Pleasing Pursuits
We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. Romans 12:6 Berean Study Bible
Gifts– The Greeks recognized a connection between chairo (joy) and edone (pleasure). In later Greek thinking the two terms are barely distinguishable. Alignment with the deepest expression of joy is the truest sense of pleasure. Eric Liddell made the connection when he said that while he was running, he felt God’s pleasure. But there is more to this connection than simple, inward exuberance. The Hebraic contribution to our etymological history shows that sacred joy is something that always finds expression in relationship to others. Joy has a purpose that culminates in community, especially in the community of worship, a way of realizing satisfaction with the Creator. This is why the Tanakh claims that God Himself rejoices. The fulfillment of His purposes in the voluntary expression of His creation is immensely pleasant for all who participate. Joy points toward a time when there is no disparity between the desire of the heart and the expression of the hands. When all of God’s creation exhibits the undiluted purposes for which it was created, joy will reign supreme. Then work and worship will truly be one.
This linguistic connection underscores the essential quality of charismata, the manifestation of your personal passion in joyful celebration. When we are aligned with the natural gifting inherent within us, our expressions of that gifting create joy for us and for others. It does not matter if I am at the piano or the computer. It makes no difference if I am at home or at work. Allowing my natural gifting to propel my choice of activities will bring me into the joyful flow of the universe. I will manifest the world of God’s delight. In the process I discover that my uniqueness is only a part of a coordinated tapestry of symbiotic gifts. By exhibiting my inherent uniqueness, I provide others with the ability to exhibit what they were born to be. I discover that every true expression of my natural zone facilitates community. In this sense, joy is communal. It creates mutual fellowship with others and with the universe. When I am in the flow, things just seem right for me and for everyone else.
Hellenistic Greece considered joy a power, fraught with religious meaning and potency. We may not hold the same mystery about joy, but every human being knows that the experience of real joy carries some kind of nearly magical aspect. Joy retains this magical quality when it becomes the motive behind my actions. When what I do fills me with joy, I am propelled toward more action. My compensation is the experience itself. The Scripture say that Yeshua continued on the journey to the cross for the joy set before Him. That is an example of gift in action.
Unfortunately, there are also consequences when we stifle or ignore these natural gifts. Wherever external incentives predominate, I am usually engaged in activities outside my natural zone. When joy is not my reward, I am not optimally productive. When we operate outside of our natural gifting, we work against the grain of our uniqueness and encounter resistance. We are outside the flow, swimming upstream and feeling exhausted in the effort. In contemporary terms, the result is stress. The consequences are declines in productivity, stress-related illnesses, and dysfunctional behaviors. The ancient Greeks recognized this counterpoint to joy in the idea of ungratefulness. This provides us with another “red flag” test. When I operate within my natural gifting, I am grateful for the experience. Life is good. Joy embraces me. But when I push my actions outside the zone, life is stressful. Joy evaporates. My orientation turns toward ungratefulness. I cannot love a job that steals my joy no matter how much it pays.
Today is the day for assessment. Are your incentives really robbing you of joy? Do you work for the sheer enjoyment of what you do, or are you a captive of toil for rewards? You cannot move toward the natural gift God has given you if you are serving a master who restrains you? Yeshua knew very well that no man can serve both masters. Which one drives you?
There is little hope of exercising the joyful gift in your life if you are bound to the objective of external rewards. Today is the day for ruthlessly honest assessment. Why do really you do what you do?
Topical Index: joy, chairo, edone, pleasure, work, Romans 12:6
I love this message! This is great confirmation for me. I have been running a small business which I quite like, but which I have essentially been involved in because I can make good money by means of it. However, I am now moving into life as an author and life coach which is really what I want to do. I don’t know yet if I’ll be successful, but the difference in the “joy” factor is massive!!!
The “joy” factor is what it is all about. I was successfully self-employed for more about 50 years and I regarded it as joy every day so I always said I never worked a day in my life.
However, I would love to be an author and write a story about a larger-than-life ancestor who lived through the French Revolution as a youth, fought with Napoleon at Moscow, returned to France and became a farmer, brewer and teamster. He sold all and emigrated to NYC in 1828 under very stressful conditions on board ship with a family of five children and 80 others who were food hostages for 75 days. One person died and a baby was born. He repeated his business performance in Ontario starting with nothing at the age of 46. After his Moscow and emigration experiences everything he did was for the benefit of others. He was just grateful to be alive.
I wanted to be him.
