Tag: Joy

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5 Steps to Grow in Faith, Hope, and Love for Greater Joy, Peace, and Hope

Key thought: when we grow in the characteristics of faith, hope, and love, we will have greater joy, peace, and hope. But how do we do it?

Over the past couple of months, I have explained that the book of Romans is a book that is designed to lead us to greater joy, peace, and hope. As Paul wrote, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (15:13). This was Paul’s prayer for what this letter would accomplish.

The key to growing in joy, peace, and hope was greater faith in what God had done in Christ to forgive us and will do to transform us. The key was greater hope in a brighter future for ourselves individually and for the world. The key was greater love that would love others better, even when it was hard. The key was growing in the virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Becoming people of greater faith, hope, and love is much harder to do than to say. So, how do we do it? I want to conclude this series on Romans with an explanation of how to grow in faith, hope, and love so we can feel greater joy, peace, and hope. I hope that this will serve as a guide for you to study and review the principles of this great letter to the Roman Christians. This advice is derived from what the Apostle Paul is doing in this letter.

If you want to read the rest of the series, you can read part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here, part 6 here, and part 7 here. You can read part 8 here.

How to Grow in Virtue
1. Pray specifically to grow in faith, hope, and love. This is what Paul is doing at the end of his letter in the blessing he declares over them. He is asking God to increase the faith of the Roman Christians. That’s what we should do. We have not because we ask not. Ask, and it will be given you. God delights to give us the gifts of greater faith and love. Pray specifically each day that God will give you faith, the gift that opens the door to all other gifts. Continue reading “5 Steps to Grow in Faith, Hope, and Love for Greater Joy, Peace, and Hope”

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Why Do We Lack Joy, Peace, and Hope? (Study of Romans, Part 2: Romans 1:18–3:19)

Key Thought: a lot of things can take our joy, peace, and hope, but the main problem is our alienation from God.

What is it that keeps us from joy, peace, and hope? Many things. We make many errors in our thinking that cause us to lose these things. We exaggerate threats, make outcomes too important, tie our happiness to the wrong things, don’t see the good that we have, etc.

But Paul saw all these things as rooted in one key problem: our failure to make God central to our thoughts and lives.

We do not do this because we do not know who God is. We do know. He has made Himself clearly known (Rom. 1:19–20). It is because we refuse to take this knowledge into account and give God the glory, praise, and place He deserves. We suppress the truth.

The result is that God gives us over to our own desires. One part of our error and sin is that we want things too much. Because we have given up on that which truly satisfies us (God), we have to try to find satisfaction elsewhere. We become obsessed with other things. We take whatever gives us pleasure and make life all about that.

When we make the pleasures or experiences of life the center of our lives, we will find other people blocking our way. That’s where wars, hatred, envy, jealousy, and rage come from. And that’s where we, as a human race, are stuck.

Into this failure to keep God in our hearts and thoughts as the supreme object of devotion, people offer religion as a way to get God back into our thoughts. God Himself gave a religious system to His people in the Old and New Testaments. However, oftentimes, those who possessed this religion used it to exalt and gratify themselves and clothed their injustice in the righteous claims of their religion. They knew the Words of God. They had them. But they didn’t obey them (see Romans 2).

People will use anything to exalt themselves and place themselves at the center. Ironically, religion can be a means of escaping God and exalting ourselves. We make ourselves bigger by identifying ourselves with the transcendent. This is not a problem simply of the Jewish people, though Paul addresses them. It is a human problem. There is no tool that we use to subdue pride that cannot become a tool of pride.

Why is this? Why do we take the best things and abuse them? Because humans are bent in the wrong direction. They have a sort of acquired allergy to God that keeps them from doing the right thing. Even the people who had the clearest instruction on God went the wrong way, including Paul himself! We cannot not establish righteousness and goodness on our own. We can’t get back to joy, peace, and hope without intervention.

At this point, it is important to remember that our problem is not simply that we cannot be what God has made us to be. God is opposed to what we have become. Sin is offensive to Him. The wrath of God is being revealed against all the bad things people do (Rom. 1:18).

Some people may be offended at this idea, but here is the problem. Would we really want a God who didn’t care that people did bad things? No. We would not want to worship a God like that. We would think He was unjust. The trouble is that we think all the bad things are outside us. Instead, we need to see that they are also inside us. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 and see Paul’s summary of this in Romans 3:1-20).

When we get that, we will understand our need for reconciliation with God and transformation into a new people.

So, what is needed? A righteousness from God. That is what is revealed in the Gospel, the good news. That is what we will explore in the next section.

