April 2, 2010

• "I thirst! I thirst!" Whitefield's experience of joy (letter 51 on assurance & fighting for joy)

  Dear friends,

  A while back I wrote here of my experience of receiving joy in a way I'd not thought possible. I was so thirsty for something, but I didn't know what. I was desperate to know Him and His joy in a way I'd not known and God answered the cry of my heart. (I would also encourage you to read through from the beginning the progression of letters I've written on joy and assurance; all the links are here.) Besides my post on the Holy Spirit here, and my posts on dealing with sins and guilt, I believe these letters on assurance and fighting for joy are some of the most important things I've written.)

  A living experience of God does not exclude doctrine

  I hope you know that I'm not wishy-washy when it comes to doctrine and being rooted in the Bible; in fact, I just wrote about that a couple days ago here. We must be rooted in Biblical doctrine and we don't live on experiences alone, yet ... and this is a vital yet .... as the Holy Spirit appropriates the Word of God to our souls, we will have experiences. We are living beings. God is a living God. He died to give us life. His very life dwells in our souls. Is He the God of the dead or of the living? Has Jesus not come that we might have life and have it abundantly? Is it not our Lord's desire for us to have fullness of joy?

  I've written fifty letters now on this life of joy God desires for us to have. Jesus hung on the cross, He drank of the cup the Father appointed for Him, saying, "Not my will, but Yours, be done." He did that so we might know Him, not merely know about Him.

  John 17:1 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

  He drank so we might drink of Him:

  John 4:13  Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14  but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

  John 7:37  On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39  Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

  Have you received His Spirit in such a way? Is His joy springing up in you?

  Do you know Him or merely know about Him? Doctrine ––> Experience

  The more intimately we know Christ, we cannot help but know His joy and peace in believing (Romans 15:13). I know many of you are skeptical of experience and are rock-solid on doctrine. Yes, stay rock-solid on doctrine, stand fast in the faith, but I am praying that that doctrine would become alive to you, so living doctrine would burn in your hearts, hit your hearts and flow into your hearts and soften and crack your hearts open, so you might truly fall down on your knees before Him, to come to a point in your relationship with the living God where you can say with George Whitefield and me, "I cannot comprehend, but only adore Him." Have you ever broken your alabaster jars and washed His feet with your tears and wiped them with your hair? Has God's love for you in Jesus Christ ever really been shed abroad in your heart in such a way? Or do you sit back with contempt and skepticism when you see people like the sinful woman? Have you really understood what your sin cost Him?

  Luke 7:44 “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47  Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

  If you look through Paul's words, there are chock full of doctrine but they are also chock full of experience. Our doctrine cannot remain locked up in the head without it moving the heart. Paul wrote of believing with the heart (Romans 10). I think many who profess to be Christians have believed with the head and nothing more. We are to love Him with all our mind, yes, for sure, but then remember what else...to love Him with all our heart. That we might know Him and His joy. Joy that helped our Lord endure the rejections, the mockings, the trials, the taunting, the beatings, the scourging and finally death on the cross while despising the shame. This is the quality of joy our Father wants us to have as Jesus' joint-heirs. Jesus delighted to do His Father's will. He wants us to have that same delight and not to merely bite the bullet and perform His will like heartless, unfeeling automatons.

  The devil fights against our knowing the joy of the Lord

  A friend of mine who has also experienced that same joy and delight in walking with God reminded me that since so very often Christians seem so gloomy to the world, therefore "Jesus must seem like a hard taskmaster, seeing our countenance is so glum." I think that is a ploy the devil uses on us. Remember: He comes to steal, kill and destroy. Does the devil want us to enjoy God? Does the devil want us to rejoice in the God of our salvation? Certainly not! (See my posts here and here.) Besides those false gospels that twist the Word of God just a smidgen to sound truthful but in fact are full of lies, the devil's best weapon against the church and God's Kingdom is dull, gloomy and joyless Christians.

  In "The Soul's Espousals to Christ," Edward Pearse (1633-1673) wrote:

  The subtle deceiver, the devil, represents godliness also as a melancholy, gloomy, and vexatious life, in which it is impossible to have a happy hour. The individual must always hang down his head, torment himself, and make his life very bitter. Now it is certainly true that those whose eyes God opens to perceive and feel the burden of their sins, by true repentance, grieve and mourn. This is a sorrow according to God, a repentance which no one repents of. But after this sorrow, and their subsequent sufferings, there follows a more thorough and most inward consolation. O he who could have seen into the heart of these mourners before their conversion would have been convinced that before they were reconciled unto God in Christ they had never enjoyed a happy hour. In short, true godliness is a holy, glorious, and complete state which alone can cause us true delight.

  True delight! The Christian is intended to enjoy many a happy hour! Not only in heaven but in this world, starting in the here and now. Jesus said that whoever believes has life. Has life. Present tense! Eternal life begins as soon as we receive Him. As soon as His Spirit comes and makes us new creations in Him. We don't have to wait to enjoy Him. As soon as we have the Spirit's breath in us, we can begin to enjoy fullness of joy and experience pleasures forevermore. Why? Because He has promised never to leave us or forsake us. The Spirit has come to dwell with us forever. Yes, granted, in this world because we live in the flesh and dwell in a fallen world, we will have lapses, yet these things are possible to those who believe. There are gifts God has for each of His children if we would open our mouths, cry out, "I thirst!" and drink deeply of Him. Are you thirsting for such fullness of joy and true delight?

