SEEK NOT JOY BUT THE SOURCE OF JOY

SEEK NOT JOY BUT THE SOURCE OF JOY

I regard you as one of the women who strive together with me [the right reading] in the gospel. Very blessed place for a woman to be found in, that is, in fellowship with the apostle’s testimony. Many work who do not strive together with the apostle in the gospel. There is a remarkable connection between a soul’s enjoyment of a truth, and the purpose and zeal in the propagation of it, The latter indicate the measure and nature of the former. If it be the benefit of the gospel which occupies me, my zeal, at best, will be but to make known the benefit of it, and there will be a great deal of effort with this.

^[p. 111] But as one gets into the counsel of God in the gospel, there will be, with increased sense of its greatness, a corresponding sense of the opposition to it, and therefore a girding up of one’s loins to resist. The one is more aggressive, the other more unyielding: one is a meteor, the other a star. When your heart is settled in the purpose of God, there will be an evenness.

You must take care not to live on your enjoyment of divine things; enjoyment is not creative; it is the counsel and love of God which sets you where there is fulness of joy. You must not seek the joy, but rest in the place where He has set you and in Him by whom you are entitled to this great joy. If you seek joy you are, even if you reach it, only like a meteor, a brilliant light for a time, but the star possesses light and imparts it. I do not think that joy of itself is the highest state, though I think that enjoying the Lord, He Himself filling my cup, is perfect bliss. I find I am joyful when I am conscious that Christ is sufficient — “no bread” but Jesus only (see Matthew 16: 1 - 10), and I do not believe any joy can surpass this. Prayer, ministry of the word, everything which contributes to supplant any rivals to Him, and to give Him the throne of my heart undisturbedly, help on my joy; but, if these things are not ministering to me, I do not lose my joy, though I may grieve that souls are not helped, but I have not lost my own portion, though there be nothing around to add to me. The darker the night, and the less I receive from others, the more am I called upon to render to all. Should I become dark, or depressed, because the darkness is great and oppressive? No, this is the very time for the true heart to “strive together with me in the gospel”, as the apostle says, and when he wrote that he was in prison! If you only seek enjoyment for yourself, you will be at best but a meteor, which vanishes in the darkness, but if you rest in the fact that Christ can and does fill your cup, you will, like the bee, gather honey in the summer time; and like her too, have it in store in the winter. I might be oppressed and grieved by trying meetings, for instance, but if I were thereby to lose my joy I should only add to the general disorder. I am most thankful for the fellowship of meetings, but I am not dependent on ^[p. 112] them: I come to help them and to receive, but if my help be not accepted, my joy in the Lord does not leave me, but remains with me. I think you judge yourself, or rather your state by the amount of your joy, this, I believe, is unwise. I judge myself as to whether Christ is enough for me, and I do not raise the question of my joy at all; but I find that when He is enough my joy is full, I am rejoicing in the Lord, for He fills my cup. If my heart be full of life I must be warm and healthy.