Joy in knowing Christ

My friend Teresa was kind and thoughtful to give me a copy of an article from an old Sovereign Grace magazine, which is an excerpt from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones' Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure. The article is called To Know Joy, and I read it in the waiting room for my chiropractor appointment on Wednesday. Below I am quoting the last paragraph. I love this truth so much - I love when God feeds our minds with truth and softens our hearts to love him more.

Finally, let me put it in this way: "Do you want to know supreme joy, do you want to experience a happiness that eludes description? There is only one thing to do, really seek him, seek him himself, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ himself. If you find out your feelings are depressed do not sit down and commiserate with yourself, do not try to work something up but - this is the simple essence of it - go directly to him and seek his face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to him. If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find him there is not need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as he is our peace. He is life, he is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence of the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory, Who so loved you that he went to the Cross and bore the punishment and the shame of your sins and died for you. Seek him, seek his face, and all other things shall be added unto you (emphasis added).

And because of the all encompassing reach of the gospel, I can have joy in any given moment.

On my worst days of sin and failure, the gospel encourages me with God's unrelenting grace toward me. On my best days of victory and usefulness, the gospel keeps me relating to God solely on the basis of Jesus' righteousness and not mine. - Milton Vincent; A Gospel Primer

photo: Tuscany, Italy 2007