Living with Joy—living with Jesus

Philippians 3, verse 1: Those words were written by the apostle Paul during what he thought might be the final days of his life. We know from experience in our own lives that when someone is preparing to depart, you want to say the most important things, you want to speak with the people dearest to you and give them the most urgent messages you have for them, and that is what the apostle Paul did. He loved the Philippians; this church was dear to him, and he wanted them to know how they could grow in Christ and stand firm amid the temptations they faced. So I want us to read these words knowing that he was speaking heart to heart.

You know those moments when you are speaking heart to heart with a loved one—this is what we read here. Philippians chapter 3 says: “Finally, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you. Watch out for the dogs, watch out for the evildoers, watch out for those who mutilate the body, for we are the circumcision, we who worship God in the Spirit and glory in Christ Jesus, putting no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reasons for confidence in the flesh. Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Israel, a Hebrew of Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, a persecutor of the Church; concerning the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. But whatever things were gain to me, I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I still count all things as loss because of the excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost everything and count it as garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that is from God, so that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained it or have already been made perfect, but I press on to see whether I may take hold of that for which Christ Jesus also took hold of me.”

“Brothers, I myself do not claim to have already attained it, but one thing I do: certainly forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of God’s high calling in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let all of us who are perfect think this way; and if you think otherwise, God will reveal this to you as well. But regarding what we have already attained, let us be of one mind. Brothers, be imitators of me, and take note of those who conduct themselves according to the example you have in us, for many walk about—and even now I say it with tears—as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end will be destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame; they think only about earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body so that it may be like His glorious body.”

“By the power with which He is also able to subject all things to Himself. Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brothers, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, beloved.”

Father, we open our hearts to hear these words. Your apostle Paul could not have emphasized them any more than he did. Lord, we do not want to be slow to hear; we want to hear what You want to tell us today. Holy Spirit, only You can reveal Christ to the human heart, and that is what we ask You to do: let us see more of You; make us fall in love with You. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen and amen.

Rejoice in the name of the Lord; rejoice in the name of the Lord. I don’t know whether anyone has ever said to you while you were going through problems, “Don’t worry, be happy”; just don’t worry, be happy. It isn’t that easy, is it? Because sometimes the problems are severe. But the truth is that God is saying that the strongest security a human being—a Christian—has is found in joy. The Bible says, “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” Isn’t that something? How can we rejoice amid problems and difficulties? It is not easy.

If our happiness is based on our circumstances, it is impossible. But for the Christian there is another source, another foundation for joy that is available to us, and this is what the apostle Paul is telling us about. The joy of the Lord safeguards us against temptations, safeguards us from Satan’s attacks and gives us armor. Because how can we be rejoicing in Christ and at the same time sin against Christ? Joy. Sometimes we place so much emphasis on effort: “You’ve got to try harder”; you have to make a greater effort. And it is good to be committed, but you know what? Joy makes you stronger than anything else. He is now going to begin talking about that, but the first thing he is inviting us to do is to be authentic Christians, Christians who are truly genuine in God. And to do that, the first thing we must do—if we are going to love and treasure being genuine, being true Christians—is guard ourselves against the deceptions that come our way. And he begins with that.

Look, the apostle Paul gets really angry here, doesn’t he? Did you notice? Let’s look at the text again: “Watch out for the dogs.” Dogs? What neighborhood does he live in? “Watch out for the evildoers; watch out for those who mutilate bodies.” He is talking about certain people who were changing the Gospel in those days. The apostle Paul put up with a great deal. Even when people tried to bother him, he joked about his enemies who preached the Gospel with false motives in order to cause him more trouble in prison—Paul is in prison when he writes this. And he jokes: “They think they are bothering me, but the truth is that they are preaching the Gospel. I rejoice.” So he joked about it.

He was not easily offended when they touched on something personal to him. Many of us are the opposite: the slightest thing upsets us; our toes are stepped on very easily—far too easily. He was not like that. But he did get upset when someone preached a false gospel. What those people called the Judaizers did—they were radical Jews who followed the apostles—was that after people came to know Christ, they said, “Well, it is fine for you to believe, but that is not enough. You have to do more to improve yourself. You have to be circumcised, you have to follow the laws of the Old Testament, and you have to become a good Jew to earn salvation.”

