Audio Transcript

Is joy a choice, or is joy just a feeling that comes and goes? That is a great question, one our culture asks all the time. And if our joy is a choice, whose choice is it ultimately? That actually was the question I attempted to answer in my book The Joy Project. I know a number of you have read that book. I think joy is a better way to frame the essentials of Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism: God’s sovereign joy in pursuit of us.

But here’s the specific question on the table today, as it comes to us from Susan in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. My question is pretty straightforward. Can you tell me if joy in God is a choice that we make? Or is our joy in God a feeling that comes to us after we do a certain something else first that will lead to joy?”

Here’s an amazing fact to start off with. If you consider all the forms of the word choose or choice or decide or decision, the New Testament never applies those words to the act of choosing God or choosing Christ or choosing Christianity. I think that would come as a shock to a lot of people. (One near exception is Mary choosing to sit at Jesus’s feet while Martha did the housework, but Mary is already a follower.)

In fact, the one place where choosing Jesus is mentioned, it’s denied. In John 15:16, Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” In other words, when the disciples chose to follow Jesus, it wasn’t ultimately their choice. It was God’s choice. He was decisive in that event. God’s choosing us is mentioned over and over and over in the New Testament, but our choosing him is not mentioned, not with the words choose or decide.

Incline Your Heart

Now, if you go to the Old Testament, there’s that famous statement of Joshua 24:15, “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua is happy to call for a choice to serve God or not.

But then a few verses later, he says this (in Joshua 24:22–23): “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him. . . . Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.” Now, why did Joshua add the command to “incline your heart”? He said it because there is such a thing as choosing to serve God while the heart is far from God.

And Jesus said that. He said it in Matthew 15:8, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” They choose to go to church on Sunday morning. They choose to sing, and they choose to pray. They choose to go to the synagogue, or they choose to give tithes. And on the outside, they look like they’ve chosen God.

They have not chosen God. They have chosen religion to hide the fact that their heart wants something else besides God. That’s why Joshua said, “It’s not enough. This is not enough to choose to serve God. Your heart must incline to the Lord. The Lord must be your treasure — not the praise of man, not health, not wealth, not prosperity.”

Deeper Than a Choice

Now, the way all of this relates to Susan’s question is that this inclination of the heart, which both Joshua and Jesus refer to, is deeper than a choice. It’s a kind of joy in God. Joshua was saying what Psalm 100 says; namely, if you’re choosing to serve God, then let that choice be acceptable to God — let it be honoring to God by “[serving] the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2). That’s a command: “Serve the Lord with gladness!” That is, have your heart incline to God; don’t just choose to serve him. Serve him with gladness.

For a choice to be pleasing to God and honoring to God, it must be rooted in the heart’s taste for God, in gladness in God. In other words, a choice for God or a preference for God that honors God must be rooted in the heart’s experience of God as preferable. What makes a choice to serve God real is that the choice expresses the fact that the heart has found God to be preferable, desirable, valuable.

When Jesus said that the people had chosen to honor God with their lips but not with their hearts because their hearts were far from him, he meant that their hearts did not taste God as desirable. They didn’t taste God as valuable. They didn’t taste God as preferable. Their taste was for the praise of man, not God.

So, my answer for Susan is no, joy is not a choice. It is deeper. It is the gift of an experience of God as desirable, preferable, valuable. It’s not a mere choice. It is the God-given, spontaneous response to seeing God as desirable — tasting him as good, as preferable to other satisfactions.

Joy by Looking

That’s what it means in 1 Peter 2:2–3 when it says, “Long for the pure spiritual milk . . . if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Tasting is not a choice. If you put a lemon in your mouth, no amount of choosing can make it taste like sugar. It’s not a choice. It’s the way your taste buds are designed. And there are taste buds on the soul that are either ruined or alive — which brings us then to the other part of Susan’s question about how our spiritual taste buds might be changed.

She asks, “Is joy in God a feeling that comes after we do something else that leads to joy in God?” Now, the very fact that we’re talking about joy in God — not just joy generically, but joy in God, or experiencing God as our joy — implies that we need to have some knowledge of God in order to have authentic joy in God.

This means that any steps we can take to put ourselves in the way of true knowledge of God may prove to be the very action that leads to joy in God. So, in that sense, yes. Joy in God is a feeling that comes after we do something else that leads to joy in God; namely, listening to the truth about God.