George. Take this summary of the event and fill up the before during and after with information you have and then make it a romantic pirate story by incorporating the loving boundary shaping message in the previous blog and you have a novel based on historic facts. Including a very convincing love principal to improve a specific relationship.
Just start, your heart is there your topic is great…
If you include rediscover yourself in 80 days then you will even be helping others through sound practical advice. The bottom line Just Do it. And the only time is now….
Best of luck.
Skip
Joy points toward a time when there is no disparity between the desire of the heart and the expression of the hands.
A lot said in this sentence. Sounds like that child like pleasure when a child is reunited with a favourite toy, pet or family member.
Hi Seeker, thanks for the suggestion. I agree with the concept of doing this kind of thing and have read similar books that work very well, two about WWI for example, both by Canadian award winning authors, but my problem is a virtual total lack of literary training in English literature education. I trained in Mech. Eng. and spent my entire life making consumer products.
I have written the basics facts of my various family genealogical histories of many of my ancestors which sold nearly 1000 books and everyone loved it because I write the way I tell stories, just the essential facts of the matter which is what people like; stories. But a cogent, well developed story that covers a huge range of subject matter is waaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond my limited talent. Thanks anyway though.
George, if you think you can, you can… I have a feeling you can, write the first paragraph of the struggling childhood and the rest will follow. Trust in God and believe in how he has empowered you to date, more is still to be revealed. Enjoy the talking to yourself and God while you permit the words to flow through your fingers into paper – sorry keyboard.
May all reading TW discover the gift of joy
that is rightfully yours.
Don’t let a moment go by without it!
“Be joyful always; pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances, for
this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
1 Thes 5: 16-18
What is of further interest to me here is the use of both, “gift”, and, “grace”, in this one verse. Perhaps you will have more to say on this verse but I notice that Grace is Strong’s G5485, CHARIS, and, Gift is G5486, CHARISMA.
Obviously, one is the root of the other. It also seems to me that grace can be associated with gratifying joy in Strong’s definition. So, it is God’s joy (grace) to give us gifts. Gifts are given freely; they are not earned, or they would not be gifts. Certainly, there is usually some good reason as to why they are given, but they are not given for “works”. It is a pleasure for a parent to freely shower gifts joyously on their children.
Hopefully, they respond with appropriate gratitude and attitude.
That helped me a lot, Dan!
I have noticed that all the gifts of God: whether they be outlined in 1Cor. 12, or other gifts, such as His Son; are just potentials, as it were, unless or until they are ‘used’, or, acted upon. The gift of faith, say, that Paul says God has given a “measure” of to all of us, still is not ‘useful’ to any of us unless or until we choose to use it by acting by means of it. Yeshua, too, as one of the gifts of God, is not ‘useful’ or even available to us unless or until we obey Him: or, release His Spirit in our lives to reproduce His life (which is His righteousness, or, right connections with reality) so that we can have the life that only comes through being rightly connected with all. I ‘get’ the gift of miracles, say, when I ACT in that gifting: when I step out by faith into the Jordan River in concert with the Shekinah living in me. I think even true “charisma” – the power of attraction – is where I think people are allowing the action of God’s attraction to shine through them to “draw all men” to love. All the actions of the Spirit in our lives are the actions of life itself for I am convinced that all God’s gifts are Himself: are those actions of life and love that He is. I think we open that package when we choose to allow the action in that package to be exercised through us by means of that Spirit in which it comes wrapped. May I not grieve that Spirit away today, but choose to live that life by means of the love (obedience) that only He can give.
I so agree with you Laurita, it is not faith alone OR works, it is faith AND works together.
Shema – Hear(obey) is a verb, not a noun and it is one, hearing/acting, not a belief and you can’t separate the one (Hebrew) from the other like a (Greek).
Faith alone is just something sitting on the mantlepiece unless we act on it.
George, I understand your aversion to Christians who think they can make one vocal expression of faith in Jesus Christ and then forever claim eternal redemption no matter what they do the rest of their life. I agree. But your solution that salvation is by BOTH faith and works has many problems as well.
1. The blunt statement by Paul that . . .
Eph 2:8 For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 9 NOT OF WORKS, lest anyone should boast.
Yes, the next verse says we are,
10 . . . created in Christ Jesus to good works, . . . that we should walk in them.
But Paul purposely contrasts the two ideas in one statement that ultimately negates works. Is that not plain enough?
Certainly, we strive to be obedient and
2. Salvation by works may actually be possible, the only problem is, the works required demands perfection, and I only know of One who is perfect.