The apostle Paul says that Christian salvation does not come through works; it comes through faith. We believe in Christ; we accept Christ into our hearts. I do not try to earn salvation; I do not try to earn heaven, because no one can earn heaven. We have to trust in Christ; He is my salvation. The apostle Paul says that this is garbage, and that is why he calls them dogs. He is not simply being mean; the radical Jews called the Gentiles dogs. He says, “They call everyone else dogs, but they are the dogs.” Something came over him—I don’t know what—because something important was at stake.

Can you hear me, or should I...? Okay, so this is where we are: he is upset with people who are changing the Gospel. They are changing the Gospel, which focuses on Christ, and turning it into a list of religious rules. You know, I am deeply concerned that in our discipleship we teach that people grow as Christians not through self-help, not by staring at their own belly buttons—I don’t know whether that expression works either—but it is not about me; it is about Christ. It is not about improving myself; it is about knowing Christ and letting what belongs to Him rub off on me.

The apostle Paul says, “I do not want to manufacture a righteousness of my own. I do not want to be a good person through my own efforts, because that is false; it is worthless. I want to fall in love with Jesus and cling to Him so that a little of Him rubs off on me.”

I talk about that a lot. I don’t know whether you have noticed that after people have spent many years together, they begin to resemble each other, don’t they? Sometimes that happens. My parents—as I said this morning—have now been married for almost 50 years, thank God, and the two of them could be little twins: both short, same coloring, everything the same, exactly alike. She is Italian and he is German, but now they resemble each other because they have spent so much time together. I do not know whether that will happen to me; my wife is of Japanese descent. I don’t know. I hope so—it would be an improvement for me. (Laughter.) But the truth is that you come to resemble the most important people in your life. When you spend time with people, you pick up their ways of acting. Christian righteousness, Christian transformation, does not come through our own effort, but through Jesus.

Look at what the apostle Paul says. Look at what he says in verse 7: “But whatever things were gain to me, I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I still count all things as loss because of the excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost everything and count it as garbage, that I may gain Christ.” What a strong word, isn’t it? Paul was rather—well, I’m not going to say it—but he was hot-blooded. I am going to teach you a little Greek because I like it: the Greek word for garbage is “skubala, skubala.” I just love it: skubala. I do not want it. Everything good in me is like a filthy rag to me; I do not have goodness of my own. Instead, Christ’s goodness comes to me and becomes part of me.” I want to be, and I want us to be, a Church that is in love with Jesus, focused on Jesus, one in which we live Jesus, breathe Jesus, eat Jesus and think like Jesus. I said this morning that I want to scratch myself and have Jesus come out.

I want Jesus to be so deeply in me and so closely joined to me—and I so closely joined to Him—that His person, His character, His personality and His way of speaking and behaving come out of me, so that there is no need even to put up a sign saying, “I am a Christian”; there is something different about this person. And let me tell you, this does not mean changing your personality so that you become just like everyone at church. No, you remain yourself. Some people are more reserved and others more extroverted. Your own personality and your own culture remain, but people can see in your eyes that there is something within you; they can see something different. Where does that righteousness come from? It does not come from your efforts. Rather, the change comes through an organic, living connection with Jesus Christ, a love for Him that regards everything else as garbage compared with the excellence of knowing Christ.

Do we really believe this—that knowing Christ is excellent? I know we do, that we know and believe this, but sometimes it feels as though they are merely words, as if we were talking about colors to someone who cannot see well, isn’t that so? Or describing a flavor to someone who has never tasted it. You know what? This morning—let’s see whether this works in Spanish; I don’t know, so you will have to be patient with me—I used a comparison. I watched a talk on the computer by an author named Michael Dagwell. He is not a Christian author, but he was giving a talk about spaghetti sauce. Don’t worry, this is going to connect somehow, okay? He said that spaghetti sauce companies sold only one kind of sauce, or perhaps two: plain and spicy. One company was losing money. They had good ingredients, so they invited someone to conduct research. Up to that point, they had found out what people wanted by asking them, “What do you want in your spaghetti sauce?” And people would say spicy or plain—that was all—and they would make their sauce.

