Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction: Faith Alone and the Fight for Joy
To Help Those for Whom Joy Stays Out of Reach
The Foundation of Gutsy Guilt
The Great Work of Christ Outside of Us
Confusing Justification and Sanctification Will Kill Joy
John Bunyan Sees His Righteousness in Heaven
Start with Despair in Yourself

1 The Darkness of Melancholy
The Physical Side of Spiritual Darkness
The Place of Medication in the Fight for Joy

2 Waiting in Darkness, We Are Not Lost and Not Alone
How Long, O Lord, How Long!
The Ground of Our Assurance When We Cannot See Our Faith
When a Child of God Is Persuaded That He Is Not

3 Fold Not the Arms of Action
What Matters Is Your Duty, Not Your Joy?
Duty Includes the Duty of Joy
Will You Be a Hypocrite If You Obey without Joy?
Thanksgiving with the Mouth Stirs Up Thankfulness in the Heart

4 Does Unconfessed Sin Clog Our Joy?
Confessing to God and to Man Is Sweet Freedom
Give the Devil His Due, but No More
The Devil Cannot Abide with the Light of Cherished Truth

5 The Darkness That Feeds on Self-Absorption
How Bill Leslie Became a Watered Garden and a Spring
What My Eighty-Five-Year-Old Father Said Was Missing
The Aim Is That Our Words Would Be the Overflow of Joy in Christ
Is the Cause You Live for Large Enough for Your Christ-Exalting Heart?

6 Loving Those Who Cannot See the Light
The Amazing Grace of John Newton’s Care for Cowper
There Is No Wasted Work in Loving Those without Light

Extract from ... Introduction: Faith Alone and the Fight for Joy

In addressing the topic of spiritual darkness, I am aware that I have put my oar in a very large sea. I rise from my desk and walk past a wall of books that speak more wisely than I on the care and cure of sad Christian souls. Just opening these volumes reminds me of how many wise and valuable things could be said — and cannot be said in a book of this size. It will always be so. The Word of God is inexhaustible, and the world he made holds countless treasures waiting to be found by clear eyes in search of Christ-exalting joy.

The needs of embattled people who fight for joy will always be as diverse as the people themselves. So I content myself with rowing out into this sea as far as my limits allow, and I pray that you will search out some of these great old books and go farther in your quest for joy than I am able to take you here.

To Help Those for Whom Joy Stays Out of Reach

My aim is to give some guidance and hope to those for whom joy seems to stay out of reach. Virtually all Bible-saturated physicians of the soul have spoken about long seasons of darkness and desolation. In the old days they called it melancholy. Richard Baxter, for example, who died in 1691, wrote with astonishing relevance about the complexities of dealing with Christians who seem unable to enjoy God. “Delighting in God, and in his word and ways,” he said, “is the flower and life of true religion. But these that I speak of can delight in nothing — neither God, nor in his word, nor any duty.”

I think that is technically an overstatement. At least I prefer to say that all true believers in Christ have within them the seed of joy, and that they do experience it in some real way. They may not have the “flower” of “true religion,” but they do have the “life,” even though it may be only a mustard seed of joy in Christ. They have tasted and seen that the Lord Jesus is a sweet, lifegiving spring of eternal joy for their souls (Ps. 34:8; 1 Pet. 2:2-3), but the taste, even though it indicates that there is true spiritual life, is easily overwhelmed by the floods of darkness that threaten to bury it. These are the ones I want to help in this small book.

The Foundation of Gutsy Guilt

This book began as the final chapter of a larger book titled When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. I hope that if this small book proves helpful, readers will consider what is in the larger one. There are crucial foundations in that larger book which are not included here. One of the most important is learning to fight for joy like a justified sinner. I call this “gutsy guilt.” Every embattled saint has learned this secret, even if they never called it by that name.

Gutsy guilt means learning to live on the rock-solid truth of what happened for us when Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead. It means realizing that in this life we will always be sinful and imperfect. Therefore in ourselves we will always be guilty. This will prove emotionally devastating if we do not discover the reality of justification by faith, that is, the secret of gutsy guilt. This is not the only weapon with which we fight for joy in the darkness of discouragement, but it is one of the most foundational and the most important.

The biblical truth of justification says that my rescue from sin and God’s wrath is first a legal rescue, and only then a moral one. ...