Advent Week 3: JOY (Job 3:1–26)

If you got a Bible, go and get that open to the book of Job in

the Old Testament, specifically Job chapter 3.

Job 3 · chapter mention

As you're turning there, a couple notes are sermon series

for Advent. We're titling it stubborn

gladness. So Advent is the celebration of

the light coming into the darkness, right?

This symbolic analogy for God himself coming in the flesh of

Jesus into our broken world. So what we've been doing is

we've been exploring the traditional topics of Advent,

hope, peace, joy, next week, love.

But we've been exploring them in light of their opposites.

And so hope in light of hopelessness, peace in light of

anxiety, and joy in light of depression.

That's why you're turning to Job Chapter 3 this morning.

Job 3 · chapter mention

So it is about joy this morning. Well, but don't get too excited

because I think my goal is to preach the saddest sermon on joy

possible because I'm a monster. So let me pray and then we'll

jump into that. Heavenly Father, I, I do, I do

try, I, I honestly do try to be mindful because I love the, I

love the Advent season. I love the, I love the Christmas

season. I, I love everything about it.

And so I, Lord, I do try to be mindful that, as I said to our

volunteers this morning, not everybody is Clark Griswold

during the season. But for some people, the bright

sparkling lights and the the presents under the Christmas

tree and the ornaments on the tree, for some people that

represents loss, loss of hope, loss of the people, a nostalgic

depression of Christmas expectations that went on that I

don't, I don't know, Lord, whatever.

I just know people can tend to experience the the Christmas

Blues in this season. And my hope this morning, and

this is, this is a hope, Lord, that can it can only be

fulfilled if you show up in a profound and miraculous way this

morning. My, my hope is that for those

who experience deep and unrelenting sorrow or sadness or

even in even depression during the season, my hope is that you

would show up this morning and help them taste joy in the midst

of it. Maybe not even joy in spite of

it, but joy in the midst of that all.

I'm always profoundly amazed when I read the New Testament

and I read the Apostle Paul describe his life as sorrowful,

yet always rejoicing. Sorrowful, like full of sorrow,

yet always rejoicing as in joy always.

And so there has to be in the Spirit this possibility that joy

and sorrow can coexist in the Christian who has both her feet

in a broken world and in the person of Christ.

So yeah, do that. In the precious name of Jesus,

all God's people prayed, Amen. We 3 Joy.

One of the biggest challenges of the Christian life, I think

potentially the biggest challenge of the Christian life

is when our experiences don't line up with God's promises.

You know what I mean? Like when our felt experiences

don't line up with God's promises.

I know God promises me this. I don't feel that.

I feel this. What do you do when your felt

experiences don't line up with God's promises?

And I I didn't think there's any bigger area of struggle on this

topic than with God's promise of joy and our regular experiences

of depression, sorrow, and sadness.

So take the Old Testament for example.

God in the Old Testament, he distinguishes his people.

He distinguishes Israel from all the nations of the world,

specifically by declaring them a happy people.

That's not coal. That's the Bible.

This is Deuteronomy chapter 33. I just want you to see this

Deuteronomy 33 · chapter mention

Deuteronomy chapter 33. God says Happy are you, O

Deuteronomy 33 · chapter mention

Israel, who is like you? They're different from the

nations. He's saying When I compare the

people of God in Israel to all the other nations, no one's like

you. What makes them distinct?

Happy are you, O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by the

Lord. And so Israel is God's people is

to be distinct and different from the rest of the world,

particularly by their happiness that they experience in their

salvation. And the big question then, of

course, is what do you do when you don't feel that way?

Like if you know your Bible, like what do you do?

For instance, if you're Job, do you pretend?

Do you act? Do you put on a face?

What do you do? And if you're able, let's go

ahead and stand together for the reading of God's Word and see

what he does. All of chapter 3.

I won't have time to expose it every single verse.

That would take a long time, but let's blast through this

together. Job chapter 3 after this, I'll

Job 3 · chapter mention

explain what happened leading up to this.

After this, Job opened his mouth and he cursed the day of his

birth. And Job said, this is ugly

stuff. Let the day perish on which I

was born, and the night that said a man is conceived.

Let that day be darkness. May God above not seek it, nor

light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness

claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it.

Let the blackness of the day terrify it.

That night where I was born, let thick darkness seize it.

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year.

