Drinking The Joy of Our Salvation | May 2021 Monthly Newsletter
Written by Ps. Nicholas Hung | Senior Pastor of Antioch Gospel Church
Praise the Lord! We sure hope that you’re well and prospering in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Blessed be my Rock! Let God be exalted, The Rock of my salvation!,” David wrote in 2 Samuel 22:47 (NKJV).
It’s really not hard to see through David’s beautiful lyrics that he was super excited about the awesome salvation that he had discovered in His God. And it’s amazing to think that these were words penned long before the fullness of salvation that Jesus bought for you and I upon the cross of Calvary. Today we have so much more to look forward to!
It makes me wonder what this salvation through Jesus really means for you and I and how it is changing and blessing our everyday lives.
In particular, I’m wondering whether God’s salvation has become a wellspring that brings great joy into your everyday life, like it was always designed to?
… Our salvation ought to be bringing us great joy, for God declared through the prophet Isaiah,
“With joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation!” (Isaiah 12:3 NLT)
Isaiah writes of a type of joy found only through our salvation in Jesus and what an awesome promise this is – that we would be deeply and continually filled with the overwhelming joy that accompanies the salvation we have received through Jesus.
Living in the days before Christ’s redemption, he must have been filled with longing and desire as he prophesied these words. He must have wondered, “How good life will be, when God’s children can live in the salvation of the Lord?” Today, we have no reason to wonder. Through Jesus, we have been released and empowered to experience this joy and drink of His goodness each and every day. We’ve just got to drink!
For the unbeliever, joy is fleeting and dependent upon feelings and the occurrence of positive events. But for the believer, joy is eternally manifest in our inner being and flows from the wonder of living our lives in fellowship and communion with the One Who created the heavens and earth and Who has made His presence real in our lives through His precious Spirit.
How could one ever describe the indescribable joy that salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ brings our way? I certainly cannot!
Because Christ lives in us, we can be totally free to live out our days in the joy of the Lord – no matter what the circumstances of our lives, if only we’ll learn how to drink from the foundation of our salvation.
So learn how to drink that joy. No more sipping. Gulp it in! No more skimming off the top. Drink it in deeply! No more passive waiting. Dive in! The joy of the Lord is fully available for anyone who knows Jesus as their Saviour. And that’s wonderful news! The best part is that the more we drink from this fountain of salvation, the greater our joy becomes!
What could you do today to drink of the joy of your salvation? Remind yourself of the goodness of God through the sending of His Son Jesus. Reflect on the fact that it was through the cross of Jesus that all of God’s promises have been revealed, ratified, and distributed, and made to be ‘Yes’ and ‘Amen.’ Take time to draw nearer to God, who lives in you and who longs to have a relationship with you.
Don’t ever stop living in the joy of the Lord – it’s truly our strength in every season!
Many blessings,
Pastors Nicholas and Grace