December 12: Lasting Joy

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 7
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These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. John 15:1111These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (John 15:11)
OH 15:11{Who that has known anything of joy in the Lord but has asked, "But will it last?" And why has the question been so often the very beginning of its not lasting? Because we have either asked it of ourselves or of others, and not of the Lord only. His own answers to this continually recurring question are so different from the cautious, chilling, saddening ones which His children so often give. They are absolute, full, reiterated. We little realize how unscriptural we are when we meet His good gift of joy to ourselves or to others with a doubtful, and therefore faithless, "If it lasts!" "To the law and to the testimony," O happy Christian! there you shall find true and abundant answer to our only shadow on the brightness of the joy. So long as you believe your Lord's word about it, so long it will last. So soon as you ask of other counselors, and believe their word instead, so soon it will fail. Jesus meets your difficulty explicitly. He has provided against it by giving the very reason why He spoke the gracious words of His last discourse. "That My joy might remain in you.”
O the freedom and the fervor after all the faithless days!
O the ever-new thanksgiving and the ever-flowing praise!
Shall we tempt the gaze from Jesus, and a doubting shadow cast,
Satan's own dark word suggesting by the whisper "If it last"?