I have been doing some delightful study in the last few weeks in preparation for our Advent Soup & Scripture, which will be focused on the hope of heaven. But I came across this quote yesterday, and I wanted to share it with you, as a teaser, and hopefully one that will stir your soul and increase in you a deeper longing for what God has for you.
This is from the puritan writer Thomas Watson, a 17th century English preacher:
Here, joy begins to enter us; there, we will enter into joy.
Watson is writing about the contrast between earth and heaven, and the small foretaste we get to experience here and now. Here, we can have joy, especially (actually, only!) in Christ. We can have access to it. But in the glory of God’s Kingdom, joy will have us. What we have merely tasted, we will fully enter into. Joy will consume us, we will swim in it as an everlasting ocean of delight, because we will see our Lord face to face, and in Him all is perfected.
When you know Christ, when you are united spiritually to Him by the Holy Spirit and have access to the Father (cf. Eph 2:18), the joy of Christ will come to you. It may come in fits and starts, it may flicker like a faint candle threatened with being snuffed out by the concerns of the world and the sins of our flesh, and our call is to fan that flame and let it grow in us more and more. But the joy of eternity has come to you, because Christ Himself has come to you, and you have come to Him.
Do you know the joy of the Lord? Do you know the delight of His presence, that is more satisfying than anything the world has to offer you? Do you know the hope of glory that is in you, that is an anchor in all the storms of life? If the joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10), are you allowing that joy to be with you day by day in all the situations of life in which you need strengthened?
Let Joy enter you, knowing that it is found through Christ entering you and taking up residence in your heart. And let it grow, and grow, and become a strengthening power in you that shapes and forms you, preparing you for eternity.
For it is there that we will “enter into the joy of [our] Master” (Matthew 25:21,23). Here, we get a foretaste; there, we will sit at the feast. Here, we get rationed drops to satiate our thirst; there, we will swim in the river of His delights. We will enter into joy that is all-consuming, far bigger than us, that will satisfy us in everlasting life. Heaven will not be boring–far from it! It will be a Joy, a Delight, a Love, and perfect Peace that we fully enter into.
“For now we see as in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
May the joy of the Lord–with the anticipation for more, this eager expectation and hope that is ours–enter into us today, and shape us to long more and more for Heaven, the fount of all joy.