Joy in God: A Command and Delight

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"God commands us to be happy and to pursue our joy. Psalm 100: Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the Earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Okay, everybody knows you're supposed to serve Jesus. Do you know it's a sin, that is, it is a disobedience of Psalm 100 verse 2, not to serve him with gladness is sin." [00:54:10]

"Obedience is doing what the Bible says, and the Bible says serve the Lord with gladness, delight yourself in the Lord, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. You can't play obedience off against the pursuit of gladness. The Bible says be glad in the Lord. Do you obey that or don't you?" [01:13:40]

"God threatens terrible things if we will not be satisfied. This gets a little more serious. Deuteronomy 28:47: Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart for the abundance of all things, therefore you will serve your enemies. You hear that? Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy, you're going to serve your enemies." [03:18:20]

"The nature of faith teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God. Without faith, it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he's the rewarder of those who seek him. That's amazing. It says you can't please God without faith, and then it defines faith with two things: believe that he is and believe that he rewards those who come to him." [04:40:36]

"Evil is standing at the Fountain of Living Water called God or Christ and all that they are for us, this water that would satisfy our souls, tasting it, and going, turning, looking at the desert of the world, getting a shovel and digging and digging and digging and putting our mouth on the dry soil of the world, saying, oh satisfy me, satisfy me, broken cistern that can hold no water." [09:12:40]

"The nature of conversion teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid again, and from joy over it goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. That's a picture in a parable of what it means to get saved, that is, to come to Christ as your treasure." [11:57:20]

"Self-denial, but it isn't ultimate self-denial because this is the most joyful, deeply satisfying path of life for them now, and even if they lose their spouse, their children, their wife, their life, they will have God forever, and that will be gain. So yeah, I believe in self-denial. Deny yourself tin so that you can have gold." [18:09:20]

"The demand to love people in the Bible teaches the pursuit of your satisfaction. You yourselves know that with these hands I minister to my own needs and to the men who were with me. In everything, I showed you, you Ephesian elders, that by working hard in this manner, you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus: It is more blessed to give than to receive." [19:52:39]

"If you deny yourself the blessedness of giving, you cease to be a loving person. Or if you try to give and experience no blessedness in it, you cease to be a loving person. When somebody does a nice thing for you, do you feel more loved when they do it begrudgingly or joyfully? And if you feel more loved when they treat you with kindness and serve you, help you change a tire when it's late at night and cold, when they do that joyfully, if you feel more loved when they do it joyfully than begrudgingly, then they must pursue their joy in that love or they're not as loving as they would be doing it begrudgingly." [21:28:00]

"God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. That's my argument. God gets glory by your not obeying him dutifully or worshiping dutifully but by delighting in him." [26:33:00]

"When you ring the doorbell of heaven and God opens the door and says, now why do you want to come in here? If you say it's what humans are supposed to do, this is our duty to be in heaven, to believe on Jesus, to keep the Ten Commandments, it's our duty, we have decided to keep the rules, this is why I'm here, he will not smile. Because the right answer is there is no place in the universe I would rather be than with you because you have all that will satisfy my heart, you are my treasure, then he'll smile." [26:44:56]

"God has given us the capacity to delight in another so that we have the means whereby we can honor another. And guess who is the one who should be honored most? God. So when you ring the doorbell of heaven and God opens the door and says, now why do you want to come in here? If you say it's what humans are supposed to do, this is our duty to be in heaven, to believe on Jesus, to keep the Ten Commandments, it's our duty, we have decided to keep the rules, this is why I'm here, he will not smile. Because the right answer is there is no place in the universe I would rather be than with you because you have all that will satisfy my heart, you are my treasure, then he'll smile." [25:34:56]

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