If joy in God is the heart’s experience of preferring God, desiring God, treasuring God, then it’s not surprising that the main thing we can do in order to experience this is look intently at God’s greatness, God’s beauty, God’s worth in his word. Faith and the “joy [of] faith” (Philippians 1:25), Paul says (and I would say), comes by hearing, and hearing (or reading) by the word of God (Romans 10:17).

Joy by Praying

And there is another action — I’ll just mention one more — that we can do and should do in the pursuit of joy in God. We should pray. Pray the following two prayers with the psalmists. They prayed like this because they had the same experience of sometimes feeling what they ought to feel and sometimes not feeling what they ought to feel in regard to the joy we should have in God.

Open my eyes, that I may behold     wondrous things out of your law. (Psalm 119:18)

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,     that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

We should pray to have eyes to see and hearts to feel. So, in summary, Susan, joy in God is not a choice. It is a God-given, spontaneous experience of the beauty, worth, greatness of God. But there are choices that we can make that may lead to that experience, because the Bible says, “Look. Look and pray. Look at the Lord in his word, and pray for eyes to see and a heart to feel.”

On the morning of Sunday, June 5, 1864, Charles Spurgeon ascended the pulpit to deliver a sermon that he expected would cost him dearly. Friends might turn away; his influence might take a severe blow; his sermons might no longer be printed. Should he preach it? Should he publish it?

Spurgeon later recounted,

It was delivered with the full expectation that the sale of the sermons would receive very serious injury; in fact, I mentioned to one of the publishers that I was about to destroy it at a single blow, but that the blow must be struck, cost what it might, for the burden of the Lord lay heavy upon me, and I must deliver my soul. I deliberately counted the cost, and reckoned upon the loss of many an ardent friend and helper, and I expected the assaults of clever and angry foes.1

The text of the sermon was Mark 16:15–16: “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”2 The topic of this sermon was baptismal regeneration.

Spurgeon’s Challenge

That morning, Spurgeon challenged the Church of England’s teaching of baptismal regeneration, a teaching that yokes the act of baptism with spiritual regeneration. His protest was not against paedobaptism as such. Spurgeon entertained warm and affectionate respect for many paedobaptists, including men such as the Congregationalist George Rogers, whom he appointed the first principal of the Pastor’s College. Anglican evangelicals confused him, but he loved them in Christ.

Spurgeon is unmistakably clear about his views of baptism, including his opposition to infant sprinkling. Countless sermons provide explicit and incidental arguments for the baptism of believers only.3 The point in this sermon on baptismal regeneration is less about the ordinance of baptism and more about baptismal regeneration and doctrinal and practical integrity. Spurgeon’s challenge was against baptismal regeneration, formalism, and sacramentalism in the Church of England, part of which was drifting back toward Roman Catholicism through the Tractarian movement.4 Spurgeon was a true Nonconformist (or Dissenter), an Independent churchman, and a Baptist. He shared the British Dissenter’s horror of and opposition to Roman Catholicism. By conviction as well as situation, he existed outside the pale of the Anglican communion and was ready to challenge their formalism and national churchmanship.

Spurgeon preached the sermon that morning feeling that “I have been loath enough to undertake the work, but I am forced to it by an awful and overwhelming sense of solemn duty.”5 He contended that the Anglican rubric for infant baptism offered an explicit declaration that baptism saves, especially by promising that through baptism “this Child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church,” and — addressing God — that “it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.”

“Where errors have the capacity to be dangerously wrong, damningly wrong, we must speak.”

This belief, he asserted, was not something that any true evangelical could or did maintain. “Why then,” he asked, “do they belong to a Church which teaches that doctrine in the plainest terms?”6 He could honor the integrity of a bold heretic, but he was troubled by the dishonesty of good men attaching themselves to known falsehood. For men “to swear or say that they give their solemn assent and consent to what they do not believe is one of the grossest pieces of immorality perpetrated,” breeding an atmosphere of lies.7

Against Damning Error

The religion of Scripture is a religion of faith: “I cannot see any connection which can exist between sprinkling, or immersion, and regeneration, so that the one shall necessarily be tied to the other in the absence of faith.”8 Baptismal regeneration encourages hypocrisy of the worst sort and leads to damnation by assuring that all who get religiously damp are saved, though they should live godlessly. It was the side door by which popery strolled back into the Anglican communion. Spurgeon was equally merciless in his condemnation of Dissenting superstition — venerating places, people, or rituals. Christ and Christ alone must be the object of our faith:

