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\u201c. . . Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith \u2014 the salvation of your souls\u201d (1 Peter 1:7-9).<\/p>\n
IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE CONTENTED AND UNFULFILLED AT THE SAME TIME. Even though our deepest longings won\u2019t be completely satisfied until our Lord returns, we can still live in the present with a sense of satisfaction in God\u2019s goodness. And looking at it from the other direction, even though we experience the peace that passes understanding right now, we can live with a joyous expectancy that the best is yet to come. Contentment and desire need not be contradictory. We can long for God with a joy that\u2019s just as deep as our longing. Indeed, our longing can be a part of our joy.<\/p>\n
Peter wrote that we can \u201crejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,\u201d since we are \u201creceiving the end of [our] faith \u2014 the salvation of [our] souls.\u201d It\u2019s important to notice that this inexpressible joy can be ours even though the end of our faith, the final salvation of our souls, has not yet been received. Our joy is the joy of hope.<\/em> It\u2019s the joy of those who\u2019re confident that they\u2019re on the path that leads to their Father. We\u2019re grateful to be going home!<\/p>\n And yet our joy can be more than the joy of hope: we can learn to enjoy the process<\/em> that is leading to our salvation. We are indeed on a path, and we haven\u2019t yet reached the end of it. But the path itself is full of pleasant things, things that have been created by God for us to enjoy along the way. Surely it would be wrong to have our hearts so set on heaven that we failed to appreciate the goodness of the journey by which God plans to get us there.<\/p>\n The Christian really does have the best of both worlds. So when we say godliness is profitable for all things, for \u201cthe life that now is\u201d and for \u201cthat which is to come\u201d (1 Timothy 4:8), we ought to be espousing more than a theory; we ought to be stating our own experience. We need to be people who reach forward eagerly, but also those who reach forward gratefully.<\/em> We need to long for God fervently, but to long for Him with a joy that is real right now.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire and yet be quite content until it is time to rise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more\u201d (Henry Ward Beecher).<\/p>\n Gary Henry \u2013 WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com<\/p>\n