This researcher, this consultant they found, decided to conduct the research differently. He said, “Let’s invite large groups into auditoriums and give them fifteen varieties of spaghetti sauce: some spicy, some plain, some thick, some thin, some with pieces of vegetables—who knows, many different kinds.” They discovered that people’s preferences varied widely and that at least a third of the people in the world liked their spaghetti sauce with chunks—chunks of meat. And the company said, “But how can that be? All these years, no one has sold chunky spaghetti sauce. Poor people do not have the spaghetti sauce they need! But we asked them many times, and no one ever told us that they wanted their spaghetti sauce that way. Why didn’t they tell us?” Because they did not know that deep in their hearts they wanted chunky spaghetti sauce. They did not know.

That is how it is—and now it connects; forgive me—that is how it is with the Lord. Do you know what you want or desire? I can tell you, on the authority of the Word of God, that perhaps you do not know it, but what you want more than anything else in the world is not food, success, money or the love of family. What you want is a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. Perhaps you do not even know it, but God made you for that. There is a God-sized void in the human heart, and only Jesus can fill it. You are dying to know Jesus. Without that, you are hungry, as though you were dying of thirst and hunger. You want that more than anything else in the world, but perhaps you do not know it, and so we seek happiness in other things and look for love everywhere else, don’t we?

You know, joy, joy, joy—that is what I wanted, but I was looking for it where it could not be found. The thing is, there is joy in Christ, but we do not know it. And you know what? Many Christians do not really know it either. I mean, we do not know—I’m sorry—we love Christ, we believe in Christ, we are saved by faith; it is not that we are insincere, but we are not enjoying this intimacy with Christ. We are not crazy like Paul, who went crazy for Christ. He was like a bride obsessed with her first boyfriend, obsessed with Jesus. Many of us are not enjoying that. God wants us to be a church that is crazy about Christ, so that in everything we do it is evident that Jesus is the passion of my heart. Ah, this is it: Christ is more beautiful than any song we could hear, more delicious than the best arepa, more beautiful than the loveliest art that could be painted, than the most beautiful landscape, more refreshing than miraculous water. Jesus is the deepest joy we could imagine. I want to live that; I want to fall in love; I want to see Him in His humiliation and in His glory—both.

Think about how the very same Jesus who will sit upon a white throne and judge every human being in the whole world who has ever lived, who will evaluate their lives and pronounce judgment against every one of us—that same fearsome Judge, that Judge who, when He saw the Pharisees throwing stones at a woman, said, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone. Where are those who condemn you? Neither do I condemn you; go in peace.” Jesus, the same righteous Judge, a fearsome Judge, is the very same Judge who loved us so much that He gave Himself up on the cross to die for us, to pay the price; and while they were nailing Him to the cross, what did He say? “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus. There is no one like Him. He is like an ocean in which you can swim your entire life and always discover something new about Jesus.

His love is sweeter than anything else. He is the Rose of Sharon. Jesus said, “I am the I AM,” which is the name of Jehovah that was revealed to Moses; and He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” He said, “I am the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. Whoever enters through Me will find life.” To those who were mourning, He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he be dead, shall live. I am the bread of life. You can eat other bread and it does not satisfy you. I am the bread of life that came down from heaven.” Jesus. We can spend the rest of our lives thinking about Him and falling in love with Him. God invites us to do that—to become obsessed.

You know what? It is bad to be addicted to anything in this world, isn’t it? Those who have lived with addictions know how hard it is: you need another drink or need to smoke cigarettes, and you try to quit, and it is so hard—an addiction. There are other addictions too. Some of you are addicted to chocolate, or coffee, or gambling, or to some relationship in which this person has become your little god, the most important thing in the universe to you. It may be a spouse; it may be a child who takes God’s place in your heart. You know, God wants us to know that there is only one healthy addiction in the universe: let us be addicted to Jesus. Let us love Jesus so much that we can never get enough—an eagerness to know Christ. The apostle Paul said, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind, I strive, I reach forward toward the supreme calling, the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ and becoming like Him.” Begin every day by saying, “I have to love You more today. I need more of You. I have to have more of You or I will die.” May God place this urgency within us, this passion for Christ.

