Practical Steps in the Pursuit of Joy

It's amazing to me how once you have caught on to the secret of Christian hedonism, you bump into it again and again and again and again in the Word and in books about the Word and in life. So this morning, on my way through the Bible, my little program has me reading Ecclesiastes 9. Well, Ecclesiastes is very hard to understand, and so I pull Matthew Henry, this old Puritan commentator that has the whole Bible exposited in six volumes, I recommend them to you all, I pull down volume three, open it up to page 1034, and try to figure out what he thought Ecclesiastes 9 meant and hit this great sentence, Thy religious services, O Lord, no, thy religious services, speaking to the servant, thy religious services, when performed with holy joy, are pleasing to God. He loves to have his servants sing at their work.

It proclaims him a good master. Now, I couldn't have asked him to write anything more in keeping with what I've been trying to say than that. When our duties are performed with holy joy, they are pleasing to God.

He loves to have us sing at our work because it makes him look like a good master. That's Christian hedonism. That's all I've been trying to say.

And it's been said, it isn't new. I know the word Christian hedonism is new and you can drop it if you want. In fact, I haven't used it in one book, I don't think, since I wrote Desiring God back in 1986.

It doesn't hang on the name. The reality is all. So let's pray now as we begin that God would give us rest of soul tonight, that he would cause us to do our work, listening and speaking with joy, that that would show God to be a great master and that we would be deeply satisfied in him.

Let's pray. O Lord, as we begin this fourth and final session together on Christian hedonism, I pray that I would do my part with joy because I really do delight in being your servant tonight. I am so glad to have you as a master.

There is none other in all the universe that I would have as a ruler and master, creator and Lord over my life. And I am so glad that you are the kind of master who is shown to be glorious in the joy of the service of your service. Lord, magnify your worth, your beauty, your goodness tonight through my part and through the good that I pray will come to those who listen.

In Jesus' powerful and worthy name, I pray. Amen. Well, let me give a couple of words of summary and then our focus tonight is on the big how, the practical steps of how you move forward in this kind of joy.

The summary would be possible in terms of vertical hedonism and horizontal hedonism, and I summarized it last week, so I'll try to keep the summary real short and not rob time from the practical this week. Vertical hedonism can be summarized under God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. Therefore, make it your vocation in life to be satisfied fully in God.

Do not despise the yearnings of your heart for happiness and for fulfillment. Just beware of fleeting, inadequate, dying sources of satisfaction and only let yourself be satisfied on the one source. In his presence, his fullness of joy at his right hand are pleasures forevermore, namely God.

That's vertical hedonism. Horizontal hedonism says that that joy in God reaches its consummation when we expand it out to include others. There is a grace driven impulse in the heart of joy in God that wants to enlarge that joy, seeing others embrace it, experience it and look to him for it.

And when our life becomes a means to other people experiencing joy in God, our joy in God is doubled in theirs. And therefore, you can never be settled here on Sunday morning after a glorious worship experience and say that was the end. It isn't.

The end is when others do it with us and we won't experience the climax of our joy until all that God has intended, all the sheep that are not yet of this fold are brought into that worshipping community and we stand before the lamb and then reflected back to us in their faces and their voices and their acts of adoration. Our joy will be complete in God. All the manifold ways of love are instruments of drawing others into the enjoyment of God.

Therefore, love is always a God centered reality in Christian hedonism. You can't talk of loving others if you're not doing it for God's sake. Love in the Bible is a God centered reality.

Well, that's the summary of what we've seen. Now, the question I have is, how do you cultivate a heart like that? And I hope there have been helps along the way, but I want to spend all the time tonight asking that question. And I've got about how many? Oh, 12 suggestions.

I don't know if I'll have time to get through them all, but I'll start and do the best I can. How do you find, cultivate, get, maintain a heart that is that satisfied in God and that bent on delighting and loving other people? Okay, number one. First, realize that it is a fight to be fought and it is a work to be wrought.

Not just once, but every day until the day you die or Jesus comes. Now, I say that to guard you against the misunderstanding that there is a crisis experience to be sought after which you've got it. That's not true in my judgment.

There are crisis experiences in life and some of them are glorious. Conversion is one, and there are others, and they can bump you up a level in holiness and in enjoyment of God. But if you ever get to the point where you think it's no more fight to maintain joy, you will be on the downward track.

Now, let me try to give some biblical explanation and justification for that. 2 Corinthians 1.24, Paul says, not that we lord it over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy. Now, the very least that that means is somebody's got to work to keep Christians happy.

