The Fight for Joy is a Fight to See | Let's chat about Chapters 5 & 6 | Becoming Book Club

"Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!" {Psalm 34:8}

The fight for Real Joy is a fight to SEE our realities with God's perspective.My challenge for us this week is so simple.....ask God to SEE. To really SEE what He sees, so we want what He wants. Piper talks in these chapters about wanting the wrong things in the wrong way and then sometimes we want the right things in the wrong way...or at the very least I feel that I experience time and time again wanting the right things in the wrong time-frame.We need God's sight to truly experience God's glory and know His heart. On page 58 Piper gives a pretty hardy challenge to us regarding the need for spiritual sight.

"In other words, the heart and its eyes are failing in their appointed task. In the book of Revelation, Jesus saw this happening in the church of Laodicea, who thought they needed nothing. He said to them, "You are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked." And he counseled them, "Buy from me....salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see" {3:17-18}This divine "salve" must be what Paul was praying for in Ephesians 1:18 when he asked the Lord that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know our hope and inheritance and power. Without this work of our omnipotent internal Eye Surgeon we would remain blind and unable to see. Oh, how we need the gift of spiritual sight! Whatever joy we have without this sight would not be spiritual joy. It would not be spontaneous response to seeing the beauty of Christ. And therefore it would not honor Christ. It would be superficial and fleeting."

Discussion questions and journal prompts for this week....

1. The only way we will have spiritual sight is by asking God for it with a surrendered heart. Maintaining our spiritual sight involves a daily habit of confessing sin, admitting our need for Jesus and asking for revelation to His movement each day. I am asking us to put a pause on life long enough to truly ask to SEE with spiritual eyes today. To see our families with spiritual lenses. To see our friendships through spiritual lenses. To see our parenting through spiritual lenses. List out all the areas you need to see God REVEAL Himself, and ask for the sight to see Him moving. 
2. Read and write out Ephesians 1:17-23 and Philippians 3:12-16

"Together this spiritual seeing of Christ and enjoying him - or this spiritual sense of his beauty and corresponding pleasure in the soul - refer to what Paul calls "knowing" Christ. Paul prays in Ephesians 3:19 that we may 'know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.' And he says in Philippians 3:8, 'I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.' This knowing is no mere intellectual knowledge. The devils have such knowledge and tremble {Jas 2:19}. This knowing 'surpasses knowledge.' This knowing includes tasting and seeing. It is the knowledge of honey that you have only when you put it on your tongue and taste that it is sweet. Therefore, knowing Christ in this way means seeing him for who he really is and enjoying him above all things. Therefore the prophetic challenge, "Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord" {Hos 6:3} is the same as the challenge of this book; Let us fight to SEE; let us press on in the fight to see and enjoy the glory of Christ." {page 69, When I Don't Desire God}