There are examples in the Bible that I love, right? I love the story of a sinful woman from the streets who had lived—not in adultery, but in prostitution—for many years. She was on the streets. Perhaps she herself was the person to whom Jesus showed mercy; we do not know. But she heard that Jesus was visiting the home of a famous Pharisee. “I have to see Him. I have to thank Him.” She appears at the door, and I picture some good bouncers at the door saying, “Well, you’ll have to show me some ID to get in. Look, young lady, you can’t come in here; this is a Pharisee’s house.” And she says, “No, I absolutely have to go in and see Jesus.” We have many women here who would knock down the biggest giant to get in and see Jesus. It is not a matter of size; it is a matter of desire.

I need Jesus, and nothing and no one is going to stop me. I have many struggles, many problems, but I am going to see Jesus, and no one is going to stop me—no one. I am going. That heart is already in this church; may it grow, may it define us, may we be a church that pushes forward to see and touch Jesus. She went in and stood behind Jesus, and what did she do? I was imagining that perhaps she had an entire speech prepared to deliver to Jesus, but when the moment came, what came out? Only tears. Tears. “Jesus, I do not deserve You. You forgave me.” She simply wept and covered Jesus’ feet, and then she realized, “I am making them dirty. Ah, I’ll use my hair.” It was not at all proper; it was not at all prudent or restrained. It was a crazy love, an improper love, an extravagant love. She threw herself into loving Jesus, and she scandalized the Pharisees, who were very proper with Jesus. Jesus does not want civil Christians; He wants Christians who are in love. And Jesus says, “The one who is forgiven much loves much. Your sins are forgiven; go in peace.”

You know the story of a man whom we call the Gadarene demoniac? How awful, right? We should not call him that. For two thousand years he has been known as the Gadarene demoniac. I believe this is true: there are people who, well, have little friends who are not paying rent. They have demons that need to be served notice: “No more. You are not paying rent. Get out of this house; it belongs to Jesus now.” So this man came, and this man lived in the cemetery, cutting himself, scratching himself, taking off his clothes, howling like a dog, living like an animal. Jesus says, “This man is not an animal. He is a creation of God, and I love him. Go into the pigs, where you demons ought to live.” So the pigs go into the water. The man is perfectly normal; he gets dressed. And what do the neighbors say, angry over the pigs they lost? They say, “Jesus, get out of here. We do not want this. This is strange.”

And what does the Gadarene say? “May I go with You?” But he was not so casual about it; he begged Jesus to let him go with Him. He begged to get into the boat. He said, “I do not want to stay here anymore. I want to be with You in the boat, no matter where.” Jesus told him, “You are ready to preach the Gospel. Go back home, go back to your city, and preach about what God has done in your life, because you have lived it.” We should not know him as the Gadarene demoniac; we should call him the Gadarene evangelist. How about that? Because that is what he was—the first evangelist sent by God. He did not want to preach; he wanted to be with Jesus, and because he wanted to be with Jesus, the message just poured out of him to others.

We are going to continue growing in this church. Yes, we are going to continue planning evangelistic events because God has given them to us, but do you know how we are going to grow? By falling in love with Jesus. When you are in love, you cannot hold it in; you have to let people know how much in love you are. There must be some grandma or grandpa here who, after five minutes, is already showing pictures of the new grandchild, right? Let us be like that with Jesus. You meet someone, and talking about Him comes out through your pores. That is what we want.

You know another case I like, speaking of the urgency that I ask God to place in me and in us? The apostle Peter, after denying Jesus—you remember? How many times did he deny Jesus? Then Jesus dies, and Peter goes back to fishing. “What now? I know how to fish; now I’ll go back to this.” So he is fishing with his friends. Then a mysterious figure appears on the seashore. “Cast the nets on the other side,” and they catch a great number of fish. The Word says that they caught 153 fish. And Jesus—you know, I’m going to pause there. Why is that detail in the Bible? The Lord does not put details in the Bible without a purpose, so I began to investigate the number 153 in the Bible, and this and that and the other. Then a brother from the English service entered the number 153 into his phone—he entered 153, Bible, I don’t know what—and it came up that the name of Jehovah, the name Yahweh, is used 153 times in the Bible, in the Torah.

