Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. Philippians 3:1a. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Philippians 4:4. Rejoice always. I Thessalonians 5:16. These are three simple exhortations to rejoice. This is not just a statement; it is a command, as shown by the construction of the sentences. There were many occasions in the Scriptures where people rejoiced when they were being persecuted for the Lord. When the disciples were beaten and flogged, they went away rejoicing that they could suffer for the Lord (Acts 5:41).
Let us come to grips with a basic quality of the old human nature: It is perversely dedicated to unhappiness. People can be unhappy because they have set their minds to be unhappy. We are commanded to rejoice in the Lord. We are told that the joy of the Lord is to be our strength. The joy of the Lord is imparted, and it grows in your life because you have faith for it. One man has faith to be happy and joyful; another has a perversity in his nature, leading him to be melancholy and to look at the gloomy side of things even when the Lord is blessing his life in an outstanding way. The ability to rejoice and to be exceedingly glad when they say all manner of evil against you falsely is not a product of the human nature; it is a result of the divine nature coming forth in you. A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be. And when we come into a walk with God, this is doubly true.
You can continually come for personal ministry and receive something that alleviates the trouble to some extent, for the present at least. But that still may not solve the deep unhappiness in your nature. There ought to be that quality within us that just rejoices in the Lord. How often the Lord said, “Be of good courage. Be of good cheer.” This is very important, because we read in Joel that joy is withered away from the sons of men (Joel 1:12). As we come to the end time, we find even the cattle lowing in the field and the seed rotting in the clod (Joel 1:17, 18). We observe the heaviness that is upon the earth by satanic design.
When I am under assault or in battle, I can generally discern the spirits that come against me. I notice especially that when Satan himself comes (not some principality or power), there is a depressing heaviness that comes over my spirit. The presence of Satan is difficult to describe. It is very depressing and heavy.
Conversely, the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ has the opposite effect. When David talks about the Lord, he says, “In His presence is fullness of joy; and at His right hand there are pleasures evermore” (Psalm 16:11). Often the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in my life have resulted in more than comfort. They have resulted in hilarious joy, causing me to hold my sides with holy laughter. Very few of us can understand that the joy which comes from the Lord is so great that it is almost impossible for us, even at this stage, to experience the full blast of His presence and be able to handle it.
Yet many people go limping along, depressed and unhappy because they are in the midst of trials. The Lord tells us to rejoice in all of these manifold trials that are upon us. We are to be happy that the Lord is leading us on as He did all of the prophets that went before us (Matthew 5:12). It is true that the days of the restoration will see a day of heaviness and mourning upon the whole world, but with us it is to be a day of rejoicing. It is to be a time that we are exceedingly glad.
You are probably wondering how you can rejoice in the midst of this recession and other national problems. You do not know what is going to happen next. I know that you have problems. But why do you have all of these problems? You would not have them if God were not working in your life to bring an end to the things in your life that are not of God. If He were not trying to teach you and to bring you into full sonship, He would not scourge you as a son. You are not to faint, but you are to rejoice. For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth (Hebrews 12:5, 6).
There should be a joyfulness in our hearts because we are included in the plan of God. There ought to be a predetermination in our hearts that regardless of what happens to us, we are going to be laughing this afternoon, rejoicing tonight, and going to sleep with the high praises of God upon our lips, looking forward to all the good things that God is doing. David said, I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13.
Your attitude should be that of believing that God is going to meet you, and it is not going to be a sad or a heavy experience. It will be good, even though it may just about ruin you and you will probably be crucified in the whole process, as a lot of the old man dies. That should happen anyway, but God wants a difference in your attitude. As you are burying the old man, He does not want you to look over into the grave and weep over him. He wants you to hit him in the face with a spade, rejoicing that the rascal is dead. It is what you have been asking the Lord to do for you. You have been wanting to see it happen. However, when it begins to happen, the perversity of the old nature whispers, “See how complicated your problems are today, compared with those you had when you first came into a walk with God.” When you observe how far you have advanced, you see that the problems which stop you now are complicated problems that belong to sonship and maturity.
Something within us must rejoice in the fact that the Lord is not leaving us alone. He is pushing the issue. He is doing a quick work within our very being. It is difficult to anticipate what will happen tomorrow. But whatever it is, I am determined to rejoice in it. Are you? Do you ever have that old human foreboding that senses something terrible is going to happen, and you are just waiting for it? The ones who go on with the Lord are anticipating and rejoicing in the Kingdom.
