People who enjoy their God

There is more than joy to living the Christian life. But Christianity with no joy is no Christianity at all. Enjoying God is a central model of what it means to live the Christian life. Not the only way to look at the Christian life, there is faith and love and obedience, but an important and often neglected model. Tony Compolo is right: the kingdom of God is a party. The prodigal’s father, as a type of the Heavenly Father, threw a party when his son came home. On another occasion, Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is like a man who threw a great banquet (Luke 14:15ff). He compared it to a man who found a treasure in a field, a woman who found a lost coin, and a man who found a lost sheep. All of these were word pictures of joy. The man who found the field was so happy he sold everything to get the field. The man with the lost sheep “joyfully puts it on his shoulders” ( Luke 15:4). The woman “calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’” (Luke 15:9 ). All of these are pictures of parties going on in heaven. The kingdom of God is like that. May we never be guilty of the older brother’s syndrome and complain of the party. Rather, let us joyfully enter the party atmosphere of enjoying our happy God. Let us drink deeply from the well of salvation.