Let it not come into the number of the months.

Yeesh. Behold, let that night be

barren, let no joyful cry enter it.

Let those who curse them, who curse the day, who are ready to

rouse up leviathan chaos. Let the stars of its dawn be

dark. Let it hope for light, but have

none nor see the eyelids of the morning, because it did not shut

the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.

It gets worse. Why did I not die at birth, come

out from the womb and expire? Why did the knees of my mother

receive me, or why the breast that I should nurse for?

Then I would have lain down and been quiet.

I would have slept. Then I would have been at rest

with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for

themselves, or with Princess who had gold, who filled their

houses with silver. Why was I not as a hidden

stillborn child, as infants who never see the light?

There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary

are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease

together. They hear not the voice of the

taskmaster, the small and the greater.

There, and the slave is free from his master in the grave.

So why is light given to him who is in misery and life, to the

bitter and soul who long for death?

But it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they find the grave in

light. Why is light given to a man

whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?

For my sign comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are

poured out like the water. For the thing that I fear comes

upon me, and what I dread befalls me.

I am not at ease, nor am I quiet.

I have no rest. But trouble comes chapter 3 of

Job. You know that old classic Advent

text? If you're able, you can be

seated Week 1 of Advent. The first candle.

Tell yourself this. Tell your children this is for

hope, the hope of Jesus. Week 2 of Advent is for peace,

the peace of Jesus and week 3 of Advent.

Tell yourself this, this week as you light this candle.

If you have kids, tell them it's for joy.

But you read a text like this and I think the most natural

question is where? Where is that?

Where's the joy? Where's the joy?

God promises the distinguishes people from the nations by their

happiness in him. Job is a part of the people of

God. He's part of Israel.

That means he is by virtue of extension of that promise.

He is a recipient of that promise.

But where's the joy? Well, it would be helpful to

know what happened in chapters 1 and 2.

So here's what comes before Job Chapter 3.

Job 3 · chapter mention

Essentially, Job loses everything.

You should read chapters 1 and 2 this week.

It's essentially progressive overload of tragedy.

Every time you think that's got to be the worst thing that could

happen, another thing that's bad happens.

It starts with Job losing his oxen and his servants are struck

dead. That is financial insecurity.

Where's the joy? Then it gets worse.

He loses his children. Then it gets worse, his health

is taken from him. Then it gets worse.

Even his wife curses him. Where's the joy?

And the worst part is, if you read chapter 1, all that's

befalling Job, all these, these losses, these things are

happening to Job. It's all taking place based on a

cosmic bet between God and Satan that even if Satan takes

everything from Job, Job won't curse God.

That's the big question in in Job chapter 3 is, is he going to

Job 3 · chapter mention

do it? Is is Job going to raise his

first to the heavens and curse God?

There's a lot of cursing in this chapter, right?

A lot. It's uncomfortable to read,

parents. I bet if somebody made a song

out of Job 3 and you heard it on the radio, you'd be like this.

I don't want my kids to hear that right.

You would turn it off. So much cursing.

The question is, does Job curse God?

If you have a Bible open, look closely at chapter 3.

I'm not going to have this on the screen.

Let me just read it out loud. Job curse is the day where he

was born. He says let the day perish on

which I was born in the night that said a man is conceived.

Let that day be darkness like this.

He's like this close to cursing God.

Does he do it? He goes on by saying, May God

above not seek it, nor light shine upon it.

Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.

Let clouds dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day

terrify it. What's Job doing?

This is poetic language. But essentially what what Job is

doing is he's cursing the day of his birth.

Notice this. He's cursing out loud.

This is an important textual observation, but not to God

about God. But he's not addressing God.

He's just cursing out loud. This is important.

So if you look at all the angry Psalms, and there's a lot of

angry Psalms, one thing you notice is that the psalmist,

they always address God. They, they pray to God.

You read a Psalm and it's like, how long, O Lord, until you do

this or God, what are you doing up there?

How long until this happens? They're addressing God.

That's not what's happening with Joe.

He mentions God, but he does not greet God in chapter 3.

That's why some theologians refer to chapter 3 as praying

into the void, which would make an awesome name for a metal

album. Praying into the void.

This is not Job praying to God, this is Job kicking and punching

in his bed sheets, screaming into his pillow.