3. IF salvation is partly by faith, what is that faith in? Are you saying, faith in Yeshua the Messiah? If so, are you then saying Jews must believe in Yeshua? Or, are you saying, faith in YHWH only matters, and faith in Yeshua is unnecessary?
4. If it is faith in YHWH that is necessary for salvation, are you then saying the billions of people who have never heard of YHWH are eternally lost no matter how many works they may have done all their life? (And how many of us can live with that? Who does not have family and friends who are just as “good” as we are but could care less about YHWH? Will we be eternally content with their fate over ours?
5. Or, if faith and works are necessary, but they do not need to be perfect, how close to perfect IS required? How can we ever know, and how can we ever feel secure? Certainly, some of us may have a certain (false?) confidence in ourselves but millions are not near so sure.
I sympathize with your position, it makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.
Dan, I believe that Yeshua is the Messiah, the anointed one who became the King of the new covenant which he inaugurated at his resurrection, who will return to rule the earth. But he was not, is not, a sub-sect God of the Trinitarian church(es). I believe the Orthodox (conventional, traditional) churches got it right and the Roman church did not. It wanted a war-like Roman God not unlike a Messiah that some Jews were expecting. Still are. Who knows what the general resurrection will look like?
For me the Messiah of Isaiah 11 with the wolves lying down with the lambs etc. represents the Gentiles living in peaceful co-existence with the Israelites, the Jews, each with the ONE and only GOD but this all got disturbed permanently by some church authorities not understanding the concept of bi-partisan togetherness of Torah/NT rather than what some now call replacement theology which I think is bunk.
Time and geography notwithstanding, I think it all begins at the beginning; who is your God (god, gods)? The ONE GOD the creator of ALL, or whatever pleases me? Pagan. Many indigenous people throughout history have had one Creator, Great Spirit, Supreme Being, God, a conception of universal spiritual force and a reverence for life, land and family as being sacred. Sounds like Genesis to me. In many of these cases, many Christian missionaries decided that wasn’t good enough so they tried to destroy this type of culture, religion, language, way of life and society in the name of the God Jesus and a Euro-centric faith.
Were, are, the indigenous totally wrong and the missionaries absolutely right?
I think we were created to act only when we are in concert with another spirit: another motivating factor. I can be motivated by a spirit of fear or malice or envy or lust, say, or I can be motivated, or powered, by the Spirit of God. I only act when I am empowered to that action by means of a ‘marriage’, or joining with a spiritual motivation FROM BEYOND ME. I never act by means of my own motivation. Our modern religion, humanism, lies to us and tells us it is ‘just’ ourselves, but when I look closely at the motivations BEHIND my actions that I take when I am believing that, I see unholy spiritual motivators not from God that I have been using to power through those actions. These unholy spiritual motivators are what I believe temptation is: lies telling us that they are legitimate fuel in our tanks, for we have to ‘fuel up’, or be powered by at least some motivating factor to be able to act at all because that is our design. I believe we were designed to be powered by spiritual forces from beyond us by means of our agreement with (one will with) what those forces represent. Thus, temptation from other spiritual forces tells us that we don’t need God to empower us (because we can only get His power through obedience): they lie to us and tell us that we can get power to act by allowing other spiritual motivations to ‘free’ us – unlock us – power us – to act according to (here’s the lie) our ‘own’ will. But it’s never ‘just’ us in there! That’s the lie! Either we are ‘married’ to the Shekinah or we are joined in unholy alliance to motivational forces from beneath. I am convinced that no action is ever singular: actions can only happen IN CONJUNCTION (that would be spiritual conjunction for us free will creatures) with other forces, or life.
Nature shows us this principle, for example: plants and animals alike cannot ‘use’, or, digest their own food (fuel). All plants and animals, including our own bodies, are completely dependent upon other lives to digest what we need and then ‘feed’ us. In turn, both plants and animals supply what their attendant life forms need to survive, too. Life – change – action itself – is NEVER a singular affair. (This is one reason why I think crowds can be dangerous: they spiritually share motivational forces, but if that force is not the Spirit of God, it can defile us or even be used to hurt us. Even science admits that “mass memes”, or mutual motivation, is real.) I suspect that people (all of us, sadly) who fall for that notion are ripe for even more ridiculous notions – further temptations from unholy spiritual forces. I repent! I want to be a “chaste bride espoused to Christ” Who is my sole spiritual link to life by means of His life in me. Halleluah!