There’s No Joy in Hiding

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11

We recently explored the significance of joy in our ability to thrive in this life. Jesus found it so important, He launched His ministry with a wine-making miracle. If you missed that one, you might want to read about it here.

Beloved, you and I were created to live in joy, and joy is essential to our well-being. Although many of us may find it elusive, scripture is clear about its source. We just read about it in our opening verse.

…in your presence there is fullness of joy…

The joy your heart longs for—the joy you were created to experience—comes from one place: your Creator. And we cannot experience the full expression of joy we’re meant for without experiencing His presence. You may have felt this in a worship service. The body of Christ uniting in worship ushers His presence into the room, and your heart lifts. Something feels better, and you can’t really explain it. You just know you want more of it, so you keep coming back to find it again.

But God never intended for that experience to be limited to church gatherings. If you are in Christ, you carry that presence within you, and you have direct access to Him all the time. In fact, that’s what it means to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Jesus invites us to engage with God perpetually, connecting with Him spirit to Spirit.

1 Corinthians 6:17 reveals this amazing truth:

But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

Do you see it, dear one? No separation exists between you and God. You are one with Him, in the same way that Jesus is one with the Father. Your spirit is now joined with His Spirit. You have direct access to Him—all that He is—and He wants you drawing from that. His love. His joy. His peace. That’s the miracle of water into wine. An internal nature transformation resulting in a heavenly expression of His life in you—joy, peace, love, and kindness flowing out unhindered with celebration. Then every other aspect of life becomes powered by this source.

Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? I want it, and now the Lord has stirred my heart with a question. What needs to happen for His people to experience this? Why do so few live this reality? The answer is both simple yet profound: we don’t really know who God is.

We think we do. But really, we’ve settled for nuggets of information about God that we try to fit together to explain our experiences without really experiencing Him. We need to let Him show us who He is.

We must know God’s true nature to become one with it. Our hearts remain unsure about what God is really like, so we project on Him a dual personality. It looks something like this. Sometimes He’s generous; sometimes He withholds. Sometimes He’s loving; sometimes He’s full of wrath. Sometimes He heals; sometimes He destroys.

And when we see God with this dual personality, we live our lives in fear, unsure of who God will be to us on any given day. And let’s face it. It’s hard to live in joy and fear at the same time.

But God does not have a dual personality, dear one. In fact, that’s why Jesus came. To show us who God really is so humanity could finally live out God’s plan of union with Him. The apostle John said it this way:

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5

Do you know what that means, dear one? God is not both light and dark. He can’t be sometimes good and sometimes mean. He is all light and always good. Period. So, let’s look at where this perceived darkness we project on Him comes from. Ephesians 4:18 reveals the source.

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.

The darkness, dear one, comes from us. Our understanding remains shadowed, our hearts hardened to what is true in fear and self-protection. And that darkened understanding separates us from the life of God within us. God hasn’t separated Himself from us. Our false perspectives have hidden Him from our view.

It started in the Garden of Eden. The serpent convinced Adam and Eve to question God’s character. And when that came into question—is God really good?— they did what He’d warned them not to do. Immediately, they experienced feelings that had never existed before as fear and shame engulfed them. Genesis 3:8-9 shows us what happened in response.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

Do you see it, dear one? Adam and Eve hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. Where did the idea of separation come from? It came from them. God didn’t separate Himself from them in hatred of their sin. He still showed up to walk with them. Nothing had changed on His part. He still wanted relationship with them and called them out of hiding. Adam and Eve weren’t cast off by God. They actually rejected intimacy with Him, believing they were no longer worthy.

David understood God’s heart in a way few others did. Perhaps that’s how He became what God described as a man after His own heart. Let’s close with a look at his perspective on separation.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me. Psalm 139:7-10

Beloved, you can make your bed in the pit of hell, and God would still be there with you. Allow your heart to receive that truth, to trust His good intentions for you. He is pure light, pure love, pure goodness. Maybe it’s time to come out of hiding and discover the fullness of joy