Holy Passion, Divine Contentment, & Supernatural Joy (Part 1) - Rod Mills

In this teaching Dr. Mills discusses the importance of understanding divine contentment and the difference between worldly happiness and biblical joy.

Full transcript:




​We're starting a new series today. And I did not plan it this way. This is just the way it worked out. Talking about Holy passion, divine contentment, and the supernatural joy of the Lord. Now, today, because I've been preparing these notes for weeks, as I was getting ready, I was like, wait a minute… this is joy Sunday. And I didn't even coordinate that, it was just coordinated by the Lord. And then of course, you guys were just sharing in our time of worship about the joy of the Lord and various aspects. And that was just a powerful, powerful time. And, Mike, when you started sharing I thought, man, it sure sounds like you read through some of my notes this morning. Because God is saying the same thing. So that was really encouraging.


But in this study of exploring divine contentment, we're also looking at contentment. And when I say contentment, I'm talking about divine contentment. You could be content with the wrong things. In other words, you can be content to not go any deeper in God or content to not go further in your faith. That's not biblical contentment. So we’re talking about divine contentment and supernatural happiness, which the Bible calls joy. You're going to hear me hear me say this a lot. Whenever you look Joy up in the lexicon, you will find that it is one of the definitions is happiness.


Now I have a lot of friends that have taught that joy is not happiness. And they are correct in what they're trying to communicate. They're saying worldly happiness that comes because I have this, because I have that, is not joy. It's not the supernatural, divine joy. But whenever we read the word joy in the Bible, it's not some religious word that sounds pretty. Joy is talking about a supernatural happiness that comes from the presence of God who feeds the soul, and brings pleasures that nothing else in life can bring, and that no one else in life can bring.


Joy is a supernatural thing. It's like- and you'll also see this word a lot in the New Testament- gladness. And gladness in our in English today doesn't mean what it meant many years ago. So whenever I say, “Well, I'm glad about that.” It means “I'm mildly happy about that.” That's not what the Bible is talking about. When it says gladness, it’s talking about this great happiness. So gladness is supernatural, in other words, holy passion.


And holy passion, if you think about it… think about when you're extremely joyful, and this happiness of God is on you and your life. Man, I've had it when nothing on the outside looks good. The Lord has brought this supernatural happiness and passion for Him, in times when we had no money, we were barely making it. We didn't know how we were going to pay the next bill. The Lord brought it in times of combat when people were dying all around me. And people were extremely stressed. And yet, this deep happiness of God was in my spirit sometimes, especially in combat, when things were really bad.


l have a personal confession. There were times when I actually felt guilty because all these bad things are happening around me and you literally don't know physically, if you're the next person to go or to lose your arm or something. And I saw hundreds of people like that around me every day in my first deployment, very rough. And yet somehow there's the supernatural gladness, the joy of God that was in my life. There's no way you can have that by earthly means that is a divine thing. It's not because I'm really good at something. It's not because I'm spiritual. It's not because of that, it's because of God's presence, bringing life at that time.


I’m just making some definitions ahead of time so that we're on the same sheet of music when we're talking about divine contentment, supernatural happiness that we call joy, and holy passion, which is that deep desire that comes from that happiness and that joy, which we'll get into.


Now, I'm going to use an illustration. So we got a lot of folks of different ages here, gathered here today, I think we pretty much have every generation present. Well, on this particular day there's not a whole lot of people that are in their extreme later years or golden years. But still, there's a lot of people in every generation here, and joining us on zoom as well. And so many of you will be able to relate to this. But when we were young, we fell in love. And we were ready to get married, if you remember what that's like almost nothing else in the world mattered. I know it's been a long time for some of you. But think back to what that was like.


When you fall deeply in love with someone, it's amazing how irrational you can be, and how irrational some of your life choices can be as well. You're just happy and you're content to be together. And there's a tremendous contentment in the relationship. And then if this happened to you, and most of us it did, if we're married and have been married for some time, but pretty much you were willing to work any job, you were willing to live anywhere. I mean, it just didn't matter, you were going to be together, that was the main thing: we're going to be together. And so nothing else mattered.


It was like you know what, we'll figure it out. If we don't like the job, we'll find another one. But we're going to be together. And that's the main thing. And this tremendous- I'm going to call it a marital contentment, just with the relationship. Now I understand there's a honeymoon phase, and you got to get through that and grow into relationship. But hopefully, with a healthy marriage that's supposed to grow. That doesn't mean every day will be like that, because we all have our ups and downs. But it means our marriage grows. And there's a joy in the relationship that supersedes regular life and monotony. And that really takes the edges off monotony completely and brings joy into our life because we're not alone. And it's a wonderful thing to, to have that. What I want to illustrate here is relationships have an important role in God's supernatural joy and contentment. Relationships are very important.