Lay hold on Jesus Christ. This is the foundation: build on it. This is the rock of refuge: fly to it. I pray you fly to it now. Life is short: time speeds with eagle’s-wing. Swift as the dove pursued by the hawk, fly, fly poor sinner, to God’s dear Son; now touch the hem of his garment; now look into that dear face, once marred with sorrows for you; look into those eyes, once shedding tears for you. Trust him, and if you find him false, then you must perish; but false you never will find him while this word standeth true, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” God give us this vital, essential faith, without which there is no salvation. Baptized, re-baptized, circumcised, confirmed, fed upon sacraments, and buried in consecrated ground — ye shall all perish except ye believe in him.9

For Spurgeon, baptism — the baptism of his Scripture text — must follow after faith in the Jesus of the Bible:

Baptism is the avowal of faith; the man was Christ’s soldier, but now in baptism he puts on his regimentals. The man believed in Christ, but his faith remained between God and his own soul. In baptism he says to the baptizer, “I believe in Jesus Christ;” he says to the Church, “I unite with you as a believer in the common truths of Christianity;” he saith to the onlooker, “Whatever you may do, as for me, I will serve the Lord.” It is the avowal of his faith.10

The falsehood of baptismal regeneration introduces a fatal frailty into any church: “Out of any system which teaches salvation by baptism must spring infidelity, an infidelity which the false Church already seems willing to nourish and foster beneath her wing.”11 The sermon is not bitter in tone, but it potently manifests the spirit of a man who is deeply persuaded of the danger of the lie he exposes, and desperate that sinners should realize that only faith alone in Christ alone can save. He wants the people of God to know what they believe and to speak and live accordingly.

Gospel Issues

For all its preening pomposity, our age often lacks the kind of straightforwardness that Spurgeon championed and displayed. Sniping from cover is more the order of the day. Corresponding to that posture is a vindictiveness toward those with whom we disagree or who disagree with us. It is hard for us today (and was not easy in Spurgeon’s day) to reconcile strong opposition with affection and respect for some who hold to what we oppose. I can, and do, appreciate and respect men whom I am persuaded are wrong, sometimes badly wrong, on certain issues. I am grateful for what I perceive to be the happy inconsistencies that keep my brothers from wandering too far from the right road. I suspect that they entertain the same thoughts of me; if not, they need to sharpen up!

For Spurgeon, every scriptural truth was important. If God has spoken, men should listen and obey. Spurgeon was not suggesting that salvation hinges upon the embrace of every truth that God has revealed. He entertained warm and affectionate relationships with men who did not see eye to eye with him on every matter. Nevertheless, he was concerned that men should take God at his word and not pretend that anything God has spoken is insignificant. Spurgeon was not prepared to treat any point of revelation as if it were unimportant.

Alongside of that, Spurgeon recognized that not all issues were gospel issues — hinges upon which spiritual life and death hung. A matter like baptismal regeneration, however, was (and still is) a gospel issue. It offered what it could not deliver in the sphere of salvation, and — for the glory of God and the good of men — it must be withstood and exposed. It was not enough to disagree with it; it must be addressed: “I might be silent here, but, loving England, I cannot and dare not; and having soon to render an account before my God, whose servant I hope I am, I must free myself from this evil as well as from every other, or else on my head may be the doom of souls.”12 Where errors have the capacity to be dangerously wrong, damningly wrong, we must speak.

Cost of Conviction

Do we, with Spurgeon, believe what we say and say what we believe, appropriately and clearly and humbly, following the word of God where it takes us? We need not attack everyone and everything with which we disagree, and we can entertain genuine affection for some with whom we have genuine difference of conviction. However, we must be clear where the glory of God in the salvation of souls is at stake, and we cannot condone — either by speech or silence — those errors that rob us of the gospel. Do we have the discernment, honesty, and integrity to love those with whom we might disagree in some things, but to come away from those who maintain and declare damning error?

Such conviction requires sacrifice. As we saw earlier, Spurgeon expected this address, when published, to cost him financially and reputationally. But, he asserted,

No truth is more sure than this, that the path of duty is to be followed thoroughly if peace of mind is to be enjoyed. Results are not to be looked at, we are to keep our conscience clear, come what may, and all considerations of influence and public estimation are to be light as feathers in the scale. In minor matters as well as more important concerns I have spoken my mind fearlessly, and brought down objurgations and anathemas innumerable, but I in nowise regret it, and shall not swerve from the use of outspoken speech in the future any more than in the past. I would scorn to retain a single adherent by such silence as would leave him under misapprehension. After all, men love plain speech.13

You do not know what the Lord will do with your honesty. Both this sermon and its controversial successors were runaway bestsellers, even as they called forth real vitriol from opponents. Far from destroying Spurgeon’s reputation, though, they enhanced it among those who valued “plain speech,” even when they disagreed with its content. Remember that Spurgeon did not know what the results would be when he first wrote and spoke, but he wrote and spoke nonetheless.

