God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Unction is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an accuser, a revealer, a searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant; opens his heart and his purse as gently, yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves. This unction is not the gift of genius. It is not found in the hall of learning. No eloquence can woo it. No industry can win it. It is the gift of God - the signet set to His own messengers. It is heaven’s knighthood given to the chosen true and brave ones who have sought this anointed honor through many an hour of tearful, wrestling prayer. Earnestness is good and impressive; genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but holy unction can do this.
What the Bible Says About Joy:
1. Jesus’ aim in all He taught was the joy of His people (Jn. 15:11).
2. Joy is what God fills us with when we trust in Christ (Rom. 15:13).
3. The kingdom of God is joy (Rom. 14:17).
4. Joy is the fruit of God’s Spirit within us (Gal. 5:22).
5. Joy is the aim of everything the apostles did and wrote (2 Cor. 1:24).
6. Becoming a Christian is finding a joy that makes you willing to forsake everything (Mat. 13:44).
7. Joy is nourished and sustained by the word of God in the Bible (Psm. 19:8).
8. Joy will overtake all sorrow for those who trust Christ (Psm. 126:5; 30:5)
9. God Himself is our joy (Psm. 43:4; 16:11).
10. Joy in God outstrips all earthly joy (Psm. 4:7)
11. If your joy is in God, no one can take your joy from you (Jn. 16:22).
12. God calls all nations and peoples to join in the joy He offers to all who believe. No racism. No ethnocentrism (Psm. 67:4; Psm. 66:1).
13. The whole Christian message from beginning to end is good news of great joy (Lk. 2:10; Isa. 51:11).
14. When we meet Christ at His second coming we will enter into his indestructible joy (Mt. 25:23).
