Fighting for Joy in Christ--especially when I don't feel like it.

The Following was taken from DesiringGod.org:

When You Don’t Feel Like It, Take Heart

November 12, 2009 | By: Jon Bloom | Category: Commentary

Did you wake up not feeling like reading your Bible and praying? How many times today have you had to battle not feeling like doing things you know would be good for you?

While it’s true that this is our indwelling sin that we must repent of and fight against, there’s more going on.

Think about this strange pattern that occurs over and over in just about every area of life:

• Good food requires discipline to prepare and eat while junk food tends to be the most tasty, addictive, and convenient.
• Keeping the body healthy and strong requires frequent deliberate discomfort while it only takes constant comfort to go to pot.
• You have to make yourself pick up that nourishing theological book while watching a movie can feel so inviting.
• You frequently have to force yourself to get to devotions and prayer while sleeping, reading the sports, and checking Facebook seems effortless.
• To play beautiful music requires thousands of hours of tedious practice.
• To excel in sports requires monotonous drills ad nauseum.
• It takes years and years of schooling just to make certain opportunities possible.
• This goes on and on.

The pattern is this: the greater joys are obtained through struggle and pain, while brief, unsatisfying, and often destructive joys are right at our fingertips. Why is this?

Because, in great mercy, God is showing us everywhere, in things that are just shadows of heavenly things, that there is a great reward for those who struggle through (Hebrews 10:32-35). He is reminding us repeatedly each day to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Each struggle is an invitation by God to follow in the footsteps of his Son, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

Those who are spiritually blind only see futility in these things. But for those who have eyes to see, God has woven hope (faith in future grace) right into the futility of creation (Romans 8:20-21). Each struggle is a pointer saying, “Look! Look to the real Joy set before you!”

So when you don’t feel like doing what you know is best for you, take heart and don’t give in. Your Father is pointing you to the reward he has planned for all who endure to the end (Matthew 24:13).

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

Persecuted Church

Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. The following is from the blogspot of Dr. David Sills:

The devil hates the advance of the gospel into areas that he has kept blinded for so long and so he fights hard to resist it. Yet, the gates of hell cannot prevail against the onslaughts of those who storm them in Jesus’ name. But, the hard-won advance comes at a high price. A missionary who serves in North Africa told me that as far as he knows, every Muslim he has won to the Lord has been martyred. He also told me that in one North African country the life expectancy of a new believer is forty-five days. This is not news to the new believers; they know that this is a possible outcome when they pray to receive Christ.

We hear such reports and we are sobered. We shake our heads in wonder and horror that such could be the case. Our mission agencies seek strategies and methodologies to protect their missionaries and the new converts. We do so because we live in such luxury, security, and ease that suffering for Jesus sake is virtually inconceivable. We react with grief to news of martyrdom as if it were an unforeseen, unimaginable tragedy.

We apparently have forgotten that Paul told Timothy, “In fact everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Or that Jesus Himself said, “In the world you will have tribulation.” We haven’t time to rehearse all the passages that describe how God’s people throughout the Bible suffered for being His. Yet our lives are so isolated from the New Testament expectations for Christianity that when we see others faithfully serving and suffering for it, we tend to think that they brought it on themselves for being so radical. Hebrews 10 commends those who stood with the suffering believers during their hour of persecution. May we join the ranks of the suffering – or the ranks of those who identify with those who do – however the Lord chooses.

There is a great tragedy in suffering, tribulation, and persecution for Christ’s sake. However, the tragedy is not what we normally think it is. The greatest tragedy of suffering, tribulation, and persecution for Christ is that we are strangers to it. “In fact everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”

In This Manner, Pray.

In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the
power and the glory forever.
Amen.

Three things struck me as I read those verse from Matthew 6:9-13.

1st: God's utter holiness, power, and dominion/glory...He is WORTHY to be praised!

2nd: Our utter frailty before God. Ever notice how the Lord's Prayer magnifies God and shrinks down humanity? "Our debts, give us...our daily bread, ...us into temptation." We are dust. We are dependent on God's daily power and grace. The degree we do not seek His strength in prayer, will be the degree we fracture our daily fellowship with our life source--God.

3rd: The desire to see His kingdom come on earth should be paramount in our own lives...so much so, that we break out into spontaneous prayer CRYING OUT for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth.