You’ve read the Good Book… not the humanist one but the Word of God… Maybe you haven’t?  Well, the real Good Book wasn’t written by one chap wanting to defy God but rather multiple authors were used by the hand and mouth of God to communicate God’s good words to us to live by in this life for the next life.  I’ve been praying over God’s Word for my own spirit’s good and He has given me passion to encourage the spirit of other believers, starting with my own family.  We have the opportunity to know one another at a deeper level than just physical or emotional.  We can know one another’s spirit as being either eternal children of God or potential eternal children of God together.  I don’t mean to over-spiritualize human existence, but we must admit at the end of the day that there is so much more to our existence than mere physical and emotional responses to one another’s physical and emotional inputs.  We are not mere mortals to put it straight.  We are eternal beings, all of us!

There is hope for eternal joy that camps out in every spirit.  Every human spirit flies when introduced to purpose, calling, and especially a meaning that is good.  When one knows he or she is aiming in unhealthy directions, aiming at things which are not good, his or her spirit struggles and is often either crushed or becomes less and less good itself.  Good is not something that is defined by a sinful humanity, and yet we as humanity discover it in the light of God’s grace.  People of all traditions and origins have tasted this goodness that God dispenses so richly, and our spirits fly with a passion and joy as we encounter this goodness.

Where this power really begins to ignite within us is when it meets the promises of God in His Word, both for this life and the eternity in His presence believers so long for and hope for together.  I have a friend who struggles to believe God is really good because of age-old questions about his purposes and motives.  He doubts God’s goodness and therefore seems to doubt so much of God’s Word, the Bible as we’ve come to call it.  That said, he speaks so fondly of God’s Word when it comes to these promises of eternal joy.  In fact, JOY is one of his favorite words.  Joy, in fact, is truly one of my very favorite words and realities.  My wife gets the nickname from me of being my Sweet Song of Joy.  I’ve always loved this nickname for her, that I greet her every morning with such a long nickname, but this phrase fits my thoughts of her person, her personality, and her modus operandi.  Her very spirit is to me a Sweet Song of Joy to our Creator God.  God has created us to grow in His unmerited favor within His very presence and His awesome promises of eternal joy with Him for eternity.

Jesus Christ is the believer’s hope of glory, an eternal walk with God, the same kind of walking with God that we read about Adam and Eve originally having (Gen 1 & Col 1).  May we more and more come to encounter this Living God as we encounter those God puts in our path.  If the American church could just get this one truth, I truly believe we would find more joy than we know what to do with daily and till the day we die and joy the Lord in glory: We can encounter Jesus as we show God’s love to the least of these, to those God places in our paths, whether high or low, “important” or obscure.  Each person God has placed in our lives is a person God has decided since eternity past that you should encounter.  Have you thought much of divine appointments?  They are real, friends!

Enjoy encountering Jesus this week.

Your brother… deeply enjoying the reality of an eternal siblinghood with you, dear siblings in Christ!

– Torrey