The Joy No Words Can Tell

Thursday, April 20, 2023

You love him even though you have never seen him.  Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.  The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.  This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you.  They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ’s suffering and his great glory afterward.  They were told that their messages were not for themselves, but for you.  And now this Good News has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.  It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen.  1 Peter 1:8-12

There is much about life that is indescribable with just words.  It’s something like seeing something so funny, but when you try to retell the story there’s no way to recapture the moment with mere words.  Have you ever used the phrase:  Well, you would have to see it for yourself?  I believe the kind of joy Apostle Peter was writing about is just that… “unspeakable…full of God’s glory.”

Today is our first grandchild’s birthday.  She’s the upside-down one in the picture, taken when we got to have most of our grands in one place at one time.  

Her smile helps understand how you can’t explain extreme happiness. 

I was there when Chelsea was born.  For many months I was anxious, nervous, and wondering what it would be like to be a Grandpa.  It was like an extended version of Christmas Eve….you know it’s going to be good, but you still haven’t got a clue.  Then it happens, and you know life will never be the same again.

Peter wrote to believers who had never laid eyes on Jesus, yet the Apostle knew of their love for the Savior, and how they trusted their past, present, and eternity to the Lord’s keeping.  And it brought them unbounded, unending joy!  That’s a lot of words nobody can understand, unless they have been there.

For You Today 

If you have trusted Christ with your life, and invited Him to be your Lord, all of today’s devotion makes perfect sense.  If you’ve not yet trusted Jesus, I could write a ton of books about it all, and the rejoicing it brings to your heart, and you would still not truly see the joy your heart will know, when you know Him. 

It’s something like watching someone else bite into a wonderfully fresh apple, or peach…all their words about how wonderful it tastes still leaves you wondering.  Words are no substitute for personal experience.  The Psalmist said it best:

Taste and see that the Lord is good.  Psalm 34:8a

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Rottweiler Joy  and  Joy Unspeakable  and   Better Than Baby Toes 

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

When God is Your Whole World

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Friday, October 11, 2019

Praise the Lord!  I will thank the Lord with all my heart as I meet with his godly people.  How amazing are the deeds of the Lord!  All who delight in him should ponder them.  Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty.  His righteousness never fails.  He causes us to remember his wonderful works.  How gracious and merciful is our Lord!  He gives food to those who fear him; he always remembers his covenant.  He has shown his great power to his people by giving them the lands of other nations.  All he does is just and good, and all his commandments are trustworthy.  They are forever true, to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.  He has paid a full ransom for his people.  He has guaranteed his covenant with them forever.  What a holy, awe-inspiring name he has!  Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom.  All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom.  Praise him forever!  Psalm 111:1-10

The amazement, wonder, awe, and gratitude for and to God flowing from the Psalmist’s pen are a sum of that in which my heart wants to lose itself.  I have lived long enough, and sinned big enough to know the vast difference between who is God and who is not.  And yet, my heart aspires to immerse all of who I am in God’s love, compassion, strength, and wisdom.  In short, I desire to desire Him more than anything.  I want to be (as Charles Wesley wrote), lost in wonder, love, and praise.[2]  Paradoxically, there also exists a side of me that fears to come that close; God is awesome, and His power is without measure.  Should God decide to not receive me with open arms, the mere thought of being in His presence immediately leaps to what terrible fate would become of a poor sinner like me.  (Toasted like a pop tart comes to mind!)

But God’s Word disagrees with that “toast” deduction.  Consider the evidence:

To a wicked culture that only paid lip service to being God’s people he said through the prophet Malachi: 

Return to me, and I will return to you.(Malachi 3:7)

Before David was king he was hounded by Saul, chased into the wilderness, living in caves, an outcast, man without a country.  David considered his experience and wrote: 

Taste and see that the Lord is good Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!(Psalm 34:8)

To His dull-minded disciples who just could never quite get it, Jesus said: 

…those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.(John 6:37)

To crowds listening Jesus offered:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you.  Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.(Matthew 11:28-29)

And, to anyone who ever did choose to come close, on bended knee, willing to allow God to make Him their whole life, He said:

…I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.(Hebrews 13:5 KJV)

For You Today

It’s never smart to approach God casually, as if there is some slight chance that you can take Him or leave Him.  But, when you’ve made up your mind that you’re long overdue in getting things straight between your Creator and you…remember all those invitations to come close; God loves you too much to go back on that word!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] Charles Wesley, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, The United Methodist Hymnal, (1989, UMC Publishing House, Nashville), 384

Opening the Vault

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Tuesday, September 3, 2019

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.  The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.  Psalm 119: 71-72

Psalm 119 is the middle of Holy Scripture, and, arguably is the center of attention for anyone who wants to understand the treasure that is to be found in God’s Word.  It is the decrees of God (God’s ways) that are more precious than all the gold in Ft. Knox, or all the wisdom and kingdoms of mankind.

The Psalmist gives vent to the adage that true wisdom is best learned by experience, and harsh experiences are the most dramatic teachers.  It only takes one hurricane tearing the roof off your house to learn it might be smarter to live a little more inland!