If you don't think it's you, then it's me. There is work for joy. The battle for joy is a fight and a work until the day you die.

Philippians 1.25, Paul is praying in prison, wondering if he'll be left behind or if he'll go to be the Lord. And he says, well, I think I will be left behind and remain and continue with you all for your advancement and joy of faith. So Paul's life, his staying on earth was devoted to advancing joy.

That means he's an instrument to do it. If he drops out of the picture, somebody needs to pick up the slack to advance the joy of the church. Joy is not an automatic.

Once it comes into your heart, it is not there to stay automatically. Now, to get at this, let me try to describe for you the relationship between joy and faith. What I'm saying here is really that joy is an essential component of faith.

And then we can see that faith is a fight to be fought to the end of life. Now, listen to John 6.35. I am the bread of life, Jesus says. He who comes to me will not hunger and he who believes in me will not thirst.

Now, mark that. He who believes in me will not thirst. What would you give as the definition of faith from that sentence? Here's mine.

Faith is a being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. That's my definition of saving faith. And I get it from that verse.

Jesus is the bread and he's the fountain and water. The one who comes to him will not hunger. And the one who believes, that's faith.

The one who believes on him, feeds and drinks from him will no longer be hungry and thirsty. Believing then is so coming to Jesus with hunger and thirst that you find in him a satisfaction for the soul hunger and a satisfaction for the soul thirst that you never have to look in another place again to know where it is to be found. And every day as the thirst rises, you know where the drink can be found.

And every day as the hunger is awakened again, you know where the bread of life is to be found. You have found him and faith is resting on him as we just saying and feeding on him and drinking from him. And so joy, which is almost synonymous with satisfaction, is a component of my definition of faith.

And therefore, if the Bible teaches that there is a fight of faith, a fight to maintain satisfaction in Jesus, then there's a fight for joy, which is the satisfaction in Jesus. So let's talk about for a minute the fight of faith. Second Timothy 4.7, Paul says at the end of his life, last letter he wrote just before he is martyred, I have fought the good fight.

I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. That's where I get the idea.

It's a fight to the finish. He says, I've fought it all the way along. I never stopped fighting the fight of faith.

It's a fight to believe every day. First Timothy 6.12, Paul says to Timothy, fight the good fight of faith. Take hold on eternal life to which you were called every day.

Not once, not over one hump, not one battle, but every morning I fight before I get out of bed. Do you? I don't know what your mornings are like. I wake up and thank God I praise him for it every day.

The first thought is on my lips is help me. That's the first thought on my lips. Help me.

I don't feel like getting up. First of all, I don't have the strength to read the Bible. I know I'm going to fall asleep if you don't help me.

My first thought in the morning is help me because I'm not really strong in faith right now. Psalm 23 is very familiar. It's many people's favorites.

I want to use it to show you that there's a fight of faith continually. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.

How often? Did you see it? Restores or revives. He restores my soul. For me, it's daily.

It's a daily reawakening to God. A fight to be fought every day. There is no plateau after which you fight no more.

Matthew 24. Listen to this one. Matthew 24 12.

Because lawlessness is multiplied, the love of many will grow cold. I quoted this a week or so ago. Here's the next phrase.

But those who endure to the end will be saved. Now put those two together. Because lawlessness is multiplied, the love of many will go down that hill of negligence and indifference to the battle, to the pit of ice.

Remember that poem by Robert Frost? Some say the world will end by fire. Some say by ice. It will be both.

Down that hill, people go as lawlessness is multiplied. But those who endure to the end in what? Non-coldness. The fight of heat, the fight for heat, the fight for joy.

I've said on Sunday, in the second service at least, maybe I've said it here, that I'm thinking of my life more and more in these days as a calling to torch the glacier, to put my torch in the fire of the Spirit and the Word, and then the best I can to torch the glacier of coldness all around me. It's a fight and we are to help each other. That'll be one of my points later on.

So my first point, I'm still on point number one. The first point is realize right now, when you ask me the question, how can I get this kind of joy? How can I maintain this kind of delight and satisfaction in God? I want to make real clear, none of my answers is a once for all answer. Like tonight, it could happen to you.

You could walk out of here on cloud nine, more satisfied in God than you've ever been before. And if you were to come back and thank me, oh, thank you. Thank you so much for what I saw.

I would warn you. I wouldn't say only great, all right, you're fixed. I would say tomorrow morning, you won't have it, probably.

