Shout For Joy To God

Shout for Joy to God

Shout for joy to God, all the earth;
     sing the glory of his name;
    give to him glorious praise!
 Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!
    So great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you.
 All the earth worships you
    and sings praises to you;
    they sing praises to your name.” Selah

 Come and see what God has done:
    he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.
 He turned the sea into dry land;
    they passed through the river on foot.
There did we rejoice in him,
     who rules by his might forever,
whose eyes keep watch on the nations—
    let not the rebellious exalt themselves. Selah 

 Bless our God, O peoples;
    let the sound of his praise be heard,
 who has kept our soul among the living
    and has not let our feet slip.
  For you, O God, have tested us;
    you have tried us as silver is tried.
  You brought us into the net;
    you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
  you let men ride over our heads;
    we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance. 

  I will come into your house with burnt offerings;
    I will perform my vows to you,
  that which my lips uttered
    and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.
  I will offer to you burnt offerings of fattened animals,
    with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams;
I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah

  Come and hear, all you who fear God,
    and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
  I cried to him with my mouth,
    and high praise was on my tongue.
  If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
    the Lord would not have listened.
  But truly God has listened;
    he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

  Blessed be God,
    because he has not rejected my prayer
    or removed his steadfast love from me!

Psalm 66

There is always a reason to have joy.  The fact that we are eternally secure in God’s grace is more than enough to be thankful.  But why do I forget to be thankful during certain seasons in my life?  Why can I not see the forest for the trees?  I have come up with a name for my problem, I call it Spiritual Amnesia.  There are times in which I am in a funk, going through a situation and I am so focused on the negativity on the present that I forget how God has gotten me through the tough times in the past.  The Gospel means “good news.”  This does not mean that nothing bad will happen to me; this does not mean I will not get sad; this does not mean I will not get depressed.  But what this does mean is that God has done something great for me through His Son, Jesus.  

Sin has caused a lot of different things in this world. I had a professor say that sin caused moral evil (the bad things that humans do) and natural evil (natural disasters, illness, etc.).  Due to our flesh (physical body) still affected by sin, it is easy for us to lose focus on how good God is and what He has done for us.  I would just like to encourage you to look back in your past to see what God has done for you.  If you have to, make a gratitude list.  You might see that you have more to be grateful for than you realize.  We must be joyful in the fact that God has done for us what we could not do for ourselves, salvation. 

As for rejoicing in the Gospel, I would like to share with you a passage from Richard Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ.  In this section, Wurmbrand recalls sharing the Gospel with a Russian officer during the Cold War.

I read to him the Sermon on the Mount and the parables of Jesus. After hearing them, he danced around the room in rapturous joy proclaiming, "What a wonderful beauty! How could I live without knowing this Christ!" It was the first time that I saw someone so rapturously joyful in Christ. 

Then I made a mistake. I read to him the passion and crucifixion of Christ, without having prepared him for this. He had not expected it and, when he heard how Christ was beaten, how He was crucified and that in the end He died, he fell in an armchair and began to weep bitterly. He had believed in a Savior and now his Savior was dead! 

I looked at him and was ashamed that I had called myself a Christian and a pastor, a teacher of others. I had never shared the sufferings of Christ as this Russian officer now shared them. Looking at him, it was for me as seeing again Mary Magdalene weeping at the foot of the cross; faithfully weeping when Jesus was a corpse in the tomb. 

Then I read to him the story of the resurrection. He had not known his Savior arose from the tomb. When he heard this wonderful news, he beat his knees and swore a very dirty, but, I think, a very "holy" swear. This was his crude manner of speech. Again he rejoiced. He shouted for joy: "He is alive! He is a live!” Again he danced around the room, overwhelmed with happiness! 

I love this story.  It shows me how powerful the love of God is.  I need to stop every once in a while, and really rejoice in what God has really done for me.

I love you all!

Justin