The Pursuit of Joy - Jonathan Edwards - from John Piper and C S Lewis

Thoughts from Jonathan Edwards:


....the end and goal of creation hangs on knowing God with our minds and enjoying God with our hearts.


The very purpose of the universe -- reflecting and displaying the glory of God -- hangs not only on true knowledge of God, but also on authentic joy in God.



"God is glorified," Edwards says, "not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in."



Here is the great discovery that changes everything. God is glorified by our being satisfied in Him.



The chief end of man is not merely to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, but to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.


The great divide that I thought existed between God's passion for His glory and my passion for joy turned out to be no divide at all, if my passion for joy is passion for joy in God.



God's passion for the glory of God and my passion for joy in God are one.



What follows from this, I have found, shocks most Christians; namely, that we should be blood-earnest -- deadly serious -- about being happy in God.



We should pursue our joy with such a passion and a vehemence that, if we must, we would cut off our hand or gouge out our eye to have it.



God being glorified in us hangs on our being satisfied in Him.

We quake at the fearful luke-warmness of our hearts.



We waken to the truth that it is a treacherous sin not to pursue that satisfaction in God with all our heats.



There is one final word for finding delight in the creation more than in the Creator: treason.



Edwards argued for this in a sermon that he preached on Song of Solomon 5:1....




     Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds  to their spiritual and gracious appetites...they ought to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures...


     Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can't be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value...endeavor to promote spiritual appetites....there is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.



--From  A God-Entranced Vision of All Things, The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, by John Piper and Justin Taylor







C S Lewis on the same subject....



If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds that our desires not too strong, but too weak.



We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offers of a holiday at the sea.


We are far too easily pleased.



      -- From The Weight of Glory, by C S Lewis