College Sunday School Class
God commands you to be happy! Did you know that? In fact, there is a stream that runs from Genesis to Revelation calling for his people to be happy! Despite what the world says and what we may even feel at times, God’s intention is not to limit your joy, but to be the provider and source of your greatest, truest, and most long-lasting joy.
Consider:
Psalm 37:4 commands: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you he desires of your heart.” So too, Paul commands our Godward joy in Philippians 4:4. “Rejoice in the Lord always! I say it again: Rejoice!”
John 10:10 tells us that Jesus came to give his people abundant life, and life eternal through a knowledge of God (John 17:3). In John 15:11, he calls this abundant, eternal life the gift of his joy in the hearts of all those who genuinely know him. Again in the OT, the Psalmists fill their songs with commands to pursue joy. Hear the jubilation of Psalm 16:11, “In your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasure evermore.”
God is serious about joy! He is so serious about your joy, that he even condemns those who are not happy in him. Deuteronomy 28:47-48 say, “Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you.”
And this joy is not simply an earthly matter either. Heaven itself is described as “the joy of the Master” (Matt 25:11). Jesus went to the cross to purchase a people for himself because of the joy he would share with all those he would save (Heb 12:2).
This summer, I want to invite you (and challenge you) to consider how God has created you to be happy and to be most happy in God. Jesus is the greatest of all joys, and I hope you will take up the challenge to learn from him about the joy he wants to give you.
Starting on Sunday, May 23, I am going to be leading a College Sunday School class, and I would love for you to join us. (The class is for anyone starting college, in college, or ‘recently’ graduated from college). The format will be discussion-oriented, basing our conversation in the Scriptures, and receiving focus from a little book called The Dangerous Duty of Delight by John Piper.
I hope you will join us. Start time is 9:15am. See you there.
In Christ,
Pastor David