But I've got some clues for you for how to stoke it every day. And I'm 47 years old and God has been faithful to me. And I hope that I can stand here when I retire at whatever age, 62, 77 and say like the old polycarp who, when he was about to be martyred and they said, will you renounce the Lord? He just held out his old aged trembling hands and said, how can I renounce one who has been faithful to me for 87 years? That's the way I feel at 47.

He has come back again and again. My fire is always going out. Therefore there's only one reason today it's burning, God.

He likes it. He's gracious. He's faithful.

He comes back again and again and restores my soul. That's point number one. Take heart from the battle, in other words, for the battle too.

Number two, learn the secret of fighting this fight like a justified sinner, namely with gutsy guilt. Remember that sermon from what, seven, eight years ago on Micah chapter seven? Let me try to review that sermon for you, gutsy guilt. What I mean is this.

It's easy, I suppose, to draw a conclusion from what I just said that the Christian life is sort of miserable, doubtful, precarious, uneasy, always vulnerable, ready to fall down, and that is not what I have meant at all. If that's what you heard, do a retooling of what you just heard. Let me read this amazing two verses from Micah chapter seven.

Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall, I will rise. Though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me.

I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. Until he pleads my case and executes justice for me, he will bring me out into the light and I will see his righteousness. Isn't that amazing? Oh, I'm jealous for you to have that kind of heart that can say to the Lord, I have sinned against you.

The darkness over me is your indignation and I accept it as long as you deem it wise for me to be broken and low and dark. But don't you rejoice over me, O my enemy, because I'm coming out of this. He will in his time vindicate me.

I am his. That's what I mean by gutsy guilt. There's a lot of people today who try to solve our problems of lowliness by striking the sentence, I will bear the indignation of the Lord.

You can't say that because that makes everybody feel too bad. If you try to solve people's problems with unreality, you won't solve anybody's problems long term. I'm a sinner.

I sin every day and I've got a lot of confidence with God. Now, where in the world does that come from? It comes from one place, the cross, Jesus, and the doctrine, the truth, the reality of justification by faith. I am a justified sinner.

Read the biography of Martin Luther. If you want to find the lion-hearted sinner, Martin Luther, who reveled in the freeness of God's grace offered to him in the cross and knew that he was a sinner. So my second point is do not fight the fight of faith like a loser.

Do not fight the fight of faith as though it were already won for you in the cross. Don't fight the fight of faith with a sense of precariousness that, huh, maybe I'm not saved. Get that settled.

We'll talk more about that in a minute too. And you get it settled at the cross where every sin is blotted out for those who cast themselves on Jesus. And then you fight as a victor who is hidden already in Christ with God and one day whose life will be revealed when he comes.

So let's have gutsy guilt among us. That's a guilt that's covered by the blood and accepted under the discipline of the Father as long as he wills. Number three, labor to see God.

Labor to see God. The battle is mainly, I almost say entirely, mainly a battle to see. A battle to see.

A battle to see God, to have our eyes opened to God. Another way to put it would be it's a battle to taste. Anybody know a verse where those two words occur? See and taste.

I can hear you whispering it. Psalm 34, 8. Taste and see that the Lord is good. That's the battle.

You do that every day. Some days I do. Some days I don't.

I fight for it every day. Some days my taste is so alive that it's as though he could be here or I could be in heaven. And some days I'm just licking my tongue all over the word and nothing has happened.

Taste and see. See him. Now, the reason I say the battle is a battle to see is 2 Corinthians 3, 18.

We all, with unveiled face, beholding, seeing the glory of the Lord are being changed from one degree of glory to the next. So if you ask me, how do you grow in this? How do you reflect the glory of God by being satisfied in him? This text says behold him. Behold him.

As you behold him, you are changed into his likeness. See him. The more you spend time looking at something, the more you become like it.

The more you admire something and occupy yourself with it, the more your values adapt to it. Look at him. Look at him.

Labor to see him. Here's another one. First John 3, 2. Beloved, we are God's children now.

Does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he comes, we shall be like him for, what's the next sentence? We shall see him as he is. Do you see the connection? We will be like him for we will see him as he is. In other words, what has been happening in process, namely the process of looking to Jesus and to God and being changed from one degree of glory to the next, what's been happening in process is going to happen climactically.

When we see him, it'll be finished and we'll be totally like him when we see him face to face. So we look through a glass darkly right now. And what we see of God transforms us into joyful, satisfied reflectors of his glory.

And when he comes and that glass is removed and we see him face to face, we will be totally changed forever and ever into his likeness. And so labor to see him, labor to see God. I preached a series of sermons a few years ago on the names of God.

