Finding Joy in Your Heart
Scripture treats joy as essential to faithful living. When joy fades, strength soon drains away. Prayer feels thinner. Obedience feels heavier. Perseverance becomes harder.
Scripture treats joy as essential to faithful living. When joy fades, strength soon drains away. Prayer feels thinner. Obedience feels heavier. Perseverance becomes harder.
Forgiveness awakens love. When Christ is seen as gracious and kind, the heart responds.
Every person is already living for something. Long before they hear the name of Jesus, their heart has been trained by what they treasure, fear, and pursue. Evangelism, therefore, is never just the transfer of information. It is the work of addressing the heart’s deepest attachments with the grace and glory of Christ.
Raised intensity or visible excitement is not the same thing as heart renewal. Preaching should be affecting, but not artificial. It must refuse shortcuts that confuse emotional reaction with spiritual transformation, while also refusing to leave people indifferent to Christ.
Andrew Katay addressed this tension by returning to a question Scripture itself presses relentlessly: what is the human heart, and what role does it play in spiritual change? He explained that lasting transformation is impossible unless the heart is properly understood and intentionally addressed.
Hearts cannot be changed by willpower. Sinful desires cannot simply be removed; they must be displaced. The heart will always love something. Attempting to expel sin without replacing it leaves the heart unchanged.
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Many of us feel the tension between believing the gospel in our hearts and consistently living it out. For those in ministry, this raises an important question:
How can we experience true, lasting transformation in Christ throughout our life and leadership?
In John 17:24, Jesus prays to the Father, saying, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” Pastor Jason Dees explained that this prayer reveals Jesus’ longing for His followers to experience the fullness of His glory—a glory that transcends anything we see in this world.
We are called to be both objects of God’s renewal—transformed by His grace—and agents of His renewal, partnering with Him to bring restoration into the world. In both our successes and struggles, in tasks that feel mundane or meaningful, God is doing something profound.