When Revelation 21:8 talks about those who go into hell, we see that the fearful and the unbelieving head the list, followed by murderers and then those guilty of lesser crimes and sins. The fearful and the unbelieving are the “generals” who lead the way into hell, because that melancholy anticipation of trouble or disaster that you live with is the essence of everything that is wrong. When you believe it, it is as if you set your will for it to happen. It is a perversity that God is going to banish from the world. In the coming Kingdom, He is going to banish not only principalities and powers, but everything that is fearful and unbelieving. In Isaiah 65:25 the Lord says, “They will not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain.” There will be nothing of the defensive nor of the aggressive when it comes to this nature.
Now, what does the Lord want you to do? As you search your heart, you might begin by realizing that you have not been joyful when you should have been joyful. Sometimes you have been discouraged when you had no right to be discouraged. You listened to Satan and to all the fears and doubts that he put into your mind at times when you should have listened to the word of the Lord. God is still waiting for people who will believe Him to the extent that no matter how things look, they will keep on rejoicing, knowing that God has His hand on the situation and is going to bring it out just as He has proclaimed He would do.
You have to break this deep unconscious resolve to complain and to be unhappy. Have you ever noticed that neither circumstances nor money nor the lack of money seem to have much to do with it? Some of the happiest people in the world do not have any money. What you are going through physically does not seem to have much to do with it either. Some people who are well and strong complain all the time, whereas others who spend a lifetime as invalids rejoice. It reminds us of the little Jewish mother who said to her son, “Well, aren’t you going to ask me how I am?”
“How are you, Mama?”
“Don’t ask me.”
She was determinedly in a bad condition. There is something perverse in every race. It is difficult for God to reach any of them because Satan preys on the old nature, and that old nature says that it is not blessed, that there is nothing good in life, and that it is going to be unhappy.
I think this is the problem with many marriages too. Either the husband or the wife is determined to be unhappy. No matter what you do for some children, they whine and cry and complain. Dad tells them, “You don’t know when you are well-off. When I was a boy I had to have twelve cows milked in the morning by the time you get out of bed.” Maybe he did and maybe he did not. That is beside the point; they are still unhappy. I have known many an unhappy farm boy who at quite an early age turned his back on the farm and never came back. Yet the city boys wish they could escape from the concrete jungle and get out on a farm, for there they could really live. Neither one knows when he is well-off. The grass on the other side of the fence is always greener. People do not appreciate what they have.
Just think what is available to you in your walk with God, in the Body ministry, and in personal ministry. So much is provided for you in any one service that there ought to be a great deal more rejoicing in many of you. You should be praising the Lord. Your addiction to a morbid attitude is an expression of unbelief that is holding back the blessings of God. Determine to have a dedication in your heart to be a rejoicer in the Lord.
Rejoice always! Rejoice even when you are in a difficult situation. The joy brings the full expression of what God is doing for you now. It does not forget what He has done for you already, and it anticipates with joyfulness what you know He is going to do for you. It is a good thing to rejoice in the Lord. Sometimes your worship to the Lord does not have the element of rejoicing in it that it should have. And when it does not, it is as if the salt were missing. The Irishman describes salt as that which makes the potatoes taste flat when you don’t have any. Rejoicing is like the salt. Rejoicing is what makes a worship service flat when you don’t have any. The absence of it makes every relationship bog down.
You may have thought that love was the greatest. Love is like a beautiful ship, but it can be so overlaid with barnacles that it uses its fuel and energies just plowing through the water. Love is wonderful, but you also need the joy. When the fruit of the Spirit is listed, love is first, then joy. The joy keeps the barnacles off the love, so that we can move ahead for the glory of God. If you are in love with a sad sack, you find that the salt is always missing. Heaviness, jealousy, self-pity, and other kinds of barnacles stick to the hull when you do not have joy mingled with love.
It is time for us to ask the Lord to help us with this habit of unhappiness. For years you may have received almost everything for which you were believing, yet you still whine about your present problems and responsibilities. Look ahead. Never look back or retrace your steps. When you remember the old homestead where you were born, you may visualize it as a big, beautiful house. But when you go back, you realize what a dumpy little place it is. Things look a lot different when you are young, and as time goes by, you develop an ideal image in your mind that is not realistic.
