Daily Manna · Day 3 · January 3
Full
“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. We read that, and most of us quietly translate it into something about mood.
Jesus said it hours before the arrest, and He put the condition in the sentence just before: if ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love (15:10). The joy on offer is His own, not a feeling He arranges around our circumstances, and it runs along obedience the way sap runs along a branch. He is not promising us an easier week either. Seven verses later He tells the same room, if the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
Which exposes what we have actually been doing. We have wanted the fruit while declining the vine. We ask for fullness and skip the abiding, and then conclude that the promise was thin.
Hear the warning as He meant it. It is not that God withholds joy out of temper. It is that a branch which will not stay attached has nothing left to draw on. The word He uses is withered. It happens slowly, it does not hurt while it is happening, and nobody notices until the wood is dry.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 3 is The House of Mourning (Ecclesiastes 7:2).