There are many studies that have been done about people who are happy. And I understand they're not talking about heavenly happiness, but there is overlap. If we were to do a Venn diagram, there would be overlap between the heavenly definition of happiness and what some people in the world describe because everyone has that hole in their hearts. They're made with that hole that needs God, what some authors have described as a God shaped hole, a God shaped void. There is a need for God in our lives, there's a need for the joy and the contentment and the fulfillment that he brings.


Now, many of you may be saying, “Well, Rod, I'm already a Christian. Why talk about this among many Christians?” Because not all of us do not walk in this in this fullness. We're all seeking the fullness of it. Now some of us walk in more, some of us walk in less. And that's how we help each other to grow in deeper contentment, deeper joy and so forth. But relationships are key to to this, especially our relationship with God.


So the core contentment that we felt in life in those days of that scenario that I was just talking about, it was not related to external circumstances, it was rooted in the relationship itself, right? We can all pretty much agree on that. I'm not suggesting that we can live our lives like that. The metaphor is not perfect. I'm not saying that. Well, we can just be with the right person and everything else we can be unfulfilled in and we're just going to have contentment. No, we understand we need to be in God's Word in different areas of our lives: where we live, what our jobs are, who you know, where we worship, who our spiritual family is… all those things. When those things come into alignment, there's deeper contentment because we're in obedience, we're in God's ways in his heart and what he calls us to do.


When we're in God, there is a fullness of divine contentment and a deep supernatural joy that flows from that relationship. The key takeaway from this is that the core contentment comes from relationship. Now you may say, well, where's the scripture on this? I'm glad you asked. Let's read Hebrews chapter 13. We're only going to read five verses. I'm going to read starting in Hebrews 13:1, from the New King James, “Let brotherly love continue, do not forget to entertain strangers. For by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels. Remember the prisoners as if you're chained with them, those who are managed, mistreated, since you yourselves are in the body also. Marriage is honorable among all if the bed is undefiled. But fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have. He himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.”


So when the when the writer of Hebrews tells us to be content in Hebrews 13:5, he specifically connects it to closeness to God. He says, “Be content with such things as you have.” And then his reason, “Be content, for I will never leave you nor forsake you." In other words, he gives a command and then he gives him a reason, or the power from which the command comes. So in verse five, there's something else to point out here. The Hebrews writer shows us two opposites in this verse, and the words appear right there together. He says, “Let your conduct be without covetousness.” So there's your first word covetousness. Then he says, “Be content." So covetousness and contentment are opposites from one another. Are we tracking on that? Can you can you see that? What's the opposite of contentment? If you're not content, you want stuff.


Now, just because you want something doesn't mean you're covetous. Covetousness is inordinate desire as when it's measured up against they way God made us. In other words, do I desire this more than the way God made me to desire it? That's a good way to look at covetousness. There's nothing wrong with desiring to eat. But there's something wrong with the covetousness of gluttony. Right? There's nothing wrong with wanting to drive a car. But there's something wrong with wanting to drive a car that makes people think a certain thing about you when they look at you driving that car. See the difference? There's a difference there.


In this passage, the Hebrews writer doesn't just focus on God's provision to protect us from covetousness. Now, you would think what's the best provision against covetousness? Give people things and then they won't desire stuff, right? How'd that work out for you? Didn't work to well, did it? If you have a coveting problem in a certain area, did you ever notice that it's never fulfilled? Now, you guys, let's be honest, we've all coveted in some area of our lives. We've struggled through things, and we've gained victory in different areas. But if there's areas of our lives where we covet something. And guess what? If you get it, it's not going to make you feel better longer than a few days or a few months before you're going to want more of the same thing. Whether it's considered sinful or not sinful, it is sinful if it's covetousness. Right? This is to find the prescription for how God wants us to live that brings this extraordinary happiness and this extraordinary contentment.


So he focuses not on provision even though that's in there, he focuses on God's presence, Hebrews 13:5, what I just reread to you. And he says, “For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.” This is the key to contentment. Now, if if I'm just teaching this to 1000s of people, or if 1000s of people are listening on the teaching library, and they're looking at it at face value, it doesn't make sense. So two things will happen. There will be two kinds of people who listen to this: there will be the group of people who go, “Well, that I don't see the connection.” And they're disinterested in they'll go about their lives, then there'll be the people who go, “Wait a minute, let's look deeper into this.” Because God's word contains God's mysteries and the secrets of the kingdom that unlock doors, and makes things happen that are supernatural in nature. They're extremely powerful, because it's God's power. And so they'll look deeper and go, “Wait a minute, what is this?” So it's important that we don't miss this, that it's about the deep joy and contentment of the relationship itself.


Now, I want to stop for a second to remind us of something. I will tell you, there were seasons of my life when I would see people hunger for God at levels that I had never hungered for God before. My automatic thought was, “I'm reading the same Bible. I'm listening to the same pastor, and I don't have the same hunger, something must be wrong with me.” Have you ever thought that before? I've thought that many times. I thought, “I just must not like God as much as them” or “something's wrong with me.” And what I found was most of the time was it was just because I had not dived deeper into it. Because God has a way of increasing our desire, and you realize, wait a minute, I'm just like the rest of them.