The man of conviction is going to be criticized. The man who speaks his mind, even with humility and love, is likely to be assaulted. However, we must be concerned first to honor God by faithfulness to all his revealed truth, in its proper place, perspective, and proportion, and to serve men by speaking that truth in love — a love more concerned for their souls than for our reputations. We need not suggest that Spurgeon gets everything right here or all the time. Nevertheless, we find in this an example of conviction and courage that we would do well to follow.

On February 18, 1812, Ann and Adoniram Judson (ages 21 and 22) boarded the Caravan in the New England port of Salem. They had been married for less than two weeks, and set sail for Asia, expecting not to see America again.

They arrived in Burma (now Myanmar) to commence pioneer gospel work in July of 1813 — having already endured a four-month sea journey, a painful separation from their sending body and colleagues (due to their conscientious decision to be baptized as believers), the death of Ann’s friend Harriet, and the stillbirth of Ann’s first child.

The next thirteen years would be punctuated by serious illness, lengthy separations, and continual harassment. Ann’s second child, Roger Williams, died at eight months. She was pregnant with her third child when Adoniram was taken into the notorious Death Prison in Ava in June 1824. They would not know freedom together until February 1826. During that time, both suffered immensely; Ann daily risked her own life to care for Adoniram. These privations resulted in her death, at age 36, in October 1826. Little Maria Eliza would die six months later.

So much suffering. So many tears.

Yet Ann’s determination to serve Christ shone, undimmed, to the end. What fueled her resolve? To answer that question, we have to go back to her profound conversion, which resulted in a passionate concern for God’s glory and a powerful certainty in God’s promises.

Profound Conversion

Ann Hasseltine was born in 1789, in Bradford, New England. Popular and sociable, she would confide in her diary that she was “one of the happiest creatures on earth” (Ann Judson, 20). Ann attended church each Sunday, but her life revolved around friends and parties.

When she was 15, a teacher arrived at Bradford Academy who urged his pupils that repentance was urgent. Many were convicted of sin, including Ann. But she lurched, for months, between fear of judgment and terror of what friends would say if she became “serious.” Ultimately, God drew her to himself. At age 16, she wrote,

A view of [God’s] purity and holiness filled my soul with wonder and admiration. I felt a disposition to commit myself unreservedly into his hands, and leave it with him to save me or cast me off, for I felt I could not be unhappy, while allowed the privilege of contemplating and loving so glorious a Being. . . .

I felt myself to be a poor lost sinner, destitute of everything to recommend myself to the divine favour. [I knew] that it had been the mere sovereign, restraining mercy of God, not my own goodness, which had kept me from committing the most flagrant crimes. This view of myself humbled me in the dust, melted me into sorrow and contrition for my sins, induced me to lay my soul at the feet of Christ, and plead his merits alone, as the ground of my acceptance. (24–25)

Ann joined the Congregational Church in Bradford in September 1806. Her parents and siblings were also converted and joined the church. This is a vignette of what was taking place throughout America — a movement we now refer to as the Second Great Awakening.

“Christ did not issue the Great Commission on the condition that health, comfort, and safety could be assured.”

One outworking of revival was increased concern for those unreached with the gospel. Previously, American Protestants had sent missionaries to the North American Indians, but not overseas. Now, some young Christians were convinced that Christ’s command to go to all nations applied to them too.

Following her conversion, Ann began teaching in a small school. She wanted the children in her charge to follow Christ, but in her prayers she ranged across the globe, praying for the conversion of all nations:

My chief happiness now consisted in contemplating the moral perfections of the glorious God. I longed to have all intelligent creatures love him. (27)

Passionate Concern

Ann now knew that she was here on this earth to serve God. At 18, after reading the journal of David Brainerd, she wrote in her own journal of her passion to pray for all nations, and of her willingness to go wherever Christ would choose.

A year after that, in June 1810, four young students met with the General Association of Congregational ministers in Bradford. They were volunteering to take the gospel to the unreached people of Asia. One of them was Adoniram Judson. The brilliant son of a Congregational minister, he had been converted after a period of rebellion. Like Ann, his conversion resulted in a passionate concern that all nations should praise God.

