Almost twenty years after writing what many would call my signature book, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, I finally wrote the book I knew I had to write as a crucial sequel. The book is When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. It’s now been more than twenty years since its publication in 2004.
Long before this book came into being, I used to give three messages when asked to speak on Christian Hedonism — the theme of Desiring God. But very quickly, I realized that a fourth message was needed, because the most urgent and common question I was asked after those three messages was, “What if I don’t desire God the way you say we should?”
Liberating and Devastating
In other words, many people would read the book Desiring God or hear those three messages (“God’s Passion for His Glory,” “Our Passion for Joy in God’s Glory,” and “Our Passion for Other People to Share in That Joy”), and they would be persuaded that delight in God was not just icing on the cake of Christianity but essential.
Then they would realize that this discovery from the Bible was both liberating and devastating. It was liberating because they had never heard that they were not only permitted to be happy but commanded to be. This felt freeing. We all want to be happy. But at the same time, they realized that they did not delight in God the way the Bible commands. And now, with this new understanding of the importance of joy, that felt devastating.
So, with the publication of Desiring God, I knew that someday there needed to be a book to respond to that sense of devastation — a book to answer the question, “What do I do if I don’t have the desire for God, or the delight in God, that Scripture commands?”
I did prepare that fourth message. And eventually it was put in Desiring God as an appendix: “How Then Shall We Fight for Joy: An Outline.” That, then, became my guideline for what needed to be in the book When I Don’t Desire God.
I am thankful that it took me so long to write this book because, with every passing year, I saw more deeply into the complexity of Christian emotions. And every year, I saw more clearly that the means of fighting for joy are enormously diverse. And every year, I tested more of those means in my own battles and failures to be satisfied in God. And I saw more instances and varieties of depression and emotional brokenness.
So, in the delay, God was preparing me to speak with more patience, more compassion, more sympathy, and more nuanced sensitivity to how amazingly different people are. At least I hope that’s the case.
Core Convictions in the Fight
When I Don’t Desire God is, perhaps, my most practical book. That is dangerous to say because other books that do not dwell on application to the same degree have produced practical transformations even more pronounced for some people. Practical is a tricky word. In a sense, I would describe some of the most complex theological works I have read as the most practical, because they resulted in the most thoroughgoing effects in my life. But what I mean by practical here is that I tried to deal mainly with the “how to” questions of living the Christian life.
The title When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy implies three huge commitments. It implies that desiring God and joy in God are massively important, not marginal. It implies, second, that persevering in that joy necessarily includes our fighting for it. That is, real effort is expended. Real war is waged. And third, the title includes the conviction that, in all the fighting we do, we never fight in our own strength. And the success of the fight never finally depends on us but on God.
Those three points can scarcely be overemphasized. Joy matters. The fight is essential. God’s help is decisive. All of them are controversial. So, where do you stand? Is God most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him? If so, joy is not marginal. Are you willing to fight for your joy? Or is that an oxymoron for you — “fought-for joy”? To be sure, it is like saying, “Work for rest.” “Run for stillness.” “Wage war for peace.” Yes. Exactly. Faith is a resting and a stillness and a peace — and yet Paul tells us, “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). Fighting for joy is not a contradiction.
I pray that God will grant you to embrace all three of these convictions. I think they all are essential for the biblical pursuit of joy in God.
- Joy matters: “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4).
- The fight is essential: “Put to death the deeds of the body, [and] you will live” (Romans 8:13).
- God’s help is decisive: “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
How to Fight for Joy in God
This month at Desiring God, our team will give fresh attention to “How to Fight for Joy in God.” We’ll rehearse God’s means of grace — his word, prayer, and the covenant fellowship of the local church — and we’ll ponder how Satan opposes and seeks to sabotage our joy in God. We’ll consider the use of nature and the stewardship of our bodies in the pursuit of joy, and we’ll revisit the concluding question, “What do I do when the darkness does not lift?”
In it all, we aim to remember an all-important insight from C.S. Lewis, as it relates not only to hope but also to joy:
You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hope’s object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning round to look at the hope itself. . . . The surest means of disarming an anger or a lust was to turn your attention from the girl or the insult and start examining the passion itself. The surest way of spoiling a pleasure was to start examining your satisfaction. (Surprised by Joy, 218)
God, and God alone, is the final, ultimate goal of our quest. All that God is for us in Jesus is the Object of our quest for joy. When we speak of fighting for joy, we mean joy in God, not joy without reference to God. When we speak of longing for happiness, we mean happiness in all that God is for us in Jesus, not happiness as a physical or psychological experience apart from God. Whether we are desiring or delighting, the end of the experience is God.
Fighting for that experience of joy in God, through Jesus Christ, is what the book and our fresh focus this month are all about. I hope you’ll join us.