Now this goes both ways. Guys, this is good and bad. This is true of righteousness and unrighteousness. Have you ever seen somebody do something horrifyingly wicked in the news? And you're like, oh, my gosh, how could anybody ever do that? I can almost promise you that every single one of those people, there was a time in their life when if they saw that person on the news, they would say how could they possibly do that? And the point is, that God made us so that we can always desire more. He made us that way, so that we would desire Him and desire righteousness and desire goodness, and desire the nature of God, so He could take us deeper into Him. And that desire would be so intense that it would keep intensifying until it would just be insatiable desire for God.


So if the enemy lies to you and says, “Well, you've kind of hit a ceiling here. You can't have any more passion than you have. You can't have any more contentment than you have.” I promise you that's a lie. And if the enemy comes to you and says, “Yeah, you're more righteous than them. You're not like them, you could never be like that.” Don't listen to that. Because you could be like that. Listen, if we walked the path they walked and entertain the sins they entertained, and the demonic powers they entertained and the lust they entertained, the flesh will go that way. This is how God made us so that we can always desire more.


That's why holiness is so important. Because when we pursue Him, He can give us insatiable desire for Him, and it can increase. And even if you think yours is so big now, you’ve reached your ceiling, you can never be more hungry for God, then you're like, “Man, I love God more than I've ever loved him before in my life. It's so intense right now, it can never be more.” I promise you, it could be 1000 times higher, could be a million times bigger, right? That's the way we're made. The beauty of this is God can take us deeper into his joy in his contentment. But the secret is in the relationship.


The secret is in the relationship. Even if you don't see it, I asked you to put that on the shelf and explore it. And we'll explore it together here. When we have God, it is impossible to get more. Right? Did I mention this last week? God, what He gives us Himself, He says, “I will be their God, they should be My people.” He literally gives Himself to us as our God and we give ourselves to Him as His people. There's an exchange of ownership.


When God gives Himself to us, He cannot give us any more. It's impossible. All things are in Him, all things in eternity. When He gives you Himself, He just gave you the source of all life, and everything that comes from it. If you take infinity and you add a million dollars, do you have more than you had before… you had just infinity. It's impossible. Or a billion dollars, or a million houses, or everything in the earth, God could literally give you everything in the earth. And you wouldn't have any more then the moment before when you just had Him. Because when you have him, you have infinity, there's no way you can get more. It's impossible to add one cubit to infinity, which is God.


And what I mean is this: all things flow from God. He has figured out a way to bless you far beyond our understanding. But it's going to take eternity to do it. Because His giving is so great. It's so much that it's like trying to take an ocean and pour it into a cup. You can't do that. The cup is this life, the ocean is all that God wants to bless you and give you. And it's it's spiritual, it's physical, it's tangible. It's seen, it's unseen, it's created stuff. And it's stuff that's not yet created. But God has an endless ocean that He wants to bless you and pour into your life. And right now we live in this in this life with one little cup in our hands, like a little coffee cup. You got this coffee cup and God's like, “I can't give you this whole ocean in your cup.” It's only going to be a few ounces, right? And then He'll keep it flowing for you all through this life. He'll keep it flowing, He'll pour it out. But at the end of this life, still, His outpouring to us will be such a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of what he's about to do in eternity. So we need to see that the heart of God is this giving heart and this outpouring heart so that when God says, “I will give you Myself, I will be your God,” that literally He has just given us more than the universe. Are you with me?


All right, the writer of Hebrews actually reveals in this passage, a growing pyramid. I'm not going to teach on this, but I just want to point it out. He shows us a pyramid of God-ordained relationships upon which the pyramid’s summit is divine contentment. In verse one, he talks about brotherly love. He's talking about the love between brothers and sisters, brothers and brothers. He's talking about this love that we share in the body of Christ, as family love. It's God's family love and it's rich. Think of that in the pyramid as the big deep layers of the pyramid. Then he talks about marital love on top of that, and that's in verse number four. He says, “Marriage is honorable among all.” And then just in case anyone's doubting, he talks about physical and sexual love between married people. And he puts that in the pyramid. And then look what he does. At the end he says “be content.” And when he says “Be content," he actually says the capstone of the pyramid, “for I will never leave you nor forsake you.” He literally gives us the pyramid of relationships, from individuals, to the family, to the marriage, to our relationship with God Himself. And I'm not teaching on this today. But what I wanted to point out to you is that when the command is given to be content, it is given in the pyramid of relationships. And so you and I, as we cultivate the pyramid, whether you're married or unmarried, we live in that pyramid of contentment. And those relationships where the foundation is the family of love and the capstone is our relationship with God. And Divine Love is the pinnacle of the pyramid. It's not dependent on the existence of other relationships.