The text that was like an arch over the names of God was Psalm 9, 10, which says, those who know your name, put their trust in you. And when I read that, I remember reading it at my mother-in-law and father-in-law's house in Georgia and saying, that's a sermon series. Those who know thy name, put their trust in you.

Or we could say now, find their satisfaction in you, delight in you. So what's the key to putting your satisfaction in God? Knowing his name, his character, his reality, seeing him. And so I preached on the names of God that fall.

It is a battle to see. Seeing is becoming. Number four, and this is the main one, at least I think it'll take most of my time, meditate on the word of God day and night.

In other words, the place that you are going to see God mainly is in the revelation of his son, the revelation of his work, the revelation of his character in his word, in the Bible, in this precious, precious book. I remember an old Puritan was preaching one time about the preciousness of the word, and he held up his Bible and he closed his eyes and he said, Father, take our houses, take our children, take our health, but don't take your word from us. Do you feel that way about this book? I've been reading Wycliffe's statistics these weeks and looking at the thousands of languages that don't have it.

I must have 12 Bibles in the house at home. This is a precious book. This is God's word.

When he speaks, we know God. Meditate on his law day and night. Now, let me give you some reasons.

Let me try to stir you up. Cammie and I were talking about these things just this week, and we were having a good conversation about reasons to stir us up to be in the word, and that conversation, Cammie, helped me get ready for tonight. Psalm 19.8, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

You want joy? The Bible says the precepts of the Lord rejoice the heart. Jeremiah 15.16, your words were found and I ate them and they were a joy to me and became the delight of my heart because I am called by your name. I read that a few weeks ago in my way through Jeremiah and memorized it.

John 15.11, I have spoken these words to you, words, that your joy might be full, that my joy might be in you and your joy. Why did Jesus teach that our joy might be full? His words, the four gospels are written that your joy might be full. Do you want joy? How much time do you spend reading the gospels? I really get very frustrated with people who come and who talk about all the problems in their lives and the joylessness, and when I ask them how much time they're in the word, they say almost nothing, zero, five minutes, ten minutes.

I say, well, look, let me give you some reasons why you should change that pattern of behavior. Psalm 1, 1 and 2, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord delight. And on his law, he meditates day and night.

You can't do that if you don't memorize the Bible. Got to memorize scripture, memorize scripture. I don't know any strong saints who don't memorize scripture.

And I don't know any weak ones who do. How does the Lord use the word to produce this joy? He does it in seven ways. Number one, the word produces life.

Oh, how I wish on Sunday morning last I had quoted verse 23 of 1 Peter 1. It would have answered some questions, and it was right there in my notes, and I just overlooked it in both services. I stress the sovereignty of God in causing us to be born again. And verse 23 of that same chapter says, we were born again through the imperishable seed of God, the living and abiding word.

The word brought you life. You can't have joy if you don't have life. And the word produces life.

James 1 18, of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. You were saved by the word. Not a person in this room was born again without the instrumentality of the word of God.

Whether you read it, whether you heard it on the radio, whether it was preached, whether it was in a track, whether it was on TV, it was the word that was the instrument that God in his sovereignty used to bring you to himself. And nobody is saved apart from the word or born again apart from the word. That was the missing link on Sunday morning.

Matthew 4, 4, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. The context there is Jesus being tested in the wilderness and his physical hunger. And Satan saying here, make a stone bread.

You've got power. And instead of arguing about the stone or anything, Jesus simply quotes Deuteronomy and says, you can't live without the word of God. And if you've got the word of God, you can live without bread forever.

Every word that comes out of his mouth is important for life. Let me give you some examples. Some of you remember Pythoon Hothamart.

This is I'm giving an example now of how the word produces life, converts people. Pythoon told me one time as he was learning some of the doctrines of grace, which he's taken back now to Thailand. He said, I never have really never had really understood my conversion until I began to study and understand the doctrine of God's sovereign grace, because I can remember the day he said, when I read Matthew 11, 28 here at the University of Minnesota, what about 17, 18 years ago now? Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I'm meek and lowly in heart, and you'll find rest for your souls. And he said, when I read that, I was born again. It was a miracle.

I was born again by the word of God. From that moment on, I knew it was true. I knew I belonged to Christ, and I came at him to him.

Jonathan Edwards tells a story. I brought along his biography. I'm going to read something from this.

This is a great biography. If you want to read a good biography of Jonathan Edwards, I think this is in our bookstore. If it isn't, order it, and we'll get some more.

