You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.
Psalm 4:7
The taste of this verse should be likened to crystal waters in the dismal, gaping chasm of desert surrounding you. I felt the need to say that despite how kitschy-Reformed-blogger-John-Piper-mini-me it sounds, because this is what it really feels like. I am on a deep, dim road of understanding just how loved and saved from darkness I am with nothing but a candle before my feet to see the next step.
Until my day of completion, I may never completely understand the depth of love lavished upon me nor the caliber of salvation given to me through the litres that Christ shed from Calvary to the Cross for me. From gazing at The Road to Calvary by Herri Met de Bles for a half-hour only thinking to myself “that was a long walk,” to completely forgetting the joy that was made available for me as I wade in a bout of depression. Nothing can quite take me from the reality that this taste – the taste of the Lord as my celebratory feast and raised glass of aromatic wine – is nothing like anything that I have ever experienced in this world even at the mountaintop of pleasures that are willingly offered. The prize is elsewhere.
Some Christians may not see it like this. Not everyone is the same (which is beautiful, believe me). During my freshman year of college, it manifested itself a lot differently. I hadn’t wholeheartedly read the bible yet, so it was hard to articulate my thoughts or feelings towards God. In a valley of discouragement, I decided that I would “reject” God and go back to my life without Him. It was oddly the most awkward week of my life. I couldn’t leave him alone, and not in a weird, stockholm syndrome type of way. Rather, even when I rebelled, after every action I thought:
“I’m doing this because you abandoned me. I’m doing this because Your way is not worth it. This is me forgetting about you…You gone yet?”
God never really left my side. He was always in my thoughts even when I wanted to believe that I hated him. Even in my hate, I couldn’t actually ‘leave’ him per se because I wanted him to know how I felt. I think I wanted him to care. I know that I’m not the only one who has had an episode like this in his past. So to anyone out there who has shared these thoughts: If you don’t believe in the power and work of God and you don’t want him as a part of your life, why are thoughts towards him still in your head? Why do you want him to care?
For me, I wanted him to care, but I didn’t want him to move furniture around in my life. To our benefit, God is in the business of rearranging everything, even our fears.
There’s a hymn that I think a decent amount of more traditional churches sing, called “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” written by Helen Lemmel. Don’t quote me on this: I haven’t been in church that long and definitely don’t study church history for a living. At any rate, the climax of the piece (for myself) goes like this:
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.”
How does Psalm 4:7 – a reminder of the seemingly inescapable taste of this freedom – encourage us to change, repent of our old ways, and grow in our relationship with God? When we turn our eyes to Jesus and recognize the genuine joy in our hearts brought from his love and atoning sacrifice, it outshines everything else.
A lot of Christian men struggle with pornography and have been trying to stop for years. They want to take up a wife and be able to look at her without attaching or cycling through images of other women. They want her to be the one and only. They have tried white-knuckling restraint and have fell. Terribly. Possibly even deeper than they had started. Lemmel’s hymn brings a real truth to fore. Sexual pleasure will always be pleasurable. Physical interaction will always be stimulating. And praise God for the gift that he has given us in that! A man should never wish that God would take such a blessing away. How foolish. However, if this man comprehends the wonder, power, and immense capacity of grace God has for him and had upon him one Friday afternoon two-thousand years ago, it will outshine any chemical rush of dopamine outside of the context of a Holy matrimony.