The Hebrews writer shows us this growing intensity toward this divine contentment that's rooted in God-designed, God-ordained relationships. I want to look at Psalm 16 for a few minutes, and we will look at that secret. I'm saying secret because most people don't see them. That's why I'm calling it secret. The secret connections between supernatural happiness- what we call joy, the pleasures of God- and holy contentment. Now, here's the cool thing about these things. They have the secret connection- secret because people don't know Him, but they also have have amazing fruit in your life.


There are people trying to produce the fruits that these things produce. And you can grunt all day and try as hard as you want and burn as many calories as you want. And it won't work unless you do it this way, because it's rooted in the relationship with God. So as we get into this, I think it's going to be encouraging to you. Psalm 16 is a Psalm of David. And David had experienced what I call rivers of supernatural happiness, what we call joy. And he sums it up at the very end of the Psalm, calling it the pleasures of God. I want to read to you, and you can follow along with me in Psalm 16. I'm reading from New King James. And I want to read quite a few verses here. Let's start in Psalm 16:3.


He says, “As for the saints,” by the way, saints is not a religious word for all God's people, saints means holy ones. He says, “As for the saints, as for the holy ones, who are on the earth, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. Their sorrow shall be multiplied, who hasten after another god. Their drink offerings of blood, I will not offer nor take up their names on my lips. Oh, Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance. And my cup, you maintain. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places, and yes, I have a good inheritance. I will bless the Lord, who has given me counsel, and my heart also instructs me in the night seasons. I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad. And my glory rejoices, my flesh also will rest in hope, for you will not leave my soul and Sheol, nor will You allow Your holy one to see corruption. You will show me the path of life, in Your presence is fullness of joy, at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”


Now, many of us have read this psalm many times. The danger is when we've read something many times we automatically go to all the meanings that we've already thought about. So what I like to do when I read passages, especially in my prayer time, is I like to open my spirit and say, “Lord, show me the things I don't already know about this.” Now, I'm old enough now that about half the things I remember are things that I forgot. So normally, I have notes in my Digital Bible. I'll go in and read my own notes sometimes. And I'm like, oh, man, and Beth and I, we have color coded, we share a Digital Bible. And we have hundreds and hundreds of notes in there. So we color code them, so we know who wrote it. And a lot of times I read it, and it's in my color code and everything. And I'm like, I don't think I wrote this because I don't remember it. So it's fresh to me. But the point is that I'm asking the Lord, “Lord, show me what I have not seen before,” because the mysteries of God are like onions. As soon as you peel a layer back, he shows you a mystery. There's another mystery right underneath it. And then you learn that, you peel it back, there’s another mystery. I'm convinced this is going to keep happening. I really believe no matter how much knowledge and wisdom we gain in eternity, we can be about 10 trillion years in. And I really think that the truth of God, His wisdom, and his nature, and work we're always discovering, we will always be seeing new things will be revealed. This is the nature of God and who He is. He's infinite. And so the mysteries of God and the glories of God are extraordinary. And there's great joy in that.


The word delight in verse three. What do you think it means? It means joy. It means pleasure. It means wish. It means costly jewels, treasure, affair or business. That's the word delight in Psalm 16:3, when he says “they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight." That's what God says about us. And he's talking specifically about the holy ones who are on the earth. So remember that when he says in whom is… not most of my delight. Not half of my delight. He says ALL of my delight is in the holy ones who dwell on the earth. Now, that should make you feel pretty special, right? Amen.


The Lexham English Bible translates that word as desire, “in whom is all my desire.” That alone is really a powerful concept. We know that God is the source of all genuine divine happiness, right? We learned from Psalm 16:3, that somehow God in His nature has decided and has been moved by his own heart to take all of his delight in his people, specifically, a certain group of people, those who set themselves apart to holiness.


Now we understand holiness is not, I mean, we've all grown up in different traditions. But holiness is not a lot of outward things that we've said it is. Now there are some outward things that could be unholiness. But the point is that holiness is setting ourselves apart unto God for His purposes, in all things in all these ways, and not being contaminated by the world. And so this is something we always pursue as people on the earth. The Lord knows our struggles, our battles, He knows our challenges and all of these things. And he says, hey, I want you to know something, I know the battle you're in, I know the battles you fight, I know all those things. And yet you have set it in your heart, to set yourself apart to me. I know you're not perfect in it, but you're getting better and better. Yeah, we have our ups and downs, it's kind of like the stock market. But you just hope that gradually it goes up. That's the way our walk with God is.


And gradually, we move deeper and deeper into that set of parameters to Him. And so He has decided and been moved in His own heart to take all of His delight in His people. He's made himself extremely vulnerable, and given a great power to us. And that is to bring Him extraordinary delight. When you're not in relationship with someone, or you're in a distant, distant, distant relationship, like a tweet a year or a text a year or something like that. And you're not really in a deep relationship. That relationship is not a vulnerable relationship, not very much anyway. They’re gonna have a hard time hurting your feelings compared to the people that you're really close to. The closer we are to people, and the more we love them, the more vulnerable we are. The more I love someone, the easier it is for them to hurt me. If I don't care, it's a lot harder. A lot of people think it'd be a lot easier. You know, if I don't have all these relationships, then it won't be painful. It will hurt, but God didn't make you that way. God made us like Him. And God is a God of relationship. Remain the image of God.


