Choose to Enjoy

As I look at the topics I’ve chosen to consider in this series about making choices, I’m aware that a significant number of them involve some tension. This is surely true of today’s theme of choosing to enjoy.

Many Christians, including myself, have long been suspicious of pleasure and enjoyment, seeing them as distractions, at best, from the serious work of God, or, at worse, outright temptations of the devil to keep us trudging down the primrose path to Hell - otherwise known as “the broad way that leads to destruction.”

My thinking about this began to change several years ago when I was chatting with a Jewish man. There is a proverb among his people that the person who is truly rich is the one who is satisfied with his or her portion. Consequently, Matty said that he felt it was an insult to God to be unhappy, even when one is in want, or in suffering. God doesn’t want us to be miserable. He doesn’t set out to make us so. If we are, it is because we have chosen to be.

Unhappiness with our circumstances says a lot. Among other things, it can say:

Most Christians I know would never say these things out loud, but some, through their grim faces, complaining words and impatient grasping after the things of this world, make a strong case for such ideas.

If God is truly sovereign - able to work in human affairs in spite of their rebellion and obstinacy, we can find things to enjoy in His provision, even in the middle of the worst situations we can imagine. This is not a denial of sin. Horrible things can be perpetrated against Christians, but if we remember that nothing happens to us that God cannot redeem for our blessing in some way then we are going to miss those blessings.

A friend of mine was robbed at gunpoint. His apartment was stripped of anything vaguely valuable. For more than an hour, he was constantly threatened with death. I can’t imagine the psychological stress of this kind of home invasion situation. Yet when the invaders left with his things, his first response was to roll off of his bed onto the floor where he knelt and gave thanks to God that he was alive and unharmed. Only after spending a few minutes alone with his Heavenly Father did he contact his neighbours for help. I’ve never heard him complain when telling this story.

However, such events as this one experienced by my friend are the exception not the rule. More typical is some kind of “normal life” which, though punctuated with occasional unpleasant crises, rolls along in relative calm. Yet even in the midst of this, we need to choose to enjoy the life God has given us. A few weeks ago, I happened to be outdoors as the sun rose and was struck by the beauty I witnessed. I paused and enjoyed the spectacle, consciously aware that I was seeing something of extraordinary beauty and grandeur.

In that private moment it occurred to me that God was pleased with my enjoying that sunrise. Paul told Timothy that God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” I have to believe this includes everyday spectacles like sunrises and sunsets (1Timothy 6:17) as well as the lofty truths which often occupy the “spiritually minded.”

Since that morning, I’ve been trying to increase my awareness of things to enjoy, and I’m finding lots - too many to even start listing here. On top of taking pleasure in them, I let each one point me forward to the observation made by another traveller on the path of life: “In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11)

Ron Hughes
© January 2009