  My recent experience in Psalm 32

  Recently I had been somewhat blasé and discouraged (see here and here) and was thirsting, and by God's grace I was starting to come out of that and drink of Him. I was beginning to sing again and had begun to see my deficiency, how my joy was being snuffed out in large part due to my putting my eyes on the here and now rather than on the invisible Christ. That day I went away on an overnight retreat. Little did I know that God was preparing living waters in abundance for my thirst! Shortly after I arrived I attended the midday service during which I heard the words of Psalm 32 put to song...I sat and listened and there was the last portion of verse 5:

  ...You forgave the iniquity of my sin

  The tone of these services is quite traditional and subdued, but I sat there brought to tears, yet beaming and wanting to shout out loud when I heard those precious words: "You forgave the iniquity of my sin." Yes, He did! God forgave my sin for Christ's sake! All of it! I know He has, not just because His Word tells me so, but because His Spirit has written that truth on my heart. I had been in a funk of sorts for over a week, but didn't realize how bad it was, since I wasn't really despairing or feeling forsaken (like one time last fall which I wrote a little about here and here), though I did know I was flat in some sense. As I sat at that service and reflected on God the Father's forgiveness for me in Jesus Christ, I thought, "How wonderful God is. Not only to forgive me my sin but to let me know it in the heart!" I grieved that I'd lost that sense of joy, but it's never ever truly lost once you've got it. His gifts are without repentance. We must keep going back to His love for us in Christ that loved us while we were yet sinners (see here and here). Satan keeps doing all we can to make us forget what God has done for us in Christ.

  My desire for you

  I want all of you who are Christ's to know that inner assurance and witness of His Holy Spirit. That is my prayer for those of you who are burdened with guilt over your sin. This is my prayer for those of you who are burdened down with current circumstances. Jesus wants all of us to have His joy and have it abundantly. God does not want your sin to continue to plague you. God does not want your circumstances to plague you. What good are we if we keep our focus on our sin and on our circumstances? Yet imagine what good works we can be unleashed to walk in as we are freed to enjoy a settled assurance of the love of God in Christ and have the full assurance of hope, knowing full well that God has forgiven the iniquity of our sin once for all, that we are no longer His enemies, but His friends, His children by adoption. Surely He has forgiven us! Isaiah 53. Did our Savior bleed for our sin or not? Yes! Did the Passover Lamb offer Himself up as a perfect atonement for all our sins? Yes! God wants to consume all of us and embrace us with His joy unspeakable and full of glory, so we might truly shine as lights in this world, lights showing the confidence we have in the blood to cover all our sins and to remove all our shame and guilt once for all!

  George Whitefield's thirst and testimony of receiving joy

  In closing I'd like to leave you with George Whitefield's account of receiving such joy in 1735 at the age of 20. (Actually there are two different accounts; the first account was written in 1740, and the second in 1756 when he published a revised edition of his journals later in life. The bracketed sections were removed from the later edition.) At this time Whitefield had been struggling with guilt over his sin and sin nature.

  [...The blessed Spirit was all this time visiting my soul. All my former gross and notorious, and even my heart sins also, were not set home upon me, of which I wrote down some remembrance immediately, and confessed them before God morning and evening. Though weak, I often spent two hours in my evening retirements, and prayed over my Greek Testament and Bishop Hall's most excellent contemplations, every hour that my health would permit.] About the end of seven weeks, [1] [and after I had been groaning under an unspeakable pressure both of body and mind for above a twelve-month, God was pleased to set me free in the following manner. One day, perceiving an uncommon drought and a disagreeable clamminess in my mouth and using things to allay my thirst, but in vain, it was suggested to me, that when Jesus Christ cried out, "I thirst," His sufferings were near an end. Upon which I cast myself down on the bed, crying out, "I thirst! I thirst!" Soon after this, I found and felt in myself that I was delivered from the burden that had so heavily oppressed me. The spirit of mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was truly to rejoice in God my Savior; and for some time, could not avoid singing psalms wherever I was; but my joy gradually became more settled, and, blessed be God, has abode and increased in my soul, saving a few casual intermissions, ever since.Thus were the days of my mourning ended. After a long night of desertion and temptation, the Star which I had seen at a distance before, began to appear again, and the Day Star arose in my heart. Now did the Spirit of God take possession of my soul, and, as I humbly hope, seal me unto the day of redemption.]

  [1] "After having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan, and many months inexpressible trials by night and day under the spirit of bondage, God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold on His dear Son by a living faith, and, by giving me the spirit of adoption, to seal me, as I humbly hope, even to the day of everlasting redemption. But oh! with what joy––joy unspeakable––even joy that was full of, and big with glory, was my soul filled, when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God, and a full assurance of faith broken in upon my disconsolate soul! Surely it was the day of my espousals,––a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. At first my joys were like a spring tide, and, as it were, overflowed the banks. God where I would, I could not avoid singing psalms aloud; afterwards it became more settled––and, blessed be God, saving a few casual intervals, has abode and increased in my soul ever since. But to proceed." ––Edit., 1756.

  If you are thirsty, I urge you to tell your Savior and to cast yourself before Him. Our Good Shepherd is compassionate and never fails to hear the cries of His thirsty sheep. He will surely fill all of you who come to Him and drink!

  John 4:13  Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14  but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

  John 7:37  On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39  Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

  Revelation 22:17  And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

  
  

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  Related posts (these are only a few...please ask me or search my site if you have a specific question/concern):

  • Letter 1 on assurance and fighting for joy
  • Letter 18 on assurance and fighting for joy (my testimony of joy)
  • Letter 3 on assurance and fighting for joy (Jesus' desire vs. Satan's desire)
  • Letter 4 on joy (true joy is based on our relationship with God through Jesus Christ)
  • Letter 7 on assurance and fighting for joy (remember His love for us while we were sinners)
  • Letter 10 on assurance and fighting for joy (joy is for ALL!)
  • from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet...
  • Biblical mourning, assurance and false guilt

   

  Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

   

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