reaching problem with us humans. It has affected every area of a mortal’s life, and that’s a fact. There’s nothing that we can do to escape its clutches and there’s nothing in and of ourselves that we can do to eliminate it from our lives. But that systemic human disease has been given a powerful heavenly antibiotic to fight its deadly sin infested, bacterial infection. That heavenly cure is Jesus, the Lover and Protector of our souls.
The bottom line is this, the message of Jesus’ radical agape love and grace really does endure through all things and forever. It endures through our greatest times of joy and happiness and through our worst moments of discouragement and sorrow. It’s there when we’re standing on top of the mountain and when we’re struggling to lift the mountain off. It’s there in our proud moments of accomplishment, and it’s also there in our defeated times of humiliation. The solid truth is this: through the struggle, no matter how we succeed or fail in it, God loves us fervently, passionately, and unconditionally … and that’s a Biblical, foundational, bedrock truth!
In some earthly form or in some earthly way, each of us has faced the tempests … or will face them. These are the storms of life set in play as a result of Adam’s self-centered act of disobedience that rage against these fragile and corrupted jars of clay. But when we do struggle, at least we can confidently know that yes, we struggle, but because of God’s great grace and endless love for us, we’re now struggling well. Wow … if that doesn’t give you hope, I don’t know what would!
This op-ed is based upon the book, Struggling Well: Balancing the Love and Grace of God with the Pain and Questions of Life.