Therefore, God is teaching you to pray for the glory of God. You can decide to pursue happiness by doing things that make you happy, but your emotions are not like your little finger. My experience of God isn’t anything like what you’re talking about.”. 3. God loves you in that he does everything necessary in order that you might be enthralled forever, and increasingly, with what will bring you full and lasting happiness, namely himself. There is a kind of service he doesn’t like. God made you to magnify him and, therefore, it cannot be optional or peripheral or non-essential that you say, “It really doesn’t matter that I delight in God. I commend it. I’m just underlining how essential the fight for joy is. The biggest question I’ve ever asked, I think, is this: Why does God do everything that he does? Glum service. I don’t feel like he’s a Grand Canyon that I stand beside in the morning. You may not follow him in this, except like this. It wasn’t a theological issue, like you believe this, you believe that, and I don’t. Psalm 23:3: “He restores my soul. The first one is this: the fight for joy is a fight for joy in God, not a fight for joy in general. On the other hand, why God does things really matters, really, really matters. It’s called “When I Don’t Desire God: How To Fight For Joy” because there are a lot of people like that, there are a lot of people who think that doesn’t matter, and there are some people that state the way it does matter in totally misleading ways. We are not saved by mere decisions. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it. God does everything for the glory of God. Lewis has been helpful to me on this. Most people in the world have no experience of lasting joy in their lives. No. The first text I gave you is Matthew 13:44 about the kingdom. Therefore, for God to be, loving must give himself. I’ve preached messages that have gotten me emails from philosophy professors and theology professors. Don’t you touch my heart, because I’m in love with money, and I’m in love with the praise of man, so don’t connect “pursue God” with “pursue joy in God,” because that will get me in trouble. Some of you know the text I’m about to quote. Number one. How should Christians respond to critical race theory? Lewis’s autobiography, Surprised by Joy. I must deal with it. One of the messages was entitled, “Did Jesus die for us or for God?” Did Jesus die for us or for God? Satan’s problem is not doctrine. And so he had to put forth his Son as a propitiation by his blood, so that he could be seen to be just and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus. Psalm 32:11: “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous. Some of you have heard me say, I like to say it, “Nobody goes to the Grand Canyon to increase his self esteem,” because on the edge of the Grand Canyon, as you feel your soul being drawn out into this vast opening, that’s not what happens. I know some of you are going to walk out of this room and say I said things I didn’t say, because you don’t like what I’m saying and when you don’t like what someone says, you distort what they say. It’s a road of tears. I’m going to say that again because in our twenty-first century mold and time on the backend of the crest of the wave of self-esteem, it needs to still be said. This is Matthew 5:11–12: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. I’ll tell you, if there’s anybody’s joy in the universe I would want to have someday, it would be the joy of the omnipotent, emotional Son of God, who sees his Father and responds like 10,000 sights of the supernova or the Grand Canyon. It’s despair in suffering. A lot of preaching of the law, and I think that’s a good thing, deals with the law just at a do level, a deed level. Those are the things that damn us. Bored service. I am on a mission to put your happiness in God’s glory. Come up and tell me, “I was beaten for Jesus,” and I will bow down and give thanks for you and your faith. Your kingdom come, your will be done.’” The very first petition that Jesus teaches us to pray is, make your name great in the world. Get off your self-pity kick.” (see Mark 10:29–30). This is the closest thing to the heart of the foundation of what I’m saying that God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him or, to put it another way, you glorify what you enjoy.