The deeper my relationship is with someone, the more vulnerable I am, the more I can be hurt. The same is true with God. He because of His delight, because of His desire for us, He has now made Himself extremely vulnerable. Do you think God can feel pain?  If I do something to offend my wife, I have not only offended my wife, I've offended God. Who does it hurt the most? Does it hurt my wife the most? Or does it hurt God the most? That's a hard question. I believe that hurts God more. And let me say this, I don't take lightly hurting someone else's feelings that I love. But we don't understand the heart of God. We don't understand the gentleness of his heart, the vulnerability and the deep love that He has for us. No one loves me in this world that walks the earth more than my wife does. But I promise you God loves me more. And that love that He has makes him very, very vulnerable. And he's okay with it.


And so this gets back to the the extraordinary pain that God carries in his heart. Now, God's not close to everybody. We need to get back into another teaching on this about the love of God. The love of God is often preached as a one dimensional love, like God just has the same love. Everybody equal. Well, God wants to have deep relationships with everybody, but He doesn't, because some people don't want that relationship. So it gets really creepy. If you try to love somebody who doesn't want you to love them, it gets really creepy. Imagine if some stranger just came be-bopping in your house. I can go to my family's house, my spiritual family's house, I can go in and go over to the coffee, make some coffee. I could probably fix a sandwich. Most of you be like, yeah, no problem, man. What do you think would happen if I went down the street and just walked in somebody's house and start talking to him like I know them but I don't have a relationship with them? And so there's a different level of love.


Think about the people that you've loved for a long time. The love relationship that the two of you have has blossomed, it's grown. God would love to have that with everybody. But not everybody gives him permission, and he respects them. And so we see that in Psalm 16. There is a vulnerability God has made made Himself very vulnerable to us. But also He set these deep affections on us. And these affections are very hard to measure. They're very hard to feel the measurement until you go really deep into love with God. And as we go deep into that love, they transform who we are, because we start becoming like Him, we start becoming like He is.


I find this interesting that David, first he quotes prophetically and says, quote, in the first person, "God, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.” Speaking of the holy ones, the ones who are set apart to God. And then he immediately goes into turning away from idols and other gods and making him our inheritance. So he says the first step to making God my inheritance is turning away from other gods and idols.


By the way, many people think that we no longer have idolatry in the modern world. Idolatry and other god worship is rampant in today's society. Today's society is rampant with idolatry, and other god worship. They don't code it. Well, some of them do, but many of them don't code it in religious language. When the scriptures talk about idol worship and other gods, they're talking about the disposition of the heart, toward the exterior. Whether it's a personified god, or whether it's an un-personified god, it's talking about what is the heart disposition toward these things. And by the way, just in case some don't know this, most of the other gods and the other religions had extraordinary promiscuity and sexual immorality. So a lot of people entered into those because of the perversions they wanted to enter into. They could make it religious, or they can make it sound good, or they could make it feel better to themselves that somehow they were doing something right. And today, they're just blatantly all out. They just deny the truth. But this is very important that David brings this up, as a first step, for us to press into our relationship with Him is to turn away from the things that pull our heart from God. Things that may not be idols, but could be idols, things that may not be other gods that could be other gods and things that may just be what the Scriptures called “demonically empowered things.”


You know, Paul said, when you do this with idols, you worship demons is what he said. So literally, there are demonic powers behind these things that steal the heart affections of people. And David’s connecting it, beginning with, turn away from those things because if we do not turn away from the things that steal our hearts, it will be very hard to be the holy ones. It'll be very hard to be set apart unto God. And that's something that we press for when he is truly our joy and our fulfillment. I'm talking about our true inheritance. Our hearts reach a supernatural level of fulfillment.


What's the difference between supernatural fulfillment and natural fulfillment? Well, here pretty soon, we're gonna have a meal. And there's gonna be some really good food. I saw a ham. And I saw some other international Christmas foods that are being baked and cooked and, and it's going to be really good. And you know what, when you eat that there's going to be a natural contentment. You're gonna be like, "Man, this is good!” That's a good contentment. God gives us that, but it's not supernatural. There's a natural contentment with relationships. When you're with someone, when you're not alone. You're with someone who loves you. There's a natural contentment with that. But God says, “Hey, I want you to know I also have a supernatural contentment. I have a deep joy, happiness fulfillment that I can bring.”


You can take two happily married couples. And they look very much the same on the outside in their relationship. And one can be operating in natural contentment. And one can be operating in supernatural contentment. And the supernatural contentment requires people's heart desires and affections to be deeply rooted in God himself. He brings something that we cannot fabricate, we can't make up on our own. We can't manufacture it, it's impossible. And no matter how much you love someone, and the natural contentment and joy that comes from that relationship, they cannot fabricate supernatural contentment, supernatural joy, supernatural happiness.


