JOY

​Hudson Taylor, 

missionary to China. 

Oh, it is joy to feel Jesus living in you; to find your heart all taken up by Him; to be reminded of His love by His seeking communion with you at all times, 
not by your painful attempts to abide in Him. He is our life, our strength, our 
salvation… I am no longer anxious about anything… for He, I know, is able to 
carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places 
me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest 
position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is 
sufficient. So if God should place me in great perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength. I have no fear that His resources will be unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine—for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me. 

mind blown

“When we enjoy God, we enjoy him in his eternity without any flux… Time is fluid, but eternity is stable; and after many ages, the joys will be as savory and satisfying as if they had been but that moment first tasted by our hungry appetites. When the glory of the Lord shall rise upon you, it shall be so far from ever setting, that after millions of years are expired, as numerous as the sands on the seashore, the Sun, in the light of whose countenance you shall live, shall be as bright as at the first appearance; he will be so far from ceasing to flow, that He will flow as strong, as full, as at the first communication of himself in glory to the creature. God is always vigorous and flourishing; a pure act of life, sparkling new and fresh rays of life and light to the creature, flourishing with a perpetual spring, and contenting the most capacious desire; forming your interest, pleasure, and satisfaction; with an infinite variety, without any change or succession; he will have variety to increase delights, and eternity to perpetuate them; this will be the fruit of the enjoyment of an infinite and eternal God.”

—Stephen Charnock, Discourse on the Eternity of God

fibonaccispiralsblack

Eternity, with all its years,
Stands present in Thy view;
To Thee there’s nothing old appears;
Great God! There’s nothing new.

Issac Watts

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/g/r/e/greatgoh.htm

regeneration

We don’t need superficial religion.
We need supernatural regeneration.
We’re dead in sin, and we need to be born again.
We need a new heart.

We have this idea of salvation, as getting out of the line going to hell, and getting in the line to go into heaven, and we’d really kind of rather be enjoying those things over there, but we’re going to do this over here to save our skin. That’s not salvation.

SALVATION
is a
revolutionary new taste capacity
where you realize that the world doesn’t satisfy,
and Christ does,
and you drink from His water,
and you eat from His bread,
and you say,
“Why would I go back to that?
I’ve got CHRIST! And a new heart!”

We don’t conquer sin by working hard to change our deeds. We conquer sin by trusting Christ to change our desires, and He gives us a new heart. He satisfies the thirst of our soul, and when He does, He breaks the power of desire for sin.

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, 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 our desires not too strong, but too weak.”
C.S. Lewis

Regeneration. It’s like you’ve been wandering in a desert, and you’re looking for water in all these different places: relationships, money, greed, success, approval. We’re looking, and then, regeneration is when we realize that the water is found in Christ, and we drink, and we drink deeply. We come to Him.
He’s bread from heaven. Living water.

–David Platt
Secret Church # 10, Crucifixion, Salvation, and the Glory of God
www.secretchurch.org