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The Friend on the Road and Other Studies in the Gospels: Chapter 55 - The Joy of the Lord

By John Henry Jowett


      "That My joy might be in you, and that your joy might be full."--John xv. 11.

      IT is an extraordinary thing that our Lord should speak of His joy in the dark season through which He was passing. The circumstances were most oppressive. Antagonisms were blazing with fiercest enmity. Hatreds had deepened into black passions of the midnight. Malicious nets were being woven around Him. Calvary was only a stone's throw away, and on the morrow the grim cross would be on the hill! It was a very wilderness of stern surroundings. And yet the Master quietly spoke about His joy, an inward joy which these outer things could not disturb. His joy was like a well in the inner keep of a castle when all the streams of the countryside are locked in the bondage of frost. It was like the light and the fire in a cottage, quietly shining and burning while the tempest rages outside. It was a joy that was victorious over the unfriendly world.

      And this inner joy has always been one of the distinctions of the triumphant saints. They have been self-possessed in the tumult. They have been radiant in the night. They have been hopefully quiet even when terrible things have shown their faces at the door. They have revealed a cheery mastery of rough and brutal circumstances. The privileged readers of "Men of the Knotted Heart" will remember that Grant was once at Ayr Station, and there was a little lad running up and down the platform, skipping and singing. A man was sweeping out the waiting-rooms, doing the most menial work about the place, and wanting an arm, and most ill-thriven looking. Grant said to him, "How much would it take to set you dancing and singing like that boy?" "Not much, sir," he said, "for I'm singing inside me a' the time." And taking off his cap he lifted his face to the sky above, "Ay, sir," he said, "just that! In God's house for evermore my dwelling place shall be!" That is the victory of the saint--the inner joy which rises above the painful and crippling antagonisms of the world.

      And what is this joy? It is much more than high spirits. High spirits often fail in the crisis. And it is much more than a happy temperament. Happy temperaments can be blown out like candles in a gusty night. This joy arises from the deep secrets of spiritual satisfaction. It is the sense of health and wholesomeness when the soul lives and breathes in its native air. It is fellowship with the eternal springs. It is the assurance of all-rightness in our relations with the eternal God. One gropes for all sorts of analogies to express the wealthy fact. It is the joy of the wedded union between the soul and the Lord. It is the interpassage of covenanted love. It is the interchange of sacred confidences. The soul has come to herself, and she has found herself in God, and all her springs are in Him! "Have you water all the year round?" I said to a friend who had built a house in a somewhat droughty place. "Yes," he answered, "our wells are very deep!" And "there is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God!" "Therefore will not we fear, though the mountains be shaken in the hearts of the seas!"

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See Also:
   Chapter 1 - Critics and Surgeons
   Chapter 2 - The Challenge of the Closed Door
   Chapter 3 - How the Best Things Become Ours
   Chapter 4 - Sixpennyworth of Miracle
   Chapter 5 - The Peace of the Larger Life
   Chapter 6 - Education by Contagion
   Chapter 7 - The Tares Among the Wheat
   Chapter 8 - Things New and Old
   Chapter 9 - The Buoyancy of Faith
   Chapter 10 - Sound the Great Recall
   Chapter 11 - The Bright Cloud
   Chapter 12 - Mercy and Obligation
   Chapter 13 - The Simplification of Life
   Chapter 14 - Life's Perilous Heats
   Chapter 15 - Feverishness
   Chapter 16 - The Truly Sensational Life
   Chapter 17 - The Dominant Passion
   Chapter 18 - Doing the Impossible
   Chapter 19 - The Life I Should Live
   Chapter 20 - The Blessing and Discipline of Retirement
   Chapter 21 - Endless Possibilities
   Chapter 22 - The Price of Liberty
   Chapter 23 - The Dynamics of Expulsion
   Chapter 24 - Evils That Never Arrive
   Chapter 25 - Returning in Power
   Chapter 26 - The Old Tackle and the New Presence
   Chapter 27 - The Noble Dissatisfaction
   Chapter 28 - The Malady of Not Wanting
   Chapter 29 - Sentimentaltsm
   Chapter 30 - The Pedantic Conscience
   Chapter 31 - A Receiver of Wrecks
   Chapter 32 - The Supreme Test
   Chapter 33 - Fainting
   Chapter 34 - Doing the Impossible
   Chapter 35 - Divine Visitations
   Chapter 36 - Self-Possession
   Chapter 37 - The Treacherous Kiss
   Chapter 38 - The Friend on the Road
   Chapter 39 - Dull Scholars
   Chapter 40 - The Unknown Christ
   Chapter 41 - The Worst and the Best
   Chapter 42 - Increase and Decrease
   Chapter 43 - Hating the Light
   Chapter 44 - Heroic Goodness
   Chapter 45 - Living Words
   Chapter 46 - The Last Bridge
   Chapter 47 - The Ministry of Infusion
   Chapter 48 - Breaking the Awful Silence
   Chapter 49 - Preparing for the Miracle
   Chapter 50 - The Inner Door
   Chapter 51 - The Revelation in the After Days
   Chapter 52 - The Troubled Heart
   Chapter 53 - The Gift of Peace
   Chapter 54 - Settling Down in Christ
   Chapter 55 - The Joy of the Lord
   Chapter 56 - The Joy of Christian Life
   Chapter 57 - The Sense of Mission
   Chapter 58 - Living at Second Hand
   Chapter 59 - The Great Act of Receiving

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