Job is the Old Testament figure who experiences the felt, not

the objective, the felt absence of God more than any other Old

Testament figure. You could even say that Job.

Many people do say that Job is the most God forsaken man in the

Old Testament in these chapters. But does he do it?

He curses. But does he curse God?

Not yet. But look at verse 11.

Job continues by saying why did I not die at birth, come out

from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me?

Why the breast that I should nurse for?

Then I would have lain down and been quiet.

I would have slept, he's saying. It would have been better to

just be dead with kings and Queens than to be alive, he

says. Then I would have been at rest

with kings and councillors of the earth who built ruins for

themselves or with Princess who had gold, who filled their

houses with silver. What a terrible thing to say.

Like imagine you're a small group, community group this week

and somebody says that, right? You would be like, you ever do

that? Like somebody asks who you how

you are and you're like, I'm good.

And they're like, no, how are you really?

And you're like, OK. And they're like, and then

you're like, OK, I feel worse now because not only do you know

how I'm doing, I still feel that way.

And now you're walking away from me.

But does he curse God? He curses life itself.

It's bad. It's a bad thing to say.

God says life is good, existence is good.

It was God's idea. Terrible thing to say.

But sometimes the interior life of a faithful Christian is ugly,

am I right? A faithful Christian can have an

ugly interior life. Sometimes I think Iowan

Christians struggle with this. And by Iowan Christians in

general, I mean me in specific. I'm talking about myself.

Sometimes when when people experience deep sadness and

sorrow or depression, it freaks us out and we say cliches to

them because it makes us uncomfortable.

And I think one of the reasons why we struggle with this is

because as Christians, something that we fail to reckon with is

the fact that God actually created us with the capacity for

sorrow. That was God's idea, and the

capacity for sorrow is intrinsically good.

You could try to make the theological argument that the

capacity for sorrow is a result of the fall.

If you made that argument, you would be stupid and you'd be

wrong. Why do I know that?

It's really simple. How do I know that?

Because God himself experiences and expresses sorrow.

And if it's part of the Nate, the fundamental nature of the

perfect and holy One, then it is objectively good to have that

capacity for sorrow. And so the implication there is

that if we are unable to experience appropriate sorrow in

life, then we actually fail to image God accurately to the

world. Did you hear that?

Like when Job freaks out in chapter 3.

My read on that is not oh, Job's spiritual health is in danger.

You know what would make me think that though?

If Job lost all of that and he felt nothing.

I think the older I get as a Christian, the more I believe

that the opposite of joy is not sadness.

The I don't think depression is the opposite of joy.

I think the opposite of joy is apathy.

Like I'm going to try to put something to words here that's

hard for me to explain. When you experience the

appropriate amount, appropriate amount of sorrow in relation to

the amount of loss, you experience that sorrow.

You experience it as though there were kind of a joy at the

bottom of it. Like there, there's a dark

pleasure in experiencing the appropriate amount of sadness

and sorrow. And so I think the problem is

that if our capacity for sadness is good, and Job's intense

sadness here is actually something of a bittersweet

consolation for him, then to try to tell him to just cheer up

would mean that you're not actually making his life better,

but actually just taking another thing away from him.

So not only would he lose his wife, his wife's love, his kids,

his health, his financial thing, but you would also make him lose

his heart. And so Job, caught up in this

furious tornado of depression, he starts to say some scary

things. Christians say scary things.

Job is saying some scary things. He's cursing life itself.

Yikes. But did he do it?

Did he curse God? And the answer, of course, is

no, close, but no. Look at verse 20.

Look at verse 20. Verse 20 says he goes after

light after going after his own life.

He says why is light given to him who was in misery and life

to the bitter and soul? Verse 23, why is light given to

a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in right this?

This is very close to cursing God.

When God creates light in Genesis, God says it's good.

Genesis saying, or what Job is saying is no, curse it.

God says it's good. Job says curse the light.

What a brutally atrocious thing to curse.

But did he curse God? No.

And this, this is the key observation in all of Job three.

I think this is the central point of chapter 3.

Job is consumed by depression, a never ending pit of sorrow in

fact, And Job raises a fist at everything and everyone and

curses everything besides God. So I'm going to say something

that is, I think it might, I'm going to quote something that I

think might make you nervous. I'm reading a book right now by

a Christian who experiences intense mental health issues,

bipolar and a lot of other things.

And he, he says his name is John Bryant.

