The Joy of Knowing
Your Heavenly Father
by Kenneth Copeland
Everything that The LORD is to us, everything He has for us, everything He does in and through us—every aspect of our Christian faith—centers on the major spiritual force of joy.
How did I come to this conclusion? It was through meditating on the words Jesus spoke to His disciples in the final hours before He went to the cross. Undoubtedly, He was very selective about what He said to them. This was the last opportunity he had to teach them. Obviously, what He said had to have been the things that were priorities in His heart.
What was about to happen weighed heavily on His soul. During those precious last moments, Jesus did the most unusual things—things He had never done before.
Never before had Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, but that is what He did at the Last Supper. And although they knew it was His habit to separate Himself from the people to spend time alone with the Father, they had never seen Him agonize in prayer to the point of sweating blood. Yet, that is what they saw in the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times He pleaded with them, “Couldn’t you watch and pray with Me?” He was carrying a heavy load that night. It was the weight of going to the Cross in a few hours to be slaughtered like a lamb sacrifice.
The gravity of the hour was clearly evident. He was not about to waste these precious words of that final conversation with His disciples. Notice what He said in John 15:9-11: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
20 : BVOV
