Joy

Joy
108. The bitterest things in religion are sweet - there is a sweetness even in reproofs, when God meets with our corruptions and whispers unto us such and such things are dangerous, and that if we cherish them they will bring us to hell. The Word of God is sweet to a Christian that has his heart under its influence. Is not pardon sweet to a condemned man, and riches sweet to a poor man, and favor sweet to a man in disgrace, and liberty sweet to a man in captivity? So all that comes from God is sweet to a Christian that has his heart touched with the sense of sin.
109. A Christian's joy is right when it proceeds from right principles, from judgment and conscience, not from fancy and imagination; when judgment and conscience will bear him out; when there is fellowship between them both, for our joy must spring from peace, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God" (Romans 5:2). The Apostles began their Epistles with mercy, grace and peace; mercy in forgiveness, grace to renew our natures, and peace of conscience. These are things to be gloried in. If we find our sins pardoned, our persons accepted, and our nature renewed; we may comfort ourselves in health, in wealth, in wife, in children, in anything, because all come from the favor of God. We may joy in afflictions because there is a blessing in the worst things to further our eternal happiness. Though we cannot joy in affliction itself as being contrary to our nature, yet we may in the outcome; so that we rejoice aright when, having interest in God, we glory in the testimony of a good conscience; when looking inward, we find all at peace; when each of us can say upon good grounds that God is mine, and therefore all is mine, both life and death and all things, so far as they may serve for my truest good.
110. The religious affections of God's people are mixed, for they mingle their joy with weeping, and their weeping with joy; whereas a carnal man's are all simple; if he rejoices, he is mad; if he is sorrowful (unless it be restrained) it sinks him; but grace always tempers the joy and sorrow of a Christian, because he has always something to joy in, and something for which to grieve. What a poorness of spirit is it to be over-joyful or overmuch grieved, when all things are fading and vanish so soon away. Let us therefore bear continually in our minds that all things here below are subordinate to the upper world.