And he says something that's almost alarming, but I think

it's worth your consideration. I wrote it down right when I

read it. He says I love Jesus.

And I'm still very much mentally ill and my love for Jesus has

not fixed that. How he goes on to say this, this

is so critical. He says, look, the saddest thing

in the world isn't to have bad thoughts or feelings.

Has anybody ever told you that the saddest thing in the world

is not to have bad thoughts or feelings?

What is it? He says The saddest thing in the

world is to believe things that are not true.

The saddest thing in the world is not to experience or have

depression. You need to hear me say that the

saddest thing in the world is to believe the lies that your

depression tells you. Those are two distinct things.

You can be in the midst of deep depression and still reject the

lies that your depression is telling you and still keep your

feet planted in the promises of God.

And if you can resist the lies that your depression tells you,

something amazing happens in this moment of Job, for

instance. What is happening, I think, is

that Job is simultaneously the happy one of Israel.

Deuteronomy 33. He has not forfeited that

identity. He is simultaneously the happy

one of Israel, the blessed one of Israel, and a man of great

sorrows. Not one or the other, both at

once. This is key.

Biblically, joy is not the absence of sorrow.

It can't be, the New Testament says sorrowful, yet always

rejoicing. Joy is not the absence of

suffering. Scripture, in fact, commands us

to count our suffering as all joy.

So it can't be that. And so if joy is not this toxic

positivity, if joy is not the absence of sorrow or the absence

of suffering, then what is it? And I'm convinced that what joy

is joy is a stubborn refusal to not worship our sorrow even when

we experience it, and instead a dogged determination to worship

God alone. I'm telling this is going to be

a hard pill to swallow. I think it's true, though.

I think, I think that it is better to be depressed in the

presence of God than to be chipper outside of the presence

of God. Which one's more joyful?

The person with deep sadness and sorrow that's in Christ or the

Super happy clappy person who doesn't know Jesus, the

depressed person in Christ has more joy.

It's wild. It's wild.

This is why we're using the phrase stubborn gladness for

this series. I'm actually ripping off from a

Jack Gilbert poem where he says something incredible.

Gilbert says. The first time I read this a

couple of years, I underlined it and highlighted it and I was

like, that's got to go on a sermon. 4 years later, here it

is baby Gilbert. In this poem.

He says we must have the stubbornness.

I like that Our mission statement is fight for joy.

It's not act happy or act joyful.

It's a stubborn fight, he says. Gilbert says we must have the

stubbornness to accept our gladness even in the ruthless

furnace of the world. Come on, does that hit dude?

We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the

ruthless furnace of this world. And this is the turning point in

the sermon, right? This is where, this is where,

this is the moment where this sappy text in Job 3 actually

becomes an Advent story. Because what we recognize in the

Advent story is that God is not merely the God who stands above

sadness and sorrow as he does in Job chapter 3.

Job 3 · chapter mention

God is the God who descends into sadness and sorrow.

Because one of the things you got to reckon with is that when

Jesus comes, there is one who comes and fulfills the story of

Job better than Job. The first advent of Jesus is the

advent of a truer and better Job.

Jesus experiences everything that Job experiences.

Read the gospels in light of the book of Job.

Jesus experiences everything that Job experiences, but to the

10th degree, right? Like Job, Jesus loses his

friends. Like Job, Jesus loses everything

that belongs to him, which is not just a couple cattle and

oxen like Job, but all of creation turns against Jesus

like Job, his bride, his wife. The church curses him on the

cross. It's exactly parallel.

And ultimately, like Job, it's Jesus who screams into the void

on the cross. Jesus, the advent of God

himself. Jesus experiences a felt absence

of God. My God, my God, why have you

forsaken me? It's extraordinary.

Job is not the most God forsaken man in the Bible.

Jesus is the most God forsaken man in the Bible.

This is extraordinary fullness of divinity made to feel the

absence of divinity, right? The in the modern world we have

a word for that kind of experience.

When Jesus is in Gethsemane and he says my soul is sorrowful to

the point of death. That's poetic language for what

in the modern world we call depression.

Like you have to reckon with this, this, just think about

this. Jesus experienced a chemical

imbalance in his brain. If you could take an MRI of what

was going on in Jesus brain in Gethsemane, you would see a

chemical imbalance and he's perfect for God himself in the

flesh. God experienced a chemical

imbalance in his brain. What I mean, what God does that?

