Day 34: Joy's Source (post 2)

I'm still chipping away at John Piper's book "Desiring God." For such a joy-seeking title and pursuit, it's a dense and academic read. However, it's also thought-provoking and convicting.

A prayer for today:

Lord, 
I long to feel sufficient desire for You, 
to thirst for Your presence, 
to crave membership in the audience of Your throne room, joined with the ecstatic throngs who revel in praising You.

Yet here I sit in my daily life:
No crisis of health or finance or parenting or career. No anxieties gnawing at my heart.
The leisure to perform my duties at a less-than-frantic pace, to plan my day with a cup of tea beside me and fuzzy slippers on my feet. 
I am comfortable. 
But this is not joy.

Once again, I have settled for a cup of lukewarm tea instead of craving Your promised feast, Your Living Water. I have settled for a brief hiatus from suffering and conflict: sufficient health, sufficient happiness, sufficient peace. Temporary "okay-ness". 
Once again, I have set my sights too low.

Teach me to set my heart on You and You alone:
my Treasure, my Goal, my Feast.
Teach me to settle for nothing less than You. 
Keep me discontented with life's little pleasures to remind me of Your eternal pleasures: A life with You. Real joy.

I will run with perseverance the race marked out for me. I will fix my eyes on You, the Author of my salvation, my Prize, my Treasure.

Day 33: Tracing JOY to its Source

During the summer months, I became more and more convicted as to WHAT gives me joy. The sources of joy I typically describe in my "100 Days of Joy" experiment are the gifts, not the Giver. They are sweet gifts, often quiet and unexpected and certainly worth celebrating, but real joy will elude anyone whose only sources are temporal things/circumstances/feelings. Am I confusing joy with happiness?

This week, I began reading John Piper's book Desiring God. This excellent book (which will probably take me months to read) has even further revealed the emptiness of pursing joy from secondary sources and has reminded me to pursue the true Source of joy. Piper says,

Test yourself here. There are many professing Christians who delight in God's gifts, but not God. Would you want to go to heaven if God were not there, only His gifts?

Piper reminds us that the gift of conversion results in us, like the man in the parable of the hidden treasure, joyfully selling everything we have to buy the only treasure we really desire. That treasure is fellowship with God; the selling is not necessarily literally getting rid of our possessions but prizing fellowship with God above all other blessings.

Do I find such perfect joy in God that I don't need anything else? Not family, not health, not material possessions or success or the opinion of others? I certainly believe in God and aim every day to live a life that glorifies Him. But can I honestly say that my joy is fulfilled in knowing God? 

I am convicted. I will continue to faithfully celebrate God's blessings every day with my "100 Days" entries. But, at the same time, I will trace these little joys to their source by praying that God performs a miracle in my heart. I want a joy that is complete in simply knowing God.

Day 32: Renewed Goals

I'm back! My summer slump is over (I hope). I plan to be productive and continue practicing my writing with this blog. Even more, I want to renew my focus on finding joy in all circumstances. I've got stories to tell from the summer, and I plan to search for joy every day.

But today's goal is just to write a post, short and simple. I am thankful for renewed goals, new chances, a return to our fall schedule when I can more easily set aside writing time (without "Mom? Mom? Mom, where are you? Hey, Mooooooooooooom!").