I am currently reading John Piper’s book, “Desiring God.” This book is arguing that true Christianity is hedonistic, meaning that it involves a personal joy and satisfaction from one’s relationship with God and the act of serving God. The chapter I read today is about Scripture and how it should be used as kindling for Christian Hedonism. Much of this chapter discussed the trials that come along with Christianity and how, with the presence of Satan, it is impossible to make every day a joyful day in the Lord. The first few paragraphs read as follows:

“Christian Hedonism is much aware that every day with Jesus is not ‘sweeter than the day before,’ Some days with Jesus our disposition is sour. Some days with Jesus, we are so sad we feel our heart will break open. Some days with Jesus, we are so depressed and discouraged that between the garage and the house we just want to sit down on the grass and cry.

Every day with Jesus is not sweeter than the day before. We know it from experience and we know it from Scripture. For David says in Psalm 19:7, ‘The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.’ If every day with Jesus were sweeter than the day before, if life were a steady ascent with no dips in our affection for God, we wouldn’t need to be re-vived.

In another place, David extols the Lord with similar words: ‘He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul’ (Psalm 23:2-3).  This means David must have had bad days.

There were days when his soul needed to be restored. It’s the same phrase he used in Psalm 19:7: ‘The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.’ Normal Christian life is a repeated process of restoration and renewal. Our joy is not static. It fluctuates with real life. It is vulnerable to Satan’s attacks.

When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:24, ‘Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy,’ we should emphasize it this way: ‘We work with you for your joy.’ The preservation of our joy in God takes work. It is a fight. Our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion (I Peter 5:8), and he has an insatiable appetite to destroy one thing: the joy of faith (Ephesians 6:17) for the defense of our joy.

Or, to change the image, when Satan huffs and puffs and tries to blow out the flame of our joy, we have an endless supply of kindling in the Word of God. Even on days when every cinder in our soul feels cold, if we crawl to the Word of God and cry out for ears to hear, the cold ashes will be lifted and the tiny spark of life will be fanned. For ‘the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.’ The Bible is the kindling of Christian Hedonism.”

The reason this spoke to me so strongly is because I am very aware in my life that not every day is a  joyful day in the Lord. Many days I am overcome by incomprehensible sadness and it’s days like that where my faith in God is at it’s weakest. There have been so many periods in my life where I thought I was trying so hard to pursue the Lord, yet I was getting nowhere. I have now come to the realization that this is the way Satan attacks me. He robs me of my joy and fills me with hatred and self-loathing. These are the days when my joy in the Lord is non-existent, and every time it happens I am pulled further away from my Creator. However, I have now learned that the only way to overcome this is by seeking him relentlessly through prayer and through the Word, even in the times that it feels like he is not there. I want to encourage everyone who has felt this way not to give up, because once you give up it’s a lot harder to get back. I have learned and am still learning that through my own experience. Don’t wait for God to pursue you; pursue Him by fighting every temptation along the way and by remembering that you are not alone.