As a teenager, I often viewed Jesus as a killjoy -- someone whose rules would prevent me from access to, and success in, the intellectual and artistic world I desired to inhabit. However, when God changed my heart just prior to my 18th birthday, Jesus became my chief joy: All else faded in importance compared to knowing him. Over time, I came to realize that Jesus even breathed new life into the intellectual and artistic endeavors that I had once pursued, but pursued in blindness.
Enjoying God should characterize the Christian's life. It is our loving relationship with the living God, based on costly forgiveness and grace, that separates Christianity from a religious system like all the others.
I've lately been reading, with a friend, John Owen's "Communion with the Triune God." In this dense book, he unpacks the theology of enjoying God. He writes:
Unacquaintedness with our mercies, our privileges, is our sin as well as our trouble. ... This makes us go heavily, when we might rejoice; and to be weak, where we might be strong in the Lord. (Part 1, Chapter 3)
In other words, we rob both God and ourselves when we fail to commune with him. When we fail to take to heart his mercies to us, his love to us, and his gifts to us.
Christmas is a great time to enjoy God's gifts, and in particular the greatest gift of all -- his Son, Jesus Christ. Is Jesus an ornament? Will he be packed away again after the holiday? Or is he reason to celebrate Christmas and, in fact, all 365 days of the year?
Yes, and even the 366th day in 2008!
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