David is getting at that in Psalm 16. There's no earthly love that can even come close to what God is pulling us into, what He's drawing us into. So when he says, I've set my heart upon these, He's talking about pulling us into a fiery relationship that is beyond what we can actually think or what we can hold in our minds. Similar to the Hebrews writer, David teaches us that this deep contentment comes from receiving and I'm going to call it this “glorying” in our true inheritance and fulfillment in Him.


Strangely and mysteriously, when we do this, several things start to happen. This is what we'll spend our last few minutes today talking about. Strangely, this is mysterious to me. But all these other things start to happen. And here's the illustration I used recently when I was talking to some of the men about this at the sabbatical. Think about the solar system. Imagine that God says to you, “We're going to create the worlds,” and I don't know how that worked. I’ve got some ideas from reading some scientific things. But who knows, you and I know a tiny, tiny grain of sand of all this, but when when God says, “I want you to help me here, we're going to create your solar system." What happens if you go put all the planets out there and you don't have a sun? What happens to those planets? Well, they just kind of split all over the place, there's no order to them, there's nothing. You have to have a sun. That sun is the center of gravity in solar system. Because that sun is there, and because there's a center of gravity in the solar system, the planets will maintain an orderly orbit on their own. The idea here is the sun is our relationship with God. And the more gravity, the more mass that relationship has. (By the way, the more mass a heavenly body has, the more gravity it has.) That's a mystery right there. And the more mass it has, the more gravity our relationship with God as it intensifies in its mass, it pulls things in our lives into order. It causes them to take their place into orbit, and you don't have to keep messing with them.


I'm not saying you don't have to cultivate things. But ultimately God is saying, establish first things first, the sun of our relationship and the center gravity of our relationship, and so many things in our life begin to fall into order like the planets do.


David points this out in Psalm 16 about our relationship with Him and how He feels about us and how we feel about Him and entering into that relationship. But keep in mind as we talk about this, all of these things are predicated on holiness and making God our inheritance. So he's speaking of the holy ones on the earth, who make Him their inheritance. That's what he's talking about.


In Psalm 16:5, he says, “The Lord maintains my lot.” What does that mean? In this agricultural society, it has a context and a meaning. He upholds the allotted land, that is the external physical inheritance that they've been given. As we make God our inheritance, he becomes our provision in all things. Every kind of provision, I need to live in divine abundance and overflow. A lot of this is not physical things, a lot of this is spiritual: grace and gifts and things that I need in my relationships. But it's every kind of provision I need to live, in divine abundance and overflow, in a vibrant heart. Everything flows from him.


What happens, David says, for these who live this way, He is good. He's testifying “This is what's happened to me, by living this way,” that the Lord maintains his lot. He literally maintains and brings forth his inheritance. And it's a good thing we'll see. He says in Psalm 16:6, that the lines of his inheritance have fallen to him in good places; the lines of our inheritance, they fall to us in good places. Let me see if I can go back here. It might be good to read the verse each time, rather than just paraphrasing it. He says in Psalm 16:6, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a good inheritance.” Now, see what's happening here. He's not saying this just happened by chance. Or this just happened because I happened to pray. He's saying this happened because this is how the Lord feels about me. I'm one of the holy ones who have set my heart apart unto him on the earth. And things begin to fall into order because of the relationship with God.


I've seen people work at this for years. And because they don't prioritize the sun, the planets don't align. And they're still struggling with the boundary lines falling for them in good places. I'm not just talking about physical things, I'm talking about relationships, interactions, jobs, life decisions, all of these things. All of this fits together, but it's it's a mystery. I say it this way to see the connections is kind of like a secret because people don't see how these things are interconnected.


Psalm 16:7 says, “I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel, my heart also instructs me in the night season.” So what happens to these people is wisdom and counsel start to flow ritually, as we walk this way with God, and our hearts receive good counsel from the Lord. He literally is guiding us in our life decisions. There are times at night, as you get deeper and deeper with God, there are times in the night and in the day, when you're alone, or it's quiet, and suddenly, you'll find your heart counseling you. That's the Holy Spirit. He's literally teaching us and your heart’s going, “Hmm, I probably should go this way. Not that way. This is a better decision, or this is weighted this way in that way,” and God opens our eyes and causes us to see something. So we find that the Spirit of God brings wisdom and counsel.


You might say, “What does this have to do with contentment and joy?” It all goes back to the relationship and making Him our inheritance. This is easier said than done. This is more than becoming a Christian. In Psalm 16:8 he says, “I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. We want to be people who operate this way. When we set the Lord before ourselves in all things, when we operate in this kind of relationship with God, constantly setting the Lord before us, we go, “Wait a minute, all this stuff's going on. Let's stop. Let's say to the Lord, ‘Where are you leading us?’”


