Pray and Fight for Joy in God
I think for all Christians—and I want to say most people, but all Christians—the desire to rejoice in God is a species of joy in God. It’s a seed. You think of a seed and a tree. I think a seed is a real thing. It’s life, but it’s different from a tree. You want the tree to be there. It gives you shade. The birds can sing in it. The squirrels can hop around in it. But that seed is real.
So I want to encourage people that if they have an authentic desire for joy in God, then they do have a species of joy in God. So that’s the first thing I would do is just to encourage them, because I’m pretty strong on the fact that you need joy in God. So I need to find ways of helping people who think they don’t have it.
John Piper’s influential work on Christian Hedonism, Desiring God, challenges the belief that following Christ requires the sacrifice of pleasure. Rather, he teaches that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
The second thing I would say is do I.O.U.S. I’ve got these little acronyms that I use to keep my soul from sinking. They’re all prayers. So I’d say pray like this: Incline my heart to your testimonies. Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of your law. Unite my heart to fear your name. Satisfy me in the morning.
Those are all quotes from the psalms, and they’re all prayers. Incline my heart, open my eyes, unite my heart, and satisfy me. So cry out to God, and be patient. Some people are just wired to be gloomy Eeyore types and Puddleglumps who are never going to be the personality that looks bright and chipper. They’re not going to be that way. Their joy is going to look very different than others.
So fight for it, and embrace it when it comes. And if you’re dealing with somebody, don’t expect from them forms of outward expression that you may have that they may not have, and yet they may have the same depth of joy you do.
John Piper is the author of Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.
