Now I can take my happy place with me!

I saw this shirt yesterday in the Atlanta airport and just couldn't resist. After I bought it, my mom was like, "You're going to put that on now, right? Right?....."

Yeah, so, what's your point?

One a bit deeper and more enduring level than a shirt, a friend (in a very timely way), sent me this article by John Piper this weekend: The Bible: Kindling for Christian Hedonism.

Here's the first two paragraphs:

Christian Hedonism is very much aware that every day with Jesus is not "sweeter than the day before." Some days with Jesus our disposition is as sour as raw persimmons. Some days with Jesus we are so sad we feel our heart will break open. Some days with Jesus fear turns us into a knot of nerve ends. Some days with Jesus we are so depressed and discouraged that between the garage and the house we just want to sit down on the grass and cry. Every day with Jesus is not sweeter than the day before. We know it from experience and we know it from scripture. For the text says (Psalm 19:7), "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." If every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before, we wouldn't need to be revived.

The reason David praised God with the words, "He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul," is because he had bad days. There were days when his soul needed to be restored. It's the same phrase used in Psalm 19:7--"the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." Normal Christian life is a repeated process of restoration and renewal. Our joy is not static. It fluctuates with real life. It is as vulnerable to Satan's attacks as a Lebanese marine compound to a suicide bomber. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:24, "Not that we lord it over your faith but we are workers with you for your joy," we should emphasize it this way: "We are workers with you for your joy." The preservation of our joy in God takes work. It is a fight. Our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, and he has an insatiable appetite to destroy one thing: the joy of faith. But the Holy Spirit has given us a shield called faith and a sword called the word of God and a power called prayer to defend and extend our joy. Or, to change the image, when Satan huffs and puffs and tries to blow out the flame of your joy, you have an endless supply of kindling in the word of God. And even though there are days when we feel that every cinder in our soul is cold, yet if we crawl to the word of God and cry out for ears to hear, the cold ashes will be lifted and the tiny spark of life will be fanned, because, "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul." The Bible is the kindling of Christian Hedonism.