And the Lord has been set before us in all things. We’re carefully following after him. He has first place. He has first counsel. He has first fruits. He has first priority. He has first delight of our hearts. He has first everything in our lives. This is the difference between trying to be a good Christian and being a Christian with a solar system that has a big sun, a big relationship with God. Big difference.


He says in Psalm 16:9, “Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices, and my flesh also will rest in hope.” He gives us three tangible, uncreated divine graces that flow from God's nature into ours. In that one verse, three uncreated graces that flow. That grace is a tangible, uncreated, quality. Did you get that? In other words, it was never created. It's been in God's nature all forever. And literally, he's saying, “You know what, I'm going to take this out of my nature and going to multiply into you. The uncreated nature of God is going to come inside of us, the eternal nature of God. And he says, “These uncreated divine graces will flow into supernatural happiness.”


Let's look at it again. Did you see it in verse nine? My heart is glad. Remember what I said about the word glad. He doesn't mean glad “I'm glad.” That's an older English word that should have been changed. He's talking about a supernatural happiness, fulfillment together in Him.


When I was working in a counseling center there was a woman who lived in San Francisco. And from time to time, she would call in, not for counseling, she would just call to encourage me. And I still remember her name. She was a Chinese American lady named Faye Fong. And when I would answer the phone, she would say, “You are so beautiful.” And the first time she called us I was like, “Who is this?” And, and then she just starts speaking how God sees me. And the first time it happened to me, I was like, “What is going on?” So I was like, “Can I help you with something,” and she said, “God loves you so much.” And she just goes on for like 20 minutes. After about three or four minutes, she keeps speaking and speaking, and she won't even let me talk. She just wants to encourage one of the counselors because we're always pouring into other people. And before long, every time she would start encouraging me in the Lord, five minutes into it, I literally felt like I was gonna start levitating off the floor, because the joy of the Lord, the supernatural, beyond just someone encouraging you-I want you to see this- something supernatural. You know when somebody prays for you, and then your body naturally heals from whatever is wrong. It's different than when somebody prays for you. It's supernatural healing. There's a difference. Both of them are healing, but one came by natural means, and one came by supernatural means. This was what I'm calling supernatural. And she would start speaking on my life, and she would bless the family and our kids. And this joy of the Lord is supernatural happiness. Those were hard years in my life; those are really some of the hardest years of my life. And man, I'm telling you, nothing was hard anymore. Because of that supernatural joy of the Lord that would just come over me. She had the ability to impart it. And I love that and I want to be able to do the same thing. And I want us to be able to do that. But you can't impart what you don't have. So we need lots of it. And she had a whole lot of it. So it was pretty easy, I think, for her to impart it.


The second one is glory with rejoicing. Now I'm going back to Psalm 16:9. He said, “Therefor my heart is glad and my glory rejoices.” Not my heart rejoices. My glory rejoices. Now what is glory? The best way to think of glory might be to look at what the opposite is. Dick Duncan says this a lot too when he's teaching on glory. He said, if you look it up in the dictionary, do you know what the opposite of glory is? Shame. The opposite of glory is shame. So let that sink in. There's a divine beauty of holiness, the Scripture says, a divine glory, a divine radiance, a divine beauty, a divine favor, a divine majesty of God that He sets upon his people. And when He sets it upon us, it’s so real, it's part of us. David says it this way, “My glory rejoices.” In other words, that glory has now become part of me. That majesty, that opposite of shameless is upon me from God. And he says it's so much a part of me it rejoices, not just my heart, but it rejoices also. And there's an extraordinary radiance that comes.


And then the third one. I'll read the rest of the verse Psalm 16:10, “My flesh will also rest in hope.”Now, we're not talking about regular hope. Some of you are hoping to have a good meal at Christmas time.
That's not the kind of hope we're talking about. We're talking about a divine hope. It creates this unique rest in our lives, and this is a soul rest. This is different than just taking a nap. This is different than just a little bit of peace. There's a deep soul rest that comes upon people who live in God this way. And so we see in Psalm 16:10, that this lifestyle produces this assurance because he says, “He will not leave my soul.” He knows his soul is resting in this assurance with God.


And then he tops it off in Psalm 16:11, “You will show me the path of life, in Your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” So he says, First, he was showing me the path of life. There's extraordinary revelation in the path of life. You guys know the difference between knowing something and seeing something. Knowing something is knowledge. But seeing something is revelation. The word “revelation” literally means “unveiling.” So it is one thing to know something, it's another thing to see it and to understand it. And so he says, “You will show me the path of life.”


