"These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full" (John 15:11).

When the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ is in a man's heart his joy is always full. There is no fulness of joy anywhere except in Christ. God has made the human heart so only He Himself can fill it. All the pleasures of the world, all the riches of earth, though they may bring a temporary thrill, leave unsatisfied the longing of the heart. "My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God," says the psalmist. The soul of man is immortal, and only God can satisfy the hunger of the soul and bring eternal joy. The immortal, eternal cannot be satisfied by the temporal and transient.

Some of the most unhappy people I have known have been people of wealth and fame—people successful from the viewpoint of the world. Some of the happiest people I know are those who have little of the material things of life, no fame and no prominence, but who possess the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Of course, the Christian has his sorrows. He is grieved by the deaths of his loved ones, but he sorrows not "as those who have no hope." In the midnight of his sorrow sings the nightingale of hope bringing joy to his heart with divine assurance that he shall see his dear ones again.

When the man without Christ loses his wealth and his friends and his family, he has lost everything. Let the Christian see his family taken from him, his temporal possessions swept away and his friends removed—he still has the abiding presence of Christ in whom his hope is fixed and who is the Author and Source of his joy. The man whose affections are set on Christ has every reason to rejoice because he knows that all things work together for his good (Romans 8:28). The man who lives in daily fellowship with the Lord is in contact with the Source of joy eternal. "In Thy presence is fulness of joy" (Psalm 16:11).

—Selected