People long for the good old days, for the old-time religion. Who needs that old-time religion? It was filled with unbelief and a lot of busybodies who wanted to run the church and make all the decisions themselves. Revivals were held every spring and every fall to try to get the dead saints thawed out. The corpse was turned over and rouged up so that for a while people would think it was alive. Do you want more of that? Not me! I like what God is doing today. There is more of a release, more experiences, more ministries, more of a walk with God and a greater depth in the Word than has ever existed before.
Those wonderful old days were not so wonderful. Think about them again. I remember when you could buy a good piece of steak for ten cents a pound, and you did not have the dime to buy it with either. Making ends meet generally meant that you went to a cut-rate market, bought a piece of ox tongue and a piece of oxtail, and then boiled them in the same pot to make both ends meet. Do not look back to the good old days. There is something better coming. It looks as if we will have more trouble, and we will; for we are going to see the end of an old age. It will go out with a scream and a roar, and finally, a sigh.
A new age is coming, and it will be good. You see that everything is being shaken. That is the general idea. Let us make an earthquake and get it over with! There ought to be within us an eagerness to move into the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it (Luke 16:16). Do not complain that it will be the death you. This is the purpose—that you be crucified and come forth in newness of life. Your problems and difficulties are for your good. Are you going to let God work out His will through them? Or will you perversely sit around and cry because of what the Lord has done? After He has circumcised your heart, will you sit around and cry about it hurting? Of course—circumcision always hurts. But do not stop with circumcision; go on to crucifixion. Then it stops hurting! After you have suffered a while, the Lord will establish, strengthen and settle you (I Peter 5:10). Open your heart and start repenting over the lack of faith and joy, and determine to be joyful.
You are probably far better off than you deserve to be, even with the grace of God. You would like to see many things different, and they will be different. You may feel that you have been hurt or offended, but you do not need self-pity. Joy puts up a wall against the invasion of self-pity. Rejoicing puts up a wall against the awful assault of emotion and depression that is not yours. If you give in to it, after a while you will think that it is yours. In the midst of all of his depression, a person often realizes that there has been an invasion of thoughts that are not his. If he had been rejoicing always, he would have thrown back that invasion of emotions, thoughts, and ideas that the enemy brought to him. Do not take down your walls; put up the wall of joy and rejoicing. Praise God with faith, and see what He does for you.
Are you a sorehead, a grumbler, or a complainer? Are you ready to repent of it and really seek the Lord for joy? Cry to the Lord that you might rejoice forevermore. This is the basic thing that helps you to live for the Lord.
We have seen in God’s Word the command to rejoice. We do not want to complain, for we know what the Lord did to Israel when they murmured, and we do not want to be like them. We want to walk with the Lord, under the cloud and the pillar of fire, with joyful hearts. We will not murmur because of the hardness of the way, nor grieve because of the wilderness that we must pass through, but joyfully we will anticipate our heritage in the Lord. We are rejoicing in the deliverances that we had from Egypt and praising the Lord for our daily provision, even in the midst of the wilderness. We are anticipating the land of milk and honey that is before us. This is our cry and our prayer: May the Lord help us to free our emotions and to rejoice in Him. We have to be set free.
People need to express themselves, because they usually have bottled up things so long that they have literally poisoned the whole stream of their thought and emotional life. When David had a sorrow, he lifted up his voice and wept all day long. He put ashes on his head, tore his garment, and cried until there was no more strength in him to cry. Then he got up and went about his business. When he wanted to dance before the Lord, he shucked off his clothes and danced before the Lord with all of his might. His wife despised him for it, but he said, “I’m going to be even more vile in thy sight” (II Samuel 6:14, 22). How he rejoiced! He said, “With my whole heart have I sought You” (Psalm 119:10).
We think that we are being civilized human beings when we put the lid on ourselves, until we poison ourselves with unexpressed emotions. Go and cry unto the Lord! Get rid of the problems! Determine that you are going to walk away from the altar of prayer rejoicing in the Lord. Change your way of life. Change your way of thinking. Come to the place where you will be the most expressive, bombastic person alive. You will be God’s explosion, going someplace to happen. You are going to be an earthquake maker. You will change the world because you are rejoicing in the Lord with all of your heart.
When the Old Testament feasts were observed, the command came that the people should be altogether joyful. Not partially joyful and partially complaining and murmuring, but altogether joyful. This must become a way of life. His love and His joy and His peace are the basic things He grows in the garden of your heart. Do not chop out the good plants and let the weeds grow. Chop out the weeds. Eliminate that negativeness. Come into the joy that grows as a fruit of the Spirit.