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Outline for Making Your Own Study of Romans 1–3

  • Paul sees the basic problem as a failure to acknowledge God, think of God, and thank God.
  • This failure leads us to try and illegitimately find our satisfaction in things that can’t satisfy us.
  • This makes us mad at other people and causes all sorts of envy and evil thinking.
  • Religion seemed to be a help to this, but human pride even used this as a tool to escape God and His claims and look down on others.
  • The reason religion (even God-given religion) failed was because of human sinfulness, or our basic bent away from God.

Questions for Reflection

  • Where are you in your relationship with God?
  • What do you often seek to satisfy you? What happens when you don’t get there?
  • What can you use to make you feel good about your relationship with God that might hide your real need?
  • How do you feel about Paul’s evaluation of human beings as sinners?

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Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

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4 Mindset Shifts for Greater Peace & Productivity

Can we change and move forward? Sometimes it feels like we can’t change. We feel stuck. We feel like our emotions just are what they are. However, if there is one thing that the great teachers of the world agree on, it is this: people can change. We are not stuck in our current ways of looking at things. We are not stuck doing the same old thing. Humans have a capacity for change.

This question is particularly poignant in times of great stress in the international order like we are facing right now. In such cases, it’s easy to let our anxiety get the best of us. We may not be aware of it. What can help us maintain peace and productivity in the midst of the storm?

I have found some help for this in the writing of some ancient philosophers known as the Stoics. The Stoics weren’t perfect, but they wrote simply and clearly about some of the best of the ancient wisdom for living well.

They key to the whole process of change is this. The locus of change is not outside us. It is inside us. It is our judgments, how we evaluate things, that determine how we will live. How we think about sickness or death, for example, will determine how we respond to it. For example, the Stoic Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius says, “But I unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not injured. And it is in my power not to think so” (Meditations, 7.14). He goes on to say: “If you are pained about any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it” (ibid., 8.47). It is how we think that determines whether or not something is bad or not. Of course, this is not about what we think at one particular moment. This is about our pattern of thinking. “Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind, for the soul is dyed by the thoughts” (ibid., 5.16). So, if we are going to be what we were created for, we will have to change our mindset.

What are these mindset shifts that can especially help us change for the better? Here I would like to set forth some general mindset shifts that can help us achieve the human telos, goal, or purpose. These mindset shifts are to trust the providence of God, focus on what is under your power, find joy in being human, and focus on living today.

First, trust the providence of God. Don’t just see the events as bad things that happen to you or things that are random. Instead, see them as coming from the good government of God. The philosopher Epictetus says that we should agree with the providence of God and not want anything other than what God’s government brings us. If someone leaves us, “Don’t wish at any price that he should continue to live with you, don’t wish that you’ll be able to remain in Corinth, and, in a word, don’t wish for anything other than what God wishes” (Discourses, 2.17). Seneca made it his habit when things went contrary to his desires not only to recognize that God wanted something different but to assent to what God wanted as the best decision. “‘Heaven decreed it otherwise!’ Nay rather, to adopt a phrase which is braver and nearer the truth—one on which you may more safely prop your spirit—say, to yourself, whenever things turn out contrary to your expectation: ‘Heaven decreed better!’” (Letter XCVIII). See everything as the result of the providence of God, and you will be able to live a life of virtue and peace. Continue reading “4 Mindset Shifts for Greater Peace & Productivity”

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Calibrate Your Emotions to Reality

Emotions drive our lives. They are powerful forces that can impel us towards good activity. Unfortunately, they can also impel us toward destructive activity. Some of our best decisions and some of our worst decisions came out of strong emotions. Does it have to be this way?

Throughout the ages, philosophers, psychologists, and religious leaders have contemplated the problem of emotions. Here is a summation of their key finding: calibrate your emotions to reality. As Thomas Aquinas says when it comes to courage, “Hence it belongs to fortitude that man should moderate his fear according to reason, namely that he should fear what he ought, and when he ought, and so forth” (Q. 126, A. 2, 1718).

Our emotions may reflect reality, but they also may not. We do not need to take them at face value. Concretely:

  • If we are scared, it does not mean there is a real threat.
  • If we are sad, it does not mean that we have lost something.
  • If we are angry, it does not mean that there is an injustice.
  • If we are joyful, it does not mean that things are going well.

The reverse is also true. Continue reading “Calibrate Your Emotions to Reality”

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Joy as Human Destiny: 10 Quotes on Joy

I believe that human beings were created for joy and are ultimately destined for joy. However, there are many things that keep us from joy. It might make us wonder whether joy is even possible. Here are 10 different quotes on joy that provide a variety of perspectives on it. In spite of the variety, all of them converge on the priority of joy for the human life, in spite all of its perplexities and challenges.

  1. “Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” — C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer 93.
  2. “Above all, my dear Lucilius, make this your business. Learn how to feel joy” (The Stoic philosopher Seneca, Letter XXIII). Continue reading “Joy as Human Destiny: 10 Quotes on Joy”
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