Jonathan Edwards told the story of how he was alone as a teenager, and he was reading the Bible. He had, of course, grown up in a pastor's home, and he knew all the facts, but he didn't feel like there was grace in his soul, and he read this verse. It's 1 Timothy 1.17. Now unto the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be glory and power forever and ever.

And he was born again. He said, there flooded into him such a sense, a taste of the reality of God that from that day forward, the glorious doctrines of God's sovereignty, and of his atoning work, and the nature of faith, and the hope of heaven were as real to him as anything. One verse on an afternoon broke him open.

St. Augustine, you know that story? Absolutely lecherous. Probably the greatest theologian in the church, after Edwards. And he was a playboy all over the Roman Empire, a womanizer, and his mother, faithful mother, praying for him constantly, and sitting in a garden, he hears a little child singing.

I'm sure they get the Latin right here, tole lege, tole lege, or something like that, take up and read, take up and read. He doesn't know where this child is coming from. He picks up a Bible, and he opens, flop, to Romans 13, 12, and 13, which say, the night is almost gone.

The day is at hand. Let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he was born again. From that day on, it was over. The fight was over.

The flight was over. And he was born again. Amazing what God did.

Martin Luther, what a struggle. Read the biography of Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, about Martin Luther. I didn't bring the quote, but I can almost remember it because I've read it so many times.

He's in his study. He's laboring under the weight of works and legalism from his past. He's been called to be a lecturer in theology.

He's lecturing on Romans and Psalms and Galatians. And he gets to Romans 1, 16. The gospel is the power of God and the salvation to all who believe, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

And he said, suddenly the meaning of the righteousness of God is wrought for him and not worked by him, open, and he felt as if he walked into paradise. And he was born again by the living and abiding Word of God. The point here under this is you can't have joy if you don't have life.

And you don't have life without the Word, either at the beginning or, as we're going to see now, in any sustained way. Number two, the first was life. These are seven ways that the Word produces joy.

It produces faith. Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. John 20, 31, these things were written that believing you might have life.

Number three, the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. What's the next one? Joy. So the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

So you've got to have the Holy Spirit working in your life if you're going to have joy, right? You've got to have the Holy Spirit there producing joy. Now, how do you get the Holy Spirit to do anything? He's God. How do you get him to do anything? Can you get the Holy Spirit to do anything? It almost sounds blasphemous to talk that way, to take the Holy Spirit and use him as an instrument.

But Galatians 3 to 5 says, does he who supplies the Spirit to you and work miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? And the answer is the latter. So think, if you want the Spirit to be supplied to you, to work miracles in you, you don't do works of the law as though you could earn it. You hear something and believe.

What do you hear? TV? Coke ads? You hear the Word of God. You hear promises. You're reading the Bible and you hear, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, to give you a future and hope, plans for welfare, not for evil.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. Then you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. You read that and you awaken to faith and the Holy Spirit.

I think they're almost synonymous, almost interchangeable. The Holy Spirit on the flood of faith is there producing joy. The Holy Spirit comes by faith and faith alone.

In our next pastor's conference in January of 1994, Dan Fuller from Fuller Seminary, my old doctor father, is going to be here and his topic is sanctification by faith alone. And I'm sure he will take one of those verses from Galatians three and say the Holy Spirit does his work by faith, not by works. Number four, the Word produces hope and you can't have joy without hope.

Romans 15, four, whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that by the steadfastness and encouragement of the scriptures, you might have hope. Hope comes from the scriptures and you can't have joy without hope. Number five, holiness, freedom from bondage to sin.

You can't have joy without holiness in the Christian life. It says in Nehemiah 810, this day is holy to the Lord. Don't be grieved for the joy of the Lord Isn't that a strange thing to say? This day is holy to the Lord.

The joy of the Lord is your strength, which I take to mean an essential component of holiness is joy in God. So where do you get holiness? John 17, 17. Father, sanctify them, make them holy in the truth.

Thy word is truth. You want to be holy, saturate yourself with the truth. John 8, 32, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.

And the context is free from sin. If you're struggling with sin, how much word do you store in your life? The world is pouring its word into your life all day long. How much of God's word do you pour in as kind of an antidote to this poison of the world? Five minutes? Well, then don't, don't blame God for sin.

Assurance number six, 1 John 5, 13. Somebody used it downstairs in the prayer meeting. I felt it was anointed and right.

These things I have written to you. Here's the word who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. Without assurance, you can't be happy.

