The Source of Abundant Joy
By Oswald Chambers
In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, (Romans 8:37).
Paul was speaking here of the things that might seem likely to separate a saint from the love of God. But the remarkable thing is that nothing can come between the love of God and a saint! The things Paul mentioned in this passage can disrupt the close fellowship of our soul with God, but none of them is able to come between the love of God and the soul of a saint on the spiritual level.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God!
The underlying foundation of the Christian faith is the undeserved, limitless miracle of the love of God that was exhibited on the Cross of Calvary; a love that is not earned and can never be.
Paul said this is the reason that “in all these things we are more than conquerors.” We are super-victors with a joy that comes from experiencing the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.
For example… huge waves that would frighten an ordinary swimmer will produce a tremendous thrill for the surfer who has ridden them.
Let’s apply that to our own circumstances.
The things we try to avoid and fight against – tribulation, suffering, and persecution – are the very things that produce abundant joy in us. “We are more than conquerors through Him” “in ALL these things”; not in spite of them, but in the MIDST of them.
A saint doesn’t know the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it. Paul said, “I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation” (2 Corinthians 7:4).
The undiminished radiance, which is the result of abundant joy, is not built on anything passing, but on the LOVE of God that nothing can change. And the experiences of life, whether they are everyday events or alarming ones, are powerless to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord…
Romans 8: 38-39: For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.