 If you want an idea of what a relationship with Christ looks like take a look at marriage. There is no better example of a growing deep, intimate relationship then a marriage. I mean you start out in a marriage thinking you know everything there is to know about a person. As the years pass you learn many more things. And those things endear us to our spouse. The reason I use the example of a marriage relationship is because that’s the example God uses in Ephesian’s 5:31-32.
Paul speaks of that joining together and intimacy of a husband and wife. In verse 32 Paul writes that he speaks of Christ and the church. Scripture uses the imagery of the bride and groom to picture for us the relationship between Christ and the church.
Second Corinthians 11 speaks of presenting the church, the body of believers, to Christ as a pure virgin. Revelation 19 finds the bride, the church “arrayed in fine linen, clean and white”. The church is that bride of Christ. We, as saved Christians, are that church. Each of us and all of us. So that message applies to us as a body and to each of us as members in particular
I hope you understand what I am getting at. The most important point of, maybe the only point of my Christian life is my relationship to Christ. In that relationship I will find strength, healing, love for others, kindness, gentleness, the list goes on. I will also find trials. And when the trials come I will find Joy, strength, and peace in my relationship to Christ. Christ in my life, Christ in the world is joy. We sing it at Christmas, at the advent of Christ ‘Joy to the world’! The angels proclaimed that Mary’s child would bring joy, Elizabeth’s baby leaped for joy in here womb, the shepherds were told to fear not for the arrival of Christ was a tiding of great joy.
So joy is a natural part of Christianity. Even in trials. James wrote it in his first chapter “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” those temptations are trials yet James calls them joy. Our trials should draw us closer to Christ, draw us to a closer walk with Him, and walking close to Christ is joy!
Joseph Trimbath, 06/13/2018
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