You're always doubting, wondering whether you're God's and the word is the means of assurance and joy. Number seven, the last one, you can't be joyful if you don't get victory over Satan in your life. How do you defeat Satan? He's prowling around like a roaring lion and what he eats is joy or faith.

Satan has one craving. He's pregnant and got one craving, your faith. He eats it.

He will destroy you if he can with it. How do you defeat him? Well, according to Ephesians 6, you've got armor and one of the pieces, the only offensive one is the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. You run him through with a word, just like some people did in prayer meeting.

Downstairs, if you don't have the word in your mind and in your heart, you will be very vulnerable through the day. Temptation comes from the Satan and there are glorious promises with which you can run him through as antidote to his lies. And if they're not there because you never spend time putting them in there, then you will be more vulnerable.

First John 2, 14, I love this word. I write to you young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. Now there's a connection between those two things.

You are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one connection. The word overcomes the evil one. It's abiding is the word of God abiding in you.

And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God has willed his what to triumph through us. And I remember truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness, grim, we tremble not for him.

His rage we can endure for low. His doom is sure. One little what work will fell him.

And I used to, when I read that and saying that I said, which word, Martin, which word do you mean? And I think his answer would be any little work will do. From this book, any little word, little word as Martin Luther read his biography. Let me use another couple of illustrations here.

Hudson Taylor, what a great man, China Inland Mission. Formerly, here's the quote from his son's memory of how he lived his magnificently painful and triumphant and joyful life. It was not easy for Mr. Taylor in his changeful life to make time for prayer and Bible study, but he knew that it was vital I hope you know by the time we're done tonight that it's vital, more vital than eating breakfast, but he knew that it was vital.

Well, do the writers remember traveling with him month after month in Northern China by cart and wheelbarrow with the poorest of ends at night, often with only one large room for coolies and travelers alike, they would screen off a corner for their father and another for themselves with curtains for of some sort, and then after sleep had at last brought a measure of quiet, they would hear a match struck and see the flicker of a candle light which told that Mr. Taylor, however weary, was pouring over the little Bible in two volumes, always at hand. From two to four a.m. was the time he usually gave to prayer, the time he could be most sure of being undisturbed to wait upon God. There is a secret to power.

That's it. How much time do you give him and how much do you take in from him? He is not far from us. He is not far from you.

He's as close as this book. George Mueller, let me insert here, comes to my mind right now, this seems to be the place to say it. Many of us say, yeah, but I read a chapter or two and I don't get anything.

Wesley Duell was a great man of God, wrote his book, A Blaze for God, and he said, sometimes when I go on retreat, I must read 50 chapters of the Bible before I am prepared to pray. So it may be that somebody needs to sow that kind of thought in your mind, that we are all so soaked, so soaked with humanity and with the world and with television and with newspaper and with our financial concerns and our broken cars. My car is driving up the wall these days.

That we think a chapter or two and if he doesn't come through, we're upset at him. And yet we give hour upon hour upon hour to the world. That's the end of point number four.

And my time is almost gone and I have 12 points. So I'm going to be discerning here about you pray that I say the right things in these last three minutes. My point number five is that you should pray.

And I need an hour on prayer. You should pray for faith and pray for hope and pray for a heart for the word and pray for holiness and pray for victory over Satan and pray for love. And you should preach to yourself.

I think I'm going to end with that. It's a great book, Spiritual Depression by Martin Lloyd-Jones. What he teaches in here is that when you read the Bible, you must preach it to yourself through the day.

You must learn to talk to yourself and not listen to yourself. I remember when I read this sentence, I almost ran downstairs to the family and I said, this is a great sentence. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Let me read the rest of the paragraph so you catch on.

He's expositing Psalm 42.5. Why are you downcast, O my soul? He's talking to himself now. He's preaching to himself. Why are you downcast, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, for he is my help and my God.

Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated then, but they start talking to you. They bring back the problems of yesterday.

Somebody's talking. Who's talking to you? Yourself is talking to you. Now, this man's treatment was this, the psalmist.

Instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. Why are you downcast, O my soul? His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, self, listen for a moment.

I will speak to you. Take the word of God and preach to yourself. Christian hedonism is your strength because the joy of the Lord is your strength.

God's passion is to be glorified. Your passion is to be satisfied. The message I've been bringing you in these four talks is that your passion to be satisfied and God's to be glorified are not at odds.

They meet in the cross and they meet in worship and they express themselves in love. Let's pray. O Father in heaven, I pray that you would reveal your power through your word to us and create joy in Jesus' name.