April 16, 2017

Fullness of Joy

Ron Lutz ~ John 15:8-11, 16:21-22

Sermon Quotes

John 15:8-11, 16:21-22
By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 21 When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
-Psalm 16:11

“To miss out on joy is to miss out on the reason for your existence.”
-Lewis Smedes

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”
-C.S. Lewis

For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God.
-Hebrews 12:2

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
-John 15:13

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
-C. S. Lewis

For there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake.  You yourself are their joy.  Happiness is to rejoice in you and for you and because of you.  This is true happiness and there is no other.  Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.
-St. Augustine

People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa… Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter?…

All these [sufferings] are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.
-David Livingstone

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
-John 17:24

Oh that the pleasure seeking men and women of the world could only taste and feel the real joy of those who know and love the true God—a heritage which the world… cannot give to them, but which the poorest and humblest followers of Jesus inherit and enjoy!… Those who have tasted this highest joy, “The joy of the Lord,” will never again ask—Is life worth living?
-John G. Paton