OUR JOY IN GOD
The wisdom of the fathers
OUR JOY IN GOD
There is a joy which we may have in God, known as intrinsic, Divine joy—that is the joy which flows out through Jesus into us by virtue of our relation to God. This joy arises from certain gifts and graces which God bestows upon us. When God, through Jesus, forgives us our sins, there springs up our first spiritual joy. He removes the load of guilt from the conscience, and gives us a sweet sense of reconciliation, assuring us that He loves us, and that His wrath against our sinful acts is past.?
Then, after seasons of heart-searching and inward grief over the hidden evils of the heart, Jesus is revealed to us a complete Cleanser, and we are made conscious that the secret chambers of the heart are purified by His precious blood, and the Holy Spirit floods the soul with a sweet sense of inward purity. Then there springs up a heavenly joy far deeper and stronger than the sense of pardon. It may be more quiet and interior, but is stronger and more satisfactory.?
Then as the Holy Spirit reveals to us God’s love for us personally—His minute and immutable care over us in every detail of life—and brings us in touch with God’s fidelity by showing us in so many ways how He has kept His covenant with us, then our joy in the Lord increases. As life goes on, and we see more clearly God’s dominion over us, how He rewards His servants even in this world, how He punishes our disobedience, how He often extends His chastisement into the little details of life with such precision and appropriateness as to make us even admire and love the way He corrects us—all this only draws us more closely to Himself.?
There is a holy joy in the knowledge of His dominion over us. There is a joy in every grace which the Holy Spirit imparts to us in the conscious possession of the graces and in the exercise of them. All these forms of joy might be termed the joys of grace, including the joys of pardon, cleansing, filling, healing, correcting, guiding and preparing us for the heavenly world.??
from "Our Own God" by G.D. Watson)