But information alone, learned by way of tragedy as teacher or by studying what has happened to others, is like having access to the Internet, it is merely potential instruction.  For information to be truly useful, instruction must be implemented.  For instance, I could watch people eat apples for years, examining their technique (slicing, or putting it in a blender, smearing it with peanut butter).  I’d have plenty of information…all useless, unless I act on it; if I never open my mouth and take a bite, I’ll never know the taste of an apple. 

Such is the nature of God’s Word.  Knowing the verses, even committing to memory the entire 66 books from Genesis to Revelation is a waste of time and brain power if the decrees of God are not acted upon.  In short, if we don’t live by the book, we have cast the book aside (along with its Author).

As a pastor I’ve talked with a lot of people about the Bible, and the sum of my experience is that people fall into about three categories where intimacy with God’s Word is concerned:

1.      Committed Relationship – Those who have been serious students of the Bible and seriously bent their will to God have found there is no other way of life that will satisfy their soul’s desire.  They’ve found what they were created to be and know they could never live differently.

2.      Seeking for Answers – There is a curiosity that drives us to find the level of soul-satisfaction of those who are in the first category…committed relationship to God.  It is like the person who has been burned in a marriage (or two) and yet still has hope to find a relationship like the ones that last a lifetime and make a lifetime sweet.  This person knows Scripture has all the answers they need, but they get distracted and muddle between faith and unbelief.

3.      Satisfied with the Ignorance of unbelief – In this group (a group which is growing at an alarming rate) we have those who have had something of a brush with faith, have even joined a church at some point, but never seriously searched the Scriptures with an open heart for themselves.  They’ve talked with unbelieving friends who haven’t got a clue where to find 2 Corinthians, but have deep opinions about God, and are arrogant enough to pass-around their ignorance as wisdom…but they have no first-hand relationship with God.

For You Today

Like the game show host on TV who asks the contestant which door they’ll choose…will it be:

door number 3…a lifetime of never finding out the truth of God’s Word because you’re too ignorant to search for yourself

door number 2…a lifetime of distracted dissatisfaction, wondering what’s next

door number 1…a committed relationship of faith and obedience to God your creator?

Scripture invites us to door number 1:

Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.  Psalm 34:8

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of  Pixabay.com     Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

Taste and See

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Thursday, October 25, 2018

Taste and see that the Lord is good.  Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!  Psalm 34:8(NLT)

Let’s unpack those words.

Taste

To “taste” here is literally to perceive by experiencing.  It involves a conscious decision to be involved.  I recall a TV commercial years ago for Life cereal.  Some boys were reluctant to taste the new cereal their Mom had brought home, so they tried it on their little brother, Mikey.  

This is so like beginning a relationship with God.  Many people are more than willing to give their opinion about God without first knowing Him.  It is the theological equivalent of “Monday-morning quarterbacks”.  Guys who could hardly find the practice field and warmed the bench for two seasons in high school presume to know how the professionals should do it.  People who claim to know all about living the spiritual life, but have never even had an authentic conversation with God, have not “tasted”; they have only looked.  “Tasting God” means taking Him at His word.  It’s a leap of faith that says:  “I commit my life to you, what will you do with me?”

See

If “tasting” is to perceive by experience, “seeing” is knowing by that same experience.  There is something that happens when you take that leap of faith – something on the inside that validates the closeness of God.  There’s an old expression of doubt that goes:  I’ll believe it when I see it.  But with God it’s the other way around; you will never see until you believe!

And what is it that we “see” anyway?  What we see is that the LORD is good!

Trust and be Happy

To take refuge is to trust.  Happiness with the general direction and outcome of life is a matter of trust…always.  That is because we cannot see the future.  But God can…and so trusting our lives and future to the One who holds that future is the only sane decision in the playbook!

In some of John Wesley’s sermons he described an experimental aspect of religious activities – an “experiencing” of God’s power in one’s life.  Henry Blackaby is well-known for his Experiencing God writings.  Blackaby contends that when we cooperate with the move of God in our lives we grow as a strong and useful disciple.  It is this that we see here; a person “tastes” by committing himself in a leap of faith to God’s control over his life.  Because of this “leap” there is a “seeing” a knowing deep-down that God is truly good.  Faith is born strong in the inner self, and this leads to a contented heart and soul – happiness within.

David knew what he was talking about.  When he was tasting and seeing and trusting he was among the most blessedly happy of men.  When he got away from God and trusted in his own ways, his own strength and desires he became the most miserable wretch on the planet.  He could write about being incredibly blessed, and he could also recount the emptiness of having forfeited the presence of God’s Holy Spirit.

For You Today

Now, as much as we can talk all day about this, it does little to stir your taste buds.  It is like this apple – I hold it and describe it, while I eat it.  

Chomp!   Oh, it’s delicious … juicy … crunchy … sweet.  It’s got that tiny hint of tartness that comes from upper Connecticut orchards.  

Ummm…boy that’s good.

Did you taste it?  Wasn’t it good?  Did you enjoy that superb taste when I bit into it?  Are you satisfied?  Happy with that?

Of course, not…you watched, your mouth may have watered; you may have tried to ignore my rudeness at eating without offering you some…but you didn’t get near it, did you?  You’re just as empty as when I started. 

In order for you to see how good it is, you’ve got to taste for yourself.

You, uh, chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com