There are delights which the heart may enjoy in the awesome presence of God which cannot find expression in language; they belong to the unutterable element in Christian experience. Not many enjoy them because not many know that they can. The whole concept of ineffable worship has been lost to this generation of Christians.1<\/p>\n
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There also seems to be a chilling fear of holy enthusiasm among the people of God. We try to tell how happy we are\u2014but we remain so well controlled that there are very few waves of glory experienced in our midst.2<\/p>\n
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It is probably quite generally true that any Christian who has not been filled with the Spirit since his conversion does not have genuine, Christian joy. I know this was my experience. I had a lot of joyful feeling when I was first converted. I was a happy Christian. But if this is the kind of happiness that is about half carnality, just animal spirits, God will want to deliver you from it. To be filled with the Spirit of God is to have come through feelings, disturbance, anxiety, disappointment and emptiness. When you reach that place of despair, when you have gone to the last person and you have written the last editor, when you have followed the last evangelist around and hunted up the last fellow to counsel with you\u2014when no man can help you anymore and you are in a state of inward despair\u2014that is when you will recognize that you are near the place where God can finally do what He wants to do for you. When there comes that despair with self, that emptying out of you and that inner loneliness, you are getting close.3<\/p>\n
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The Lord\u2019s people are like little children\u2014they just want to be happy. They want the Lord to give them a rattle and let them cackle and laugh and be happy. They are going to be happy regardless but the Lord\u2019s happy little children very seldom get filled with the Holy Ghost. God cannot fill them because they are not ready to die to the things upon which they have put their own values. God wants His children to be joyful, but that is not the cheap happiness of the flesh\u2014it is the joy of a resurrected Christ!4<\/p>\n
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It is part of my belief that God wants to get us to a place where we would still be. happy if we had only Him! We don\u2019t need God and something else. God does give us Himself and lets us have other things, too, but there is that inner loneliness until we reach the place where it is only God that we desire.5<\/p>\n
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The reason we have to search for so many things to cheer us up is the fact that we are not really joyful and contentedly happy within.6<\/p>\n
K<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are delights which the heart may enjoy in the awesome presence of God which cannot find expression in language; they belong to the unutterable element in Christian experience. Not many enjoy them because not many know that they can. The whole concept of ineffable worship has been lost to this generation of Christians.1 \u2014\u2014 … Continue reading “JOY\/HAPPINESS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}