More Joy

Psalm 4: 6-8 (The Message)

Why is everyone hungry for more? "More, more," they say.
"More, more."
I have God's more-than-enough,
More joy in one ordinary day

Than they get in all their shopping sprees.
At day's end I'm ready for sound sleep,
For you, God, have put my life back together.

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Excerpt from Psalm 4: The Who post at Miscellanies:

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So can we be happy if God takes away all our stuff—or even worse?

In this Psalm, David was surrounded by trials and temptations and loss. David was cornered, he was hunted by his own son who usurped his throne, he was both the target of slander and defenseless to it, he was pierced with the hot lead of gossip fired from the barrel of loose tongues, he was humiliated publicly, he was surrounded by lies that further undermined his authority, and he was even brought down low by his friends, who became a cloud of doom further darkening his life.

This Psalm perplexes those of us in a western materialistic climate, because despite experiencing the loss of everything, David was filled with joy. He had joy because he had God.

Communion with God was David’s joy, a joy untouched by the slander, untouched by the loss, untouched by the outward gloom, a sweet fellowship enjoyed in reflection and prayer in the quiet peacefulness of night, those dark hours when the terror of anxiety often breaks into the silence with piercing screams to steal and destroy joy, moments now calmed for communion with God.

It was God who deposited this joy in David’s heart, a joy similar to the joy filling the heart during times of material abundance and prosperity, but a different joy altogether, a joy untethered from physical comforts, untethered from the approval of others, untethered from the plunge of Wall Street.

We, too, can find this joy if we find it in God, as we walk in God’s Word, as we know Him, as we love Him, as we delight in His goodness. And as we walk this path, joy, untouchable by circumstances, fills our hearts.

It is a good thing, and rightly do we enjoy, a bank account with money, a table with food, and several pair of clothes. These gifts each flow from God’s generosity towards each of us. But the possessions are small, temporary gifts compared to the fountain of joy He offers us.

To have God as our own, being united to Him through the death of His Son on the cross, is to possess the source of all joy, not merely enjoying temporary gifts, but to directly enjoy God, who is the source of our “infinite, self-sufficient, all-sufficient, essential, overflowing good” (Edwards).

This is the one secret to joy and happiness that you will not find printed in 40-point fluorescent green font on the cover of a magazine cover in the check-out line at the grocery store:

Get God, then seek Him all of your days, and discover with the Psalmist that the source of eternal joy is not in the what, it’s in the Who.