Testimonies

Joy Expressible

by Terry Barlow
12/18/17
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In addressing the Jewish believers and those of the first century Dispersion the Apostle Peter tells

his readers and those who would have heard this epistle read (and ourselves as well of course),

"Though you have not seen him, you love him.  Though you do not now see him, you believe in him

and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome

of your faith, the salvation of your souls."  (1 Peter 1, v.8)  Though that joy unspeakable

was and is a joy  beyond expression, they in Peter's day and we in our own day are still

challenged by the Holy Spirit to try to express it.  Many wonderful hymns and beautiful

more contemporary worship songs have come from that effort to somehow express  the inexpressible in

gratitude to God. Though that joy is beyond measure they and we are not taught by the apostle  that it is

an excessive joy,  or a joy out of proportion to what and Who it is that prompts it.  We can't be too happy

or too joyful or too excited about what salvation has done for us that can never be taken away.  We can't be

too grateful to the One who purchased it for us with his own blood.  I am reminded of  an experience I had

as a young believer in which I was invited to be interviewed on radio by a radio host who had heard my

testimony in a church service.  At the end of the interview I realized I had been censored due to excessive

excitement.  Yet it was that very excitement that had drawn the radio host to me in the first place.  Some of

us need to recover a bit of that excitement we possessed as young believers.  Sure, it needs to be tempered

with the wisdom that comes with maturity, but not jettisoned altogether,  lest we become comatose and

over-dignified in the name of  so called dignified "maturity",  a brand of "maturity" which might more aptly be called

lukewarmness.    Oh, Oh, there I go to meddlin', but I'm meddlin' with me most of all.