I believe God is saying, “Do you want to know who Jesus is? Jesus is Jehovah. Jesus is Yahweh. Jesus is God.” And with each fish—one, two—you say, “Jesus is God.” He is not just any carpenter. He is the God who manifested Himself in the burning bush. He is the God who brought the people out of Egypt. He is the God who was with you in the cloud of glory, who brought water out of the rock and gave you bread in the wilderness. Jesus is God. He is not just some guy. He is not merely cool. He is God. He is wonderful. He is the Supreme God.

And I believe Peter realized it after seeing what He did. He has risen from the dead and is there on the shore cooking breakfast—He is Latino; you have to eat—and they begin to row. And what does Peter do? He says, “That is not enough,” and he throws himself into the water and starts swimming. Peter could not contain himself; he could not wait. He saw Jesus; he knew, “He is God. I have to be with Him.” He started swimming. “I am going to be the first one to get there.” Thank God, I want to be like him. I want to plunge into the water; I want to fall in love with Jesus and pull out all the stops for Him.

So he arrived there, and Jesus was cooking breakfast, and He asked him, “Do you love Me?” And Peter said yes three times—this whole conversation, this passion for Christ. The thing is that in all these cases, they forget everything else and focus on only one thing: “I have to be with Jesus.” Paul says, “One thing I do: certainly forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal.” It is an image of an athlete running, right? He is running. Everyone has seen it in the Olympics—he is running. They tell me they saw yesterday—this is what I was told; I did not see it—that someone was running very, very hard, very, very fast, and it ends with a photo of someone doing this with all his might, winning, while the person right beside him, who loses, is looking at the person next to him, and he loses.

The Bible says, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind.” I would say, forgetting what is beside me, what lies behind; I focus on one single thing.

Brothers and sisters, some of us have to forget certain things. Do not misunderstand me: we never forget the things we have lived through or what we are; we do not forget. But we must free ourselves from that and say, “Today is a new day. Today I am going to know Christ. Today I am going to love Him more, no matter what.”

You know, there is one more case before moving on to the final part. I was not going to talk about this, but imagine this: I dreamed about it. I do not have many dreams, but every now and then I do. Joseph of Arimathea was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were very strict, very religious Jewish leaders, and most of them were bad. They were the dogs Paul speaks of; they were hypocrites. But there were two who loved Christ—I do not know, perhaps there were more. Nicodemus began fearfully, but he spoke with Jesus about the new birth. And we also know from the Bible that Joseph of Arimathea was another Pharisee who accepted Jesus. They were Christians, but they decided to be Christians in hiding—secret Christians, undercover. They did not want anyone to know that they were Christians.

We have some like that who want to be undercover Christians. We have some whose coworkers still do not know that they are Christians. But do you know what Joseph of Arimathea did? When Jesus died, he decided to go to Pilate, the Roman governor who had Him executed, and ask permission to receive Jesus’ body, prepare it together with Nicodemus, and bury it in his own tomb—a tomb he had bought in a large garden, with the stone and everything. And in my dream I began to ask myself, “Why would he have done that?” It was something so public: going to the governor and asking for the body. He truly came out of the closet. He became—he could no longer hide it—he was now a public Christian, and in great danger. He had everything to lose, and Jesus was dead. He did not know that Jesus was going to rise from the dead. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain, yet he did this. Why did he do it?

I believe he simply could not hold it in anymore. His love for Christ reached the point where he went crazy. “I want Christ even if He is dead, even if it is only His body. I have to touch Him. I have to honor Him. I love Him so much that I do not care what happens; I am getting involved.” We too have to throw everything aside and say, “You know what? I am going to live for Jesus.” I do not know whether there are people here who are going to be baptized or who were baptized a few months ago or last year. When you are baptized, you declare this: “I do not care what happens, or what happens to me; I am going to be a Christian. I am going to be a Jesus person, one of Jesus’ people.” There is something in Christ that makes us reach forward.

