Faith and Joy

Puritan teaching emphasized that without faith joy cannot be maintained.  Thomas Manton carefully analyzed their connection, and wrote of faith:  “It is a help to joy, it represents the excellency, truth and reality of spiritual things.  That which we rejoice in, must be good, true, present.  All joy arises from the presence of some good, either in actual possession, or in firm expectation.  It is the nature of faith to make things that are absent, present to us, it gives being to hope.”  Richard Baxter echoed these thoughts: “”It is only a life of faith that will be a life of holy, heavenly joy.  Exercise yourselves therefore in believing contemplations of things unseen.  It must not be now and then a glance of the eye of the soul towards God, but a walking with Him, and frequent addresses of the soul to Him, which must help you to the delight which believers find in their communion with Him.”  All of the Puritan teachers exhorted their congregations to regularly contemplate the unspeakable joys of heaven.  Do this and everyday for the Christian will be a festival of rejoicing.  Baxter wrote: “God  is the same yesterday, today, and for ever.  If once you have a God, a Christ, a heaven to rejoice in, you may rationally indulge in constant joy.”  And whether you are in poverty or prosperity doesn’t matter.