This involves our entry and our enjoyment into many things, and many relationships of life. Every aspect of our journey will be filled with life. Think back to your days of darkness. Remember when we lived in darkness it was so hard to see clearly. And death was all around us. I mean, for me, death was all around. I just felt death and I felt darkness and I felt anger and I felt all these yucky things because I lived around darkness. When God began to bring me into this life, and I had first given my life to Christ, but then through the the journey of bringing me into being one who is setting himself apart to the Lord, the deeper I got into this, there was life all around. Someone told me the other day, I like coming to your house because there's just plants everywhere. And you guys know, in the library, that original house plant that we had, that one big house plant that's in the library, it just has huge vines streaming down those tall bookshelves and they're all over. And Beth has plants all over the house and the on the desks and the dining room. And then we brought those tomato plants in from the summer and now they're literally running out of space, even with nine foot ceilings, tomato plants are clear up pressing against the ceiling. So I don't know how much longer we're gonna be able to keep them in the winter. But the point is, imagine plants is life. I wanted to say take a deep breath and smell all that oxygen. I told my grandkids that and they've reminded me several times, “Papa, take a deep breath.” And I'm like “What?” And there like, “Smell the oxygen!” because of the plants. I've teaching them about that.


In our lives, whenever God shows us the path of life, this is not just fancy religious language He's given us secrets of the kingdom. He's saying, "Hey, I'm going to make things grow in your life, I'm going to cause there to be life all over the place. When you touch things, they'll prosper, when you touch things they'll grow, even where you didn't intend things will spring up out of the ground, they'll spring up out of your relationships, and where you work. And there'll be plant life and living relationships, and I'm gonna cause your life to be filled with people and love and goodness and life.” Take a deep breath and smell the oxygen! And it will bring nourishment deep into your soul, in your lungs.


Then the second thing is there will not only be extraordinary supernatural happiness, David says that it will come to us in fullness. Have you ever had a little bit of blessing? I have. And you know what, just like we talked about earlier, when I got a little bit of blessed as a man, that was really good. I liked some more of that. And God says, “Guess what, that's what I have in store.” Because when God gives, He gives with all of his heart. That's the way he is. And so when God brings blessings into our lives, his agenda is fullness. When you go to God's restaurant, you got to get ready because when you order off the menu, it's an all-you-can-eat deal.


This is what I've noticed about God. There are so many times when I'll ask the Lord for something, I'll say, “God, could you bless us?” And I'll bring something up and then the Lord will bring the blessing. And then through that blessing, it'll be like a doorway into all these other blessings I didn't even know about and He'll just pour it out on me. You know, I love to drink coffee with God, because it’s like, “Can I have some of that coffee?” And I'm expecting him to bring a coffee pot out, and I look up and there's a dump truck getting ready to dump it. And I'm like “What?!” And that's the way God is. He brings fullness in our lives. And this is not just in physical things, especially in the spiritual things, especially in the relational things. The physical things are good, but they're not as great as all this cool spiritual stuff.


And then the last one, most of all, this lifestyle brings us into the unique pleasures of God that come from living at his right hand. There are many Christians who do not live at the right hand of God. He wants them to so bad, but they don't. They choose not to. But God wants us to live it His right hand. Right hand speaks to favor. It speaks to friendship. It speaks to access. Think about this, in those days, if you sat next to the king, you had favor. If you sat next to the king, you had access. If you sat next to the king, you had friendship, you had closeness, you had enjoyment of relationship. And if you sat next to the king, and you had this kind of favor, you pretty much had whatever you needed. So all of these things are given freely, forever.


But God doesn't want us to get stuck on the things. And this is why it has to come from us cherishing our inheritance and where he started in Psalm 16, that He is our inheritance. That's the pursuit, He is the pursuit. Am I telling you guys anything you don't already know? Absolutely not. The point is that sometimes whenever God's teaching us, we've already got the first three layers and God's going, “Okay, it's time for layer number four, or it's time for layer number 10. Or layer number 15.” So now God is calling us to live in a deep joy, a deep contentment that we have never lived in before. So I want to invite us to press into this next year. Joy is on the agenda. Contentment of Heaven is on the agenda. We're going to teach more on this in the coming weeks. But this is very important that we become people who are really wholeheartedly pursuing it, and skilled at pressing deep into God and his ways and his heart.


It begins with holiness. So my first step is set myself apart and go back to that part which says no other gods, no other idols. Lord, search me and help me see, is there anything that I can remove from my life? And then as I do, I press deep into Him. Amen. Let's pray. And then we'll open it up for sharing and others who have some insights.


Lord, we’re thanking you, that you are our God, and we are your people. The greatest joys, the greatest pleasures of God we will ever find in this life, are hidden in this relationship. And although we've studied it many times, You are calling us deeper to the next layer. There's a deeper layer, there's something more, there's a deeper underground river that you've not yet tapped into. I feel like the Lord saying this right now, as I'm praying, there's a deeper underground river that you have not tapped into. And the Lord says, I'm ready to bring you into this. I'm ready to take you deeper in our relationship. And so Lord, we respond to you and pray teach us, show us the way open our eyes help us to be the people of Psalm 16. Help us be people who desire and with all of our hearts live in the favor of the Lord. And, Lord, we thank you for the blood of Jesus that washes away our sins, so that we can come before you and so that we can pursue you so that we can walk with you, and so that we can live clean before you but also Lord live in the fullness of the joy and contentment of this relationship. In Jesus name, Amen and Amen.


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