Christian joy isn’t shallow or sentimental. It’s rooted in the reality of salvation and sustained even through suffering. In this excerpt from Alistair’s sermon “How Great a Salvation!,” we hear how Peter encourages believers to rejoice in the midst of trials, knowing that their faith is being refined and their future is perfectly secure.
The joy that is recounted for us here is an “inexpressible” joy, and it’s “filled with glory.” It’s not only joy then, but it is joy even now—joy that is different from happiness, joy that may sustain us in times of suffering and disappointment and trials.
Surely all of us, if we had ten minutes of each other’s time, would tell of how we have been greatly helped by living through an experience with someone who in the most devastating circumstances has, in a way that is entirely realistic and sensible, expressed a deep-seated conviction that they’re being held and kept by God and that there is even joy in the midst of all of this.
Years ago, in speaking at a conference outside of San Francisco, I must have said something along these lines, because afterwards, a lady came to me to tell me a story which was so stirring to me that I wrote it down, and that’s why I’ve still remembered it. It went along these lines: She came to me, and she said, “A friend of mine was suffering through brain cancer and its treatments. His relationship with Jesus was such and his response to his trials were such that the nurse that was on duty wrote as a critical comment in his chart, ‘Mr. X appears to be inappropriately joyful.’” In other words, she could find no basic premise as to why there should be a radiance about this man. This is a spiritual geography I can observe from a distance. I haven’t been in that position. But when I see it, I long for it—that I might know this, that I might understand this, that I might live in the light of this.
