Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: March 22nd

JOY THE RESULT OF FAITH

"Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My Name: ask, and ye shall receive that your joy may be fulfilled,’’ - John 16:24

The act of faith is the condition of joy. Joy springs from the contemplation or experience of something calculated to excite it; and the more real and permanent and all-sufficient that object, the fuller and surer the joy. But where can we find such an object as Him with whom we are brought into union by our faith? Jesus Christ is all-sufficient, full of pity, full of beauty and righteousness, all that we can desire, - and all this for ever. Union with Him provides an object on which all the fervor of the heart may pour itself out. In Him our faith grasps the absolutely good and perfect. Confidence is joy. But when confidence fastens on such a Christ, it is joy heightened and glorified. If we have the certain knowledge that the dear Lord died for us, and live realizing His power and sanctifying Spirit, His constant tenderness and more than womanly sympathy and affection, then nothing can come to us that will deprive us of our gladness as long as our hearts are anchored upon Him only. Our gladness will be accurately co-temporaneous with our trust. As long as we are exercising faith, so long shall we experience joy; not one instant longer. It is like a piano, whose note ceases the moment you lift your finger from the key; not like an organ, in which the sound persists for a time after.

The moment you turn away your eye from Jesus Christ, that moment does the light fade from your eye. It is like a landscape lying bathed in the sunshine; a little white cloud creeps across the face of the sun, and all the brightness is gone from leagues of country in an instant. As long as, and not a hair’s breadth longer than, our faith in Christ is exercised, so long have we gladness. You cannot live upon yesterday’s faith, nor furbish up again old experience to produce new joy. Ever and ever you must draw afresh from the fountain, and secure constant joy by continuance of renewed confidence in Him.

There is a sufficient reason for the failure of most Christian lives to attain this perfection of joy as their habitual possession, in the interrupted and fragmentary character of their faith. If we are only exercising it by fits and starts, we shall have only short and far-between visits of gladness in our lives. The measure of our faith is the measure of our joy. He that soweth sparingly of the former shall reap sparingly of the latter. And the duration of our joy depends on the duration of our faith. What wonder, then, that instead of its continual sunshine, we should have but occasional glimpses of its brightness, and that our skies should mostly be weeping or grey with clouds? The reason for such imperfect and interrupted joy is simply our imperfect and interrupted faith.