Fighting for Joy

This is another rad post from daniel hames' blog....you can read it at his blog with the comments here. It's been so inspiring I thought I'd just paste the whole thing up for you to read. Probably because I haven't got anything to say myself. So read on, my friends, and be inspired!

"A few days ago, I met-up with my friend Andy Upton. Andy is the pastor of Knighton Evangelical Free Church, which is near my home. Because he's a pastor, he's become very good at asking penetrating questions such as, "What are your idols?", "What does a Dan Hames quiet time look like?" and others.

Andy asked me how I fight for joy each day. I have to confess it took me ages to understand what he was getting at. I'm assuming it down to my lack of quick witedness rather than Andy's lack of penetrating-ness! Eventually I cottoned-on and Andy rephrased, "You love Piper. You know that finding your joy in God alone is a fight. How do you fight for joy every day? How do you practically make sure that you delight yourself in God? Or are you just all talk?"

We chatted about the ways... listening to talks on the iPod while walking to places, listening to praise and worship music, disciplining myself to swing my legs out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off in order to get a quality quiet time, blogging to record God's goodness, songwriting.

Since then, I've been thinking about this question a lot. How do I fight for joy? Am I just all talk? Well I think I might be a lot of talk, and perhaps not so much fight as I'd like. While on the new leaders' weekend, tim Rudge prayed one morning that God would warm our cold hearts, because we wake-up with stone cold hearts every day. How true that is! When I wake-up from my dreams, my first thoughts are about myself "I'd love to stay in bed", "I'm hungry", "What have I got to do today?". But what if I could wake-up and think Psalm 37:4? Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Today I've been singing an old, old hymn:

Lord, dissolve my frozen heart,
By the beams of love divine;
This alone can warmth impart,
To dissolve a heart like mine.

O that love, how vast it is!
Vast it seems, though known in part;
Strange indeed, if love like this,
Should not melt the frozen heart.

Saviour, let thy love be felt,
Let its power be felt by me,
Then my frozen heart shall melt,
Melt in love, O Lord to thee.

The love of Jesus will warm my heart, renew my mind, and show me where I can find true Joy. And I need to remind myelf of this love everyday, because I'm liable to forget it, and prone to leave the God I love for other treasures that are really no treasure at all. Keeping hold of joy is hard work! So I'm going to fight for it by trying to get up earlier as Andy has suggested, and I'm going to try and think about the words of that hymn when I wake-up each morning. It seems that discipline and joy are really quite closely related.

How do you fight for joy?
What practical, everyday ways do you feed yourself?
What are the other treasures that most easily fool you?
How do you stop idols reigning in your life?
Let's share."