Fighting for joy

At the end of my last post, I wrote that I find my joy in Christ. This is true...now. For so many years, it wasn't. I believed in Christ and His saving grace, but I didn't find my joy there. I had to learn to fight for joy. There's definitely a reason God didn't send me to medical school until I was 26.

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life. - 1 Timothy 6:12

So, how do we know that fighting for joy is a good fight? John Piper outlines 5 parameters for us.

1. It is a good fight because the enemy of our joy is evil. The enemy is unbelief, and the satanic forces behind it, and the sins that come from it.

2. It is a good fight because we are not left to our own strength in the fight. When a child of God fights for joy in God, God himself is the one behind that struggle, giving the will and the power to defeat the enemy of joy. We are not left to ourselves to sustain the joy of faith. God fights for us and in us.

3. It is a good fight because it is not a struggle to carry a burden, but a struggle to let a burden be carried for us. The fight for joy is a struggle to trust God with the burdens of life. It's a fight for hope and peace and joy, which are all threatened by unbelief and doubt about God's promises.

4. The fight of faith is good because it does not involve self-exaltations but self-humbling. It's a way of saying that we are weak and desperately need the mercy of God. We do not like to say, "Apart from Christ I can do nothing - I cannot even rejoice," (John 15:5). But the very essence of faith is the admission of our sinful helplessness in the quest for eternal joy, and looking away from ourselves to God through Christ for the help and the joy that is in Him alone.

5. The fight for joy is good because by it God is greatly glorified. Fighting against all alien joy shows that we know the infinite worth of God.

My prayer is that you would find your joy in Him and Him alone and that you would fight for joy with every fiber of your being. Fight the good fight.