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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Mike Mason
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February 23 - May 2, 2019
Christian joy is rooted in darkness, chaos, meaninglessness, sorrow. Such joy isn’t just an airy ideal but a hard reality inextricably enmeshed with conditions in the real world. Separate joy from sorrow and there’s nothing left.
novelist Robert Cormier: “Don’t frown, don’t be worried, don’t be unhappy. God is letting you discover Him. Meanwhile let the days bring you what they will and don’t fuss or fret about who you are or what you are. Let the days come, the darkness and the light, and don’t concern yourself.”
The first part of repentance is to turn away with loathing from sin; the second part is to turn toward all the good things God offers in exchange. Indeed it’s impossible to turn away from greed without turning toward generosity, to put aside lust without taking up love, or to escape bitterness without embracing celebration.
Two great obstacles to joy are guilt and grudge: Either we feel guilty about our own sin, or we bear a grudge against someone else.
“Joy is a deep-seated sense of well-being, often arising in mirth.” Both parts of this definition are significant. Without a deep sense of well-being, one cannot achieve the release from self-consciousness that is joy’s prerequisite.
“Joy is a deep-seated sense of well-being, often arising in mirth.”
A decision to rejoice in the present changes not only the present, it also changes my view of the past and ignites my future with hope.
To accept joy as a commandment is to admit that it doesn’t come to one effortlessly but requires the cooperation of the will to achieve.
When joy’s heart breaks, it’s because joy feels free and safe enough to embrace everything, even the feeling of falling to pieces.
God kept changing my view of it, showing me more and more angles, with the result that joy became more readily accessible to me in all manner of situations. If I’m looking for a perfectly clear crystal stone on a beach, I may not find one, but if I’m looking for the crystalline in stones, I’ll see it gleaming everywhere.
It takes wiliness to be happy. When cornered, we have to look at all the options and find the way out. We have to know how to outwit the heebie-jeebies, how to think faster than our blackest thought. We must be able to slip out of the nooses of condemnation, lethargy, self-pity, confusion.
Joy seems to us an upbeat sort of feeling, but the direction of joy isn’t always up. Often to be joyful we must go down—down through the noise of our racing thoughts, down through the swirling chaos of c...
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down into the still waters and green pastures at t...
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What matters is that life is hard and I need to gratefully enjoy these sips from the cup of glory.
Happiness is realized joy.
Many Christians have invited Jesus into their heart but not into their soul or strength.
nothing. The merciful are happy precisely because they aren’t afraid of sin, either in themselves or others, and so are free to offer mercy.
as Luke’s inverted version of the Beatitudes warns: “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep” (6:25). If I go around thinking I’m rich in spirit, I receive no blessing. The blessing is obtained through owning my poverty.
As a parent, would you be pleased with dutiful children who went around with heavy hearts, oppressed with guilt and anxiety, fearful of suffering consequences for their every misdeed and never lightening up enough to share a laugh or a relaxing moment with you?
They’re only problems (in the sense of worries) if I’m not sure I can lick them.
But a lot of the time I don't Win Or t dent feed liked I do
It could even be argued that the happy feel pain more acutely than the unhappy, whose feelings are relatively numb.
Rather than settling inside a happy soul, pain moves through it as through a channel, and that channel is joy. Joy keeps pain moving.
If we want joy, we’ll have to fight for it, deliberately and fiercely.
Since spiritual warfare is not an option but a necessity, we might as well be happy about it.
Christ knows that rising up against the enemy of our souls is the only way we can be free. He’ll supply the weapons, the armor, the courage, the power, and everything else—but only we can supply the will to fight.
Joy doesn’t come from standing still but from making progress against opposition.
Battles in the Old Testament were against flesh-and-blood foes, but today the battleground has shifted. Jesus returned to heaven so that the Holy Spirit could come, and the Holy Spirit came so that the battle could move within.
The Lord could have destroyed all of Israel’s enemies Himself, without them having to lift a finger, but He wanted the Israelites to fight too and not be afraid. Why? Because the war is about not just defeating our enemy, but overcoming our fear.
Gratitude is an attitude of heart, whereas thanksgiving is an act. If the act of giving thanks is not performed, gratitude will not develop.
and says, “Do come in and make yourself at home.” Without gratitude, joy stands forever just outside the heart, making gestures that go unnoticed.
A joyful experience isn’t really ours until we call it to mind and give thanks for it.
Then, as the alcoholic cannot touch a drink, for the melancholic there can be no more trips to the unhappiness bar.
What a surprise to discover that a lingering, low-grade melancholy was actually my last line of defense against the love of God.
Moodiness was how I got back at God for everything that had ever gone wrong in my life.
In view of all this, how could I justify clinging to my self-centered moodiness? The answer was simple: Believe in sadness. Believe that a certain degree of melancholy is inevitable in this world. Believe that joy is brief and unsustainable, the rare exception rather than the rule. A capricious blessing, not a commandment.
If we believe joy is in short supply and must be carefully rationed, we will not rejoice.
We will not work for what we do not believe in, and this principle applies to happiness.
Resignation is a form of commitment.
Joy is like manna; it can’t be kept overnight. Yesterday’s joy will not do for today.
Each day we need a fresh outpouring of joy. Each day we need to be renewed by receiving the good news of the gospel all over again. This is the only way to live.
As I look into the eyes of all the sad ones around me, what I see most is the desire to be understood, to be heard, to be embraced, to be accepted just as one is. In a word, to be forgiven. Forgiven for what? For being so miserable, I suppose. What a vicious circle! People cannot be happy, it seems, until their unhappiness has been entirely accepted and absorbed by someone else. How is this possible?
He continues to say, not just to the physically sick but to the emotionally lame and
broken, “I understand your unhappiness, and I accept you. Now leave your misery and get up and rejoice!”
Every compromise with the world is a stench in the spotless house of joy.
Fundamentally our fear is not just of losing battles but of having to fight at all. Overcome the reluctance to fight, and the fear of losing dissipates.
If we find it difficult to comprehend such bloodthirstiness, perhaps we’ve struck a compromise with our own enemies. Failing to see the metaphor in these Old Testament stories, we reason that our enemies aren’t as bad as all that, and it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie. We may not even admit we have enemies, because that would mean having to fight them. It seems easier to live with a false peace, never confronting the evil that stalks us. Yet if we want to achieve joy, we must take up the sword.
I’ll continue to struggle with sin for the rest of my earthly life, and yet sin does not express who I really am. “If I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (Romans 7:20; emphasis added). Who is this “I” who does not sin? It’s the child of God, the new creature, holy, pure, inviolate, utterly beyond the reach of Satan.
Scientiests like to talk about the Big Bang, but little do they realize that the echoes they detect may be the shouts of angels.
At the end of Job’s trials the Lord comes to him, lifts his eyes to the stars and to all the other wonders of creation, and says in effect: While you’ve been depressed, Job, life has gone on in all its beauty and wonder.
Are you looking for joy? Look up at the stars. They’re remnants of the original creation as it sprang fresh from the furnace of God’s thoughts.
