Joy as Protection

In war, mines were used to defend something you didn’t want taken. If there were a beach you wanted to make sure an enemy didn’t storm, you could place floating mines in the water offshore that would destroy enemy ships trying to dock nearby.  If there were a line you didn’t want enemy foot soldiers crossing, you could bury mines underneath the surface of the ground.  These were defensive weapons that didn’t require you pulling a trigger in order to defend what you deemed precious.  

As a father, I want to propose that joy is such a weapon.  

If my children delight in Jesus Christ, if they are glad and thrilled with His Word and seeing Him glorified, the odds of doctrinal heresy, of the slow growth of unrepentant sin, or of the cares of this life crowding out their Christian obedience are greatly reduced.  And greatly reduced whether I’m alive to see it or not.  

Picture a boy like this who has grown into young adulthood.  He has reached his early twenties, and he is deeply satisfied by knowing Jesus.  He is happiest when he is praying.  He adores reading his Bible in the mornings before his commute to work.  And now slowly into his small group and eventually his church at large a heresy starts to pop up.  Many of the people in his local church are young Christians, and the ideas that maybe in the end everyone does go to Heaven or that perhaps God doesn’t completely know the future don’t seem to be so crazy.  A book by a heretical supposedly Christian author starts to get recommended in conversations on Sunday morning, and YouTube videos of a heretical teacher start getting shared on Facebook.  And this boy’s loving Christian father has gone to be with the Lord.  As a friend in his small group smiles and gives him a copy of the book, and starts to tell him how it’s making him re-think everything he thought he knew, the boy flips through it, sees the titles of the chapters and some of the statements about God, and shakes his head and hands it back.  He’s not interested.  He doesn’t want to re-think everything he knows.  He enjoys the God of the Bible.  He adores the truths of Jesus Christ.  This glossy new version of an old assault on the Kingdom doesn’t have the gravity it does for his buddy next to him.  He enjoys God too much to believe lies about Him. 

Let’s take a young lady.  She is away at college.  Her greatest delight in life is thinking about and praying to and reading the Word of Jesus Christ.  She is an alien to most of the people who know her well at college, but a pleasant alien.  A cheerful one.  She’s pursued by a rowdy acquaintance down the hall, one who most young women find compelling.  And she’s also invited to a party on their dorm floor he’s throwing where drunkenness and sexual sin are sure to be appetizers.  But she really doesn’t even much consider the young man or the party.  She goes for coffee and reads her Bible, striking up a pleasant conversation with a girl she runs into from her economics class.  She shares the Gospel with the girl, right around the time most of the partiers are starting to forget how to use complete sentences.  She chalks it up as one of the best Friday nights she’s had in a while.  The party and the would-be boyfriend barely cross her mind.  She is not thirsty for happiness.  She has happiness.  

If you and I can cultivate joy in Christ in our kids, then whether we are there to protect them or not as they grow older they will be naturally defended against the calls of lies and sin.  The fruit will be less tempting because they will be less hungry.  If our kids, through joyful, happy Bible reading as a family and through constant prayer for their hearts to treasure Jesus and through an aroma of glad, hopeful Christian worship that permeated their young lives are fortified with happiness in Jesus, they will be far less vulnerable to the calls of lesser and falser gods.  

A general has a city he desperately wants to protect.  There is so much precious in that city that he cannot see fall to the enemy.  He must not see fall to the enemy.  He carefully, thoughtfully places mines in front of that city, dedicating himself to the task as much as if he were waging war right there with his gun in his hands and the enemy firing back at him.  Every mine is laid down with precision and the greatest of effort. 

The general retires to his quarters.  He lays his heavy head down on the pillow.  He rests, a deep rest with more peace than he had before.  He smiles.

Even if the battle takes him, the city is still protected.