That day, the would-be missionaries were given lunch at the home of the Hasseltines. Unsurprisingly, Adoniram set his heart upon Ann. One month later, he wrote to her father,

I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life . . . to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? (37)

Mr. Hasseltine left the choice to Ann, who resolved to marry Adoniram and to leave all she knew for the unknown:

I rejoice, that I am in [God’s] hands — that he is everywhere present, and can protect me in one place as well as in another. He has my heart in his hands, and when I am called to face danger, to pass through scenes of terror and distress, he can inspire me with fortitude, and enable me to trust in him. Jesus is faithful; his promises are precious. (40)

At this time, sea journeys were hazardous. Letters took months, and some never arrived. There was no established mission network to which these pioneers could go. Nothing was guaranteed: safety, health, toleration — least of all success. Many thought the idea insane.

But Christ did not issue the Great Commission on the condition that health, comfort, and safety could be assured.

Shortly after arrival in Burma, Ann’s journal records her desire that all should honor God, her concern for the plight of people deprived of gospel light, and her conviction that it was a privilege to have been called to sacrifice comfort for the kingdom:

If it may please the dear Redeemer to make me instrumental of leading some of the females of Burma to a saving acquaintance with him, my great object would be accomplished, my highest desires gratified: I shall rejoice to have relinquished my comforts, my country, and my home. . . . When shall cruel, idolatrous, avaricious Burma know, that thou art the God of the whole earth, and alone deservest the homage and adoration of all creatures? Hasten it, Lord, in thine own time. (83–84)

Cruel and avaricious were not malicious terms. Burma’s penal system was indeed brutal, including public torture for minor offenses. And the country’s exorbitant taxation trapped the majority of the population in dire poverty. Ann’s passionate concern was warranted.

Powerful Certainty

The day-to-day routine of surviving in harsh and hostile circumstances, acquisition of a new language, hundreds of hours in discussion with inquirers — all was motivated by the conviction that God is sovereign, and his promises are sure. “We have nothing to expect from man, and everything from God . . . we are in the service of Him who governs the world” (55, 172).

Such confidence liberated Ann to see the long-term perspective. They were laying a foundation for future work:

We cannot expect to do much, in such a rough, uncultivated field; yet if we may be instrumental in removing some of the rubbish, and preparing the way for others, it will be a sufficient reward . . . when we recollect that Jesus has commanded his disciples to carry the gospel to the nations, and promised to be with them to the end of the world; that God has promised to give the nations to his Son for an inheritance, we are encouraged to make a beginning, though in the midst of discouragement, and leave it to him to grant success, in his own time and way. (73, 83)

She longed for Christ to be magnified and souls to be won in Burma — whether she saw the harvest or not.

Permanent Contribution

Ann’s life, albeit short, was hugely influential in the expansion of the missions movement in the nineteenth century. Ann and Adoniram established the first church in Burma. Ann was fully engaged in evangelism. She engaged in translation in both Burmese and Siamese (Thai), including a catechism. She started schools and stirred up support for female education among American women.

Ann died prematurely. Her valiant efforts to secure her husband’s survival in prison had shattered her own strength. He would minister in Burma for another 23 years, during which time a firm foundation for church life was laid (including his magnificent translation of the Bible).

In time, the epic drama of the Judson story inspired generations of Baptist missionaries. Ann’s writings were among the first at a popular level to stir up missionary interest among the Protestant population in America, and beyond. Her Memoir was printed soon after her death, and ran through many editions. She was the childhood heroine of Adoniram’s second and third wives.

In 1815, a 10-year-old American girl, Sarah Hall, wept when she heard of the death of Ann’s baby Roger, and she wrote a poem to mark the sad event. Little did she know that eighteen years later she would become the second Mrs. Judson!

“The epic drama of the Judson story inspired generations of Baptist missionaries.”

In 1828, a 12-year-old factory girl, Emily Chubbuck, was moved to tears by reading of the death of baby Maria. Eighteen years later, she would become the third Mrs. Judson! Emily said to a friend before meeting Adoniram, “I have felt, ever since I read the Memoir of Mrs Ann H. Judson when I was a small child, that I must become a missionary” (253).

Pray for Burma

Ann’s God-centered testimony inspired, and continues to inspire, many. It challenges the self-absorption of our comfort-obsessed culture. It spurs us on to plead with God for many to come to a living faith and a joyous determination to serve God whatever the cost.

It also reminds us of Burma (now Myanmar), where the military regime is brutalizing the population, including many Christians. We can pray that their testimony of eternal hope would win many to Christ, and that God would be honored in the nation Ann Judson so willingly served and departed from into glory.