Devotions with Pastor Dick Guilfoil

John 15:11
"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete"
What was the joy that Jesus had?

• It is an insult to use the word happiness in connection with Jesus Christ.
• The joy of Jesus was the absolute self-surrender and self-sacrifice of Himself to His Father.
• The joy of doing that which the Father sent Him to do.
•  "I delight to do Thy will."

Jesus prayed that our joy might go on fulfilling itself until it was the same joy as His.
Have I allowed Jesus Christ to introduce His joy to me?
The full flood of my life is

• Not in bodily health,
• Not in external happenings,
• Not in seeing God's work succeed,

But in the perfect understanding of God, and in the communion with Him that Jesus Himself had.
The first thing that will hinder this joy?

• The tendency to find fault or always raise petty objections.

The cares of this world, said Jesus, will choke God's word.
Before we know where we are, we are caught up in the shows of things.
All that God has done for us is the mere threshold;
He wants to get us to the place

• Where we will be His witnesses and proclaim Who Jesus is.
• Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water.
• Be a center for Jesus Christ to pour living water through.
• Stop being self-conscious,
• Sanctification is not justification for a self-righteous individual who behaves as if they are superior to others.

The life that is rightly related to God is as natural as breathing wherever it goes.
The lives that have been of most blessing to you

• Are those who were unconscious of it.                                                                          

Pastor Dick