Only Jesus, Amen. Only Jesus, only the Christian

God, only Jesus can catch one of your tears in his hands and say,

I know what that feels like. I cried that exact same tear.

And this is so important to know because it helps you recognize

something so important, which is so simple, which is this God's

not afraid of your depression. Your friends, even some of your

Christian friends. When you go into deep seasons of

darkness and you say things like Job three, sometimes your

Christian friends will go, well, God's got a plan for your life,

so you just act happy. Even our Christian friends won't

do that sometimes. Does God No.

And you're God does not do this when you're in depression, when

you're in deep seasons of darkness and sorrow, God does

this. He knows it's felt it not afraid

of your depression, not afraid of your sorrow.

He knows what it feels like. And so when it's so life giving,

because when I experience sadness and sorrow, do you feel

this way ever? I don't know if I've ever been

through a season that I would call depression.

And so I don't. I have, I don't think I've

tasted that if you've experienced that or in that.

But I've been in seasons of sadness and sorrow.

And when I'm in those seasons, what I don't want people to do

is cheer me up. I don't.

What I want people to do in those seasons is I want people

to dignify my sorrow, to grant it dignity and worth and value.

And for Jesus to experience sorrow means that he has made

sorrow holy. By tasting sadness in the flesh,

Jesus has transfigured our sorrow and he has infused our

sorrow with a type of, and I mean this when I say it,

reverence. Do you find that beautiful?

Like, I don't even want, I don't even want a Jesus who's not the

Man of Sorrows. I don't want a Jesus who looks

at my sadness. And it's like, what's that like?

It's profound. Jesus, God in the flesh, the man

of sorrows. Job was just a man who felt

sorrow. Jesus was the Man of sorrows.

I mean, Job just cursed the day of his birth.

Jesus was cursed from the day of his birth.

There's a difference. Job just cursed his birthday.

Jesus was cursed from his birthday.

Galatians chapter 313. Argue with the wall if you don't

like that. Christ redeemed us from the

curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

He took on the curse that we deserved.

That's what makes him the Man of Sorrows.

And so every year when we celebrate Advent, we are

celebrating the advent of the Man of Sorrows.

He is the Man of Sorrows and the happy one of Israel.

And there will be a second Advent, right?

He's coming back, Amen. And when he comes back in the

second Advent, that gap is going to be gone.

The one we talked about, that gap between your felt

experiences and the promises of God during the second advent of

Jesus, it it'll be gone. There will no longer be any gap

between his promises and our felt experiences.

That gap will be thrown into the lake of fire and our experiences

will finally be brought fully into complete union with his

promises. No gap, not even a millisecond

between God promises this and then we experience it there.

It'll just be 1. You won't have to wait for the

needle to drop the needle to drop.

I I don't struggle with a lot of devices of the world, but I do

have addictions. For instance, my addiction

currently is in the middle of the day.

Yesterday I ran out of my house in order to drive over to the Hy

Vee Wine and Spirits where Joseph works because I needed to

have some more. And what I needed to have more

of was they had a record pop up store and I'm addicted to

records. And so I got there and you know

what, like a like a typical, I just like it all.

I like the the shape of the records.

I like the heaviness of it. I like the artwork, design, all

of it. And like a typical addict, I'm

going to blame somebody else. It's not my fault.

It's Andrew Johnson's fault he's not here, right?

Good. I'm going to blame Andrew.

So the reason why I'm so addicted to records right now is

he you should go check it out. In my office after church, he

brought in this amazing record player that he had that he's

letting me borrow and these massive speakers.

And so I listened to like one of my favorite albums on it.

And I was like, I have to hear every one of my favorite records

on this. And so it was like the week

after Andrew brought his new fancy record player and put it

in my office. And I there one of my favorite

records this year was written by a punk band called Military Gun,

not a Christian band. I'm not recommending it to you

know that I know as a pastor, I'm only allowed to listen to

Hillsong on my spare time. Which if you, which if you

believe that, do not look at my Spotify rapped for the year.

But there's this band called Military Gun and they're like

profoundly this punk band, like you listen to it and they got

this punk sound, but they also infuse it with this

extraordinary sound of joy. And so I was like, man, I got to

hear that. I was kind of feeling down that

week. I was like, I got to put on this

this record. And so I turned it on, turn the

speaker on, press play. It started spinning and I

couldn't hear it. So I checked again.

