Most, if not all of us Christians, some time during our Christian pilgrimage lose our joy. All of the fire goes out of our life, our zeal dissipates, our excitement about the things of God becomes cloudy.
We begin to question the benefits of serving God. The thrill and excitement of the Sunday services becomes and agonizing dread. We find ourselves hoping for, and even grabbing any opportunity (excuse) to stay out of Church.
We then try to justify it with men, in hopes that God will accept our excuse.
Many tines the reason for our joyless life is because we have left our first love. We have forgotten just how far down the Lord reached to save us. Our vision of heaven has been replaced by the lusts of this present evil world. Our worldly possessions here have become more important than what we have over there. Our focus is centered on us instead of Christ.
When we become selfish and self-centered in life, we lose our joy because man can never be satisfied within himself, or by himself, or with what he has outside of Christ. Ecclesiastes 5:10-11 “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: This is also vanity. 11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?” Also, we see in Proverbs 27:20 “Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.”
When we violate the commandments of God to do something we want to do, or, think we have to do, we will never be happy, because: there will always be guilt. Until the sin of self-centeredness is taken care of, we will never have any joy.
Many Christians who are out of God’s will don’t even know it. They just trudge along day by day, wondering why they cannot enjoy their salvation in Christ, wondering why they have no peace, and why it is such a struggle to be faithful to the Lord. When asked how things are going, they’ll put on their Christian mask and say, “Oh, just praising the Lord,” when in reality, they haven’t even thought about the Lord that day.
Sometimes we get so busy doing our thing that God gets put on the back burner, out of the way. We want the Lord in our lives as long as He doesn’t interfere with our plans, pleasures and pursuits.
Many today are saying in their hearts, “Not thy will Lord, but mine be done.” We, in this modern age of Christianity seem to have forgotten what John the Baptist said in John 3:30, “He must increase and I must decrease.” You cannot serve God and mammon; it is impossible.
Paul said in Philippians 3:8, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”
Next week: How to restore the joy!