Quest: Joy! Found: Christ!....Blaise Pascal was a French mathematical genius who died in 662.. After running from God until he was 1 years old, on November 3,, 654 at 0::0 pm, Pascal met God and was profoundly and unshakably converted to Jesus Christ. He wrote it down on a piece of parchment and sewed into his coat where it was found after his death eight years later. It said, Year of grace 654,, Monday 3 November, feast of St. Clement . . . from about half past ten at night to about half an hour after midnight, FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars. Certitude, heartfelt joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. "My God and your God." . . . Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of joy. . . Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. May I never be separated from him. In 968 Pascal and C. S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards and Dan Fuller and the Bible teamed up to change my life forever with those words, "Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of joy." This little booklet, Quest for Joy, that you have in your worship folder was born in those days. It wasn’t written for 5 years or so. But it was born then. Look inside the front cover. Here is Pascal’s blast against my fear of happiness. All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves. I suspected this was true. But I always feared that it was sin. That wanting to be happy was a moral defect. That self-denial meant renouncing joy, not renouncing lesser joys for greater joys. But then God conspired by these writers to force me to reread the Bible. To give it a chance to have its true say. And what I found there concerning joy changed me forever. I have been trying to understand it and live it and teach it every since. It’s not new. It’s been there for thousands of years. What the Bible Says About JoyLet me give you a taste from what the Bible says about joy.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 22:35:52 +0000
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