The record player was on, the speakers were on, the record was

spinning. I couldn't hear the music.

You know what happened? Andrew has a really fancy record

player, mine at home. You just press a button when you

press start and the needle naturally lifts up and goes

right down on the record where it's supposed to.

That's not the way Andrew's works.

It's a fancy one. You've got to manually lift up

the needle and then put it to the right spot and drop it.

I didn't know that. And so the record player was on,

the speakers were on, the record was spinning.

I couldn't hear it. Why?

Because the needle hadn't dropped.

And this is where records get really interesting.

OK, This is, I think that this is fascinating when when they

make a record, what they do is they etch the music.

They etch the songs into little tiny grooves, and then they they

press it into plastic and they press those songs into the

plastic until the record eventually goes perfectly flat.

And what that means is that the music is objectively there when

it's spinning, because it's etched into the record, it's

objectively there. But if the needle isn't dropped,

can you hear the music? No, that doesn't mean the

music's not there. It is.

You just have seasons where you can't hear it.

And what record players teach us is that there can be a profound

gap between an objective reality, like a song etched into

the very record itself, and our subjective experience of hearing

that song. And that's helpful to know

because that's most of the Christian life.

You are declared. If you're a believer in Jesus,

you are declared sinless objectively, even though

subjectively you still struggle with sin.

You've been covered in the righteousness of God.

Even though sometimes you practice unrighteousness.

Your sins are forgiven. You're covered in Jesus right

righteousness. And in your union with God

through the work of the Spirit, a joyful song has objectively

been pressed into your heart and grooves.

And sometimes as a Christian, the speakers are on, you know,

your Bible, the record players on, you go to church and you

worship with people. The record is spinning like

you're practicing the spiritual disciplines and you're going

through the motions. You're doing all of that and you

can't hear the music. You can't feel the joy.

And the big question is, what do you do in those seasons?

And the biblical answer to that, the answer of Advent, is simple.

What do you do? You keep spinning the record and

you wait for God to drop the needle.

That's what you do. You keep spinning the record.

Read your Bible. You keep spinning the record.

Keep going to church, You keep spinning the record.

Fast, repent of sin, pray, get help, encourage other people,

and you wait for God to drop the needle.

You practice what theologians call holy discontentment.

You ever heard that holy discontentment?

It's it's this term where whenever God promises us

something that we don't experience, it's our job to

practice holy discontentment. Do not be cool with that gap.

It's like if you go through a season of, of, of joylessness of

sadness and sorrow, that's OK, but be discontent in a holy way

with it, right? Our, our job is to say, God, you

promised me joy. I don't feel it.

Would you give it to me? And then if you don't experience

it, you know what you should do? Keep asking.

Keep spinning the record. Keep reading your Bible, say

God, I still won't experience it.

I don't feel the joy. You promised me joy.

Would you do it? And if you don't, you know what

you do. You keep asking, you keep

spinning the record. You keep praying, you keep

worshipping, you keep reading your Bible, you fast, you get

help. You talk to other Christians,

you wait. You keep spinning the record.

You fast. And you say, God, I want the joy

of salvation. I don't feel it.

Would you give it to me? And if you still don't get it,

you keep doing that on a daily basis, even if you have to do it

every day until you die. You keep spinning the record.

Amen. Keep spinning it.

You keep asking. You don't quit.

You don't just quit. You don't just give up and curse

God and be done with it. No, you keep asking, you keep

fighting and you keep banging on the door and you keep saying,

God, I don't feel it. Would you help me experience it?

You keep stubbornly asking, God, where's the joy?

Where is it? Heavenly Father, would you help

us practice that holy discontentment?

Stir in US just the spirit given desire to continue to ask and

ask and ask and ask and fight and fight and fight and fight.

And if you don't give that to us in this lifetime, help us wait

for it because it is coming. Maybe some of us will experience

the lifting of the sadness and sorrow right now.

Pray for that if you haven't. Some of us will experience the

lifting of that sorrow next week.

Some of us will experience it next year.

But all of us will experience it in our next lifetime.

And so, Lord, stir in us a desire to taste the joy

subjectively that is objectively in us because of the person of

Jesus. So it's in his precious name

that all God's people prayed. Amen.