Joy flowing from Pain.

Take my heart and let it forever be your royal throne.

“While you offer Me your heart, I have already captured it within the warmth of My love for you. You would never be able to truly give Me all your love if I had not made it possible. The key has always been the death on the cross of My precious son Jesus. As His heart was ripped out by the sin of the world and My irrepressible wrath being spent there on him it opened a glorious golden highway for My love to flow to you and whoever would desire to have it. It is only then, as My love overwhelms you that you can truly release your heart to Me. But, yes I receive your heart, your love and adoration with great pleasure this morning. However do not keep My love to yourself alone, share it with those you come into contact with so they can also benefit from it.”

We proceed today with John in 16:16-24. John has been explaining in the last three chapters how the disciples’ and our relationship with God would proceed after He departs. He now comes to the hard part. He has first got to go to the cross before this will be put into place. Although He has been warning them for some time that this must happen, they had obviously not fully taken it in. I suppose among other reasons the almost automatic response we often have as humans to bad news is denial, shutting out the full implications from our minds.

After being homeschooled on a cosy Karoo farm until at 11 years of age in standard 6 I was sent 500 km away to a very strict boarding school in P.E. I had never learned to relate to other children and easily became the target of all the bullies. The next 5 years were a nightmare of rejection and loneliness which I finally escaped from with huge relief. I have often thought back on that time and have thanked God that He took me through that so that I could, in some very small measure also experience the rejection Jesus must have felt while here with us on earth.

So here in this passage Jesus is trying to share with His close friends what was about to happen. Yet He wanted them to get this news into the full perspective of the bigger picture. I like the way He uses childbirth as an example of huge joy following great pain. Every woman who has had a child will attest to this amazing feeling of joy after the intense pain of the birth process.

The most comforting words are in vs 22 “So with you: Now is the time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice and no one will take that away from you”. The joy of the full realisation of what Jesus accomplished on our behalf transcends any pain we may ever feel after that. This is a joy which is really supernatural and cannot be explained to someone outside of the kingdom. It is the final outcome, the background music as it were of our whole relationship with our loving Father through Jesus.

The next two verses complete the picture with a repetition of His promise of the Father’s attitude towards them and to us as His very own adopted children. Ask and keep on asking and as He responds it will flow into that supernatural joy. The joy of the knowledge of a secure and loving relationship which will extend beyond our human suffering into all eternity.

I have realised, especially lately that I have to remind myself of that joy as often as possible. It is so easy to focus one’s mind on the difficulties and fears of this world that they swallow up the very reality of that joy that God wants us to experience. Rejoice in the Lord always is the instruction that Paul gives in Philippians ch 4:4 but then he goes on to admonish us to think correctly in vs 10ff. This actually develops that part of your brain so that it can become your default way of thinking. But it takes practice. But, again we have a “Helper” and coach who continually encourages us.

This section on discipleship has brought me to see this as a whole package which should guide us in our everyday walk with God. So let’s continue to practice. Until I see you all again next week, may you be blessed.