When joy is absent from your life, power is also missing (see\u00a0Nehemiah\u00a08:10). Our happiness shouldn\u2019t be based on what\u2019s happening around us; it should be dependent on our relationship with Jesus. John says, \u2018We can be completely filled with joy.\u2019<\/i> (1\u00a0John\u00a01:4\u00a0GWT) <\/p>\n
Pastor Reimar Schultze notes: \u2018John did not say this when all was well, but when\u2026 everything had turned to shambles. <\/p>\n
(1) All his fellow apostles had been murdered. <\/p>\n
(2) Rome had destroyed the temple [so]\u2026 not one stone was left upon another. Flavius Josephus, an eyewitness wrote, \u201cThe multitude of those that\u2026 perished exceeded all the destructions men or God ever brought upon the world.\u201d <\/p>\n
(3) Many Jews and Christians became refugees. Average life expectancy was about forty years and 25 per cent of the people in Rome were slaves.<\/p>\n
(4) John himself lived as a condemned criminal on the Isle of Patmos. He had no earthly comforts\u2026 no assurance of living another day. When the cup of misery was full, God commissioned him to show the world the absolute power and triumph of Christianity over everything\u2026 His writings, in reference to our daily walk, put a capstone on all that Heaven intended to reveal in the Word: if we have apostolic fellowship, our joy will be full. You do not need pleasant circumstances for this to happen.\u2019<\/p>\n
The psalmist said it best: \u2018In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.\u2019<\/i> (Psalm\u00a016:11\u00a0NKJV)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When joy is absent from your life, power is also missing (see\u00a0Nehemiah\u00a08:10). Our happiness shouldn\u2019t be based on what\u2019s happening around us; it should be dependent on our relationship with Jesus. John says, \u2018We can be completely filled with joy.\u2019 (1\u00a0John\u00a01:4\u00a0GWT) Pastor Reimar Schultze notes: \u2018John did not say this when all was well, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}