Is it any wonder we don’t feel as close to God as we could?

There is an amazing sensation that comes over you when you welcome a stranger into your life and show them reckless love.  When we serve like Jesus describes we should, serving the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, and so on, we experience nearness to the Living God, nearness to Jesus Himself like never before thought possible!

Are we looking for joy in all the wrong places?  Don’t we want joy more than almost any emotion?  What about love?  Oh, we desperately want a regular awareness of the love of God and others for us, don’t we?  Loving those who can’t return favors as quickly as our peers is one of the quickest ways we can find love and joy in all the right places.  As we love these dear souls and care for them in their tough places, they experience the love and joy of God in a fresh way, and we begin to recognize the face of Jesus in the faces of those we’re serving.  He shows up and ministers joy and love to us in those moments of struggle and exhaustion.

When discussing this, I can’t help but to think of Pastor Lee, the pastor whose true story is told in the recent film The Dropbox – PRESS HERE.  Pastor Lee tells, along with his wife and children, over and again that deeper joys are found in serving and giving.  There is a joy that we in the United States know little of in many cases.

May this change, incrementally yes, but may this also change like a wildfire changes the landscape of a thick forest.  May our sin and selfishness be burned up in the love of the Redeemer, showing up through God’s people recklessly showing the love of God to a hurting world.  And, as we do this, may we come to experience God’s love and joy like never before.

In His deeper joys,

– Torrey