You know, this text does not end in this life. Come with me: it presses forward and says that you have to be careful, brothers and sisters, because there are some who live as enemies of the cross, whose god is their stomach, whose glory is in their shame. What does that mean? It means they do not delight in God. They live—their god is their appetite, a craving for food or a craving for whatever it may be. They live for this life; they live for the earth. Paul says, “I do not want you to be like that. I do not want you to be an earthly Christian.” That is why Paul weeps, because he knows they are losing what is genuine: being a Christian yet living for money, or living for a house, or even living for family. Do not misunderstand me; we have to be committed, but your wife is not God, your child is not God, your job is not God, your money is not God. There is nothing wrong with these things, but there is only one God.

He says, “I want you to know that our citizenship is”—where?—“in heaven,” in heaven. When was the last time you thought about heaven? Some of you may have had a chance to think about it; some have not. But we should meditate on heaven, dream about heaven. How does that song go? “I’ll Fly Away.” You know what my son asked me in the car? “Daddy, I think I understand what it means”—a little American boy, but also Latino, a little Japanese boy—“Daddy, I think he’s saying that when we die, our soul flies away to heaven. Am I right?” “Well, yeah, that’s what it says.” After camp, he talked about God all week. He said, “Daddy, I think it would be interesting to die and see heaven.” I said, “Not yet—a long time from now—but yes, what will it be like?” He asks me, “Will there be games? Will there be all those things?” I tell him, “Yes—better than anything you can imagine. We’re going to play with Jesus.”

You know that our citizenship is there. That is our home; we are only visiting here. We are a colony of heaven. What defines you? Before I am a North American, I am a citizen of heaven. God’s people are my people; that is my identity. I am dreaming of that land prepared for me. God says that there will be a new earth and new heavens, because the old world will have passed away, and a new Jerusalem will come down from heaven, clothed in glory like a bride adorned for her husband. There will no longer be crying or pain, and God will wipe the tears from their faces, because there will be no more death or crying. It will be beautiful. A Voice from the Throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.” We are going to have new bodies. The earth will be renewed in the twinkling of an eye: a new earth, new bodies.

Those of us who are here will meet the Lord in the clouds; trumpets will sound, and our bodies will be transformed—new bodies. Some of you listening to me—are you in pain right now? There are some who live with pain, who come and strive every day to serve, to serve God despite your pain. Do you know what you are doing? You are sharing in Christ’s sufferings; you are close to Christ. Although we ask God for healing, there is intimacy with Christ in what you suffer. But afterward, it will no longer be necessary. Then we will know fully, even as we are fully known; we will no longer know in part. We will have new, glorified bodies. I believe we will recognize one another. It says that when Elijah and Moses appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, people knew who they were. I don’t know.

There will be a banquet; there will be new food. Jesus said, “I will not drink this fruit of the vine until I drink it in my Father’s Kingdom.” It will be a great banquet, and people will come from the east, the west, the north, and the south and take their place, their seat, at the banquet of the Son of God, the banquet of the Lamb. Brothers and sisters, it is not for nothing that so many books about heaven have come out recently. And you know that no Christian book is the Bible. Every book has parts where you do not have to believe every little word. But you know what? I believe God is speaking to us, telling us to think about heaven, to be dreamers, to take some time to dream a little.

I remember that I was going to visit someone in the hospital, someone who was about to pass away. There are always chapels in hospitals. I went inside and felt as though I could feel a fresh rain on my face, as though I were truly feeling it. There will be waters of life in heaven. It will be as though you were on soft grass, breathing new air: new rains, new flowers, new trees, new animals. “Behold, I make all things new.” The only thing we will not have is the sun, because God will shine so brightly. The Shekinah will give us light; it will outshine the sun, so the sun will not even be necessary.

Brothers and sisters, let us dream about that; let us dream about heaven. One day, the power of God will transform us. The apostle Paul concludes by saying, “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, beloved.” If we are dreaming about God, if we are tasting that God is good, there is not even time to sin—because why sin when we are enjoying what is real? So the strongest power for breaking Satan’s bonds is not law or rules, but passion for Christ, being filled with the Word of God so that it transforms us from the inside out. The joy of the Lord will be our strength.