Sunday 5th May

Hi everyone!

just imagine this: you’re with your friends and one of them says “you are my friend if you do what I command you” I wonder how you would feel. That would be quite strange. You might think – “you are not the boss of me!” Well this is something that Jesus actually said to his friends. But let’s not look at it all by itself, let’s look at with the rest of the story, so we can understand what Jesus is really saying. Watch the video now.

So, Jesus wants each of us to stick close to him and belong to him for all our lives. 

But why?  Why does Jesus want us to stick close to him always?

When Jesus talked to his friends that night, he had an answer for that question. Here’s what he said…

…so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. (v11)

Maybe you thought what Jesus really wanted was for us to follow a whole lot of rules and behave better. But Jesus himself said that what he wanted was for you to have more joy.  He wanted to give you a gift: His very own joy. 

Jesus wants you to have a lot of that gift: He wants your joy to be full.

So how do you suppose we get all that joy that Jesus wants to give us?  I wonder. Do you and I feel totally joyful every hour of every day? No! Sometimes life is really hard and we don’t feel like being joyful. 

I’ll tell you a secret though: Jesus told us a way to have more joy as we go through life. He said it comes through living the way we are created to live. 

He came and loved people. He cared for them when they were lonely. He fed them when they were hungry. He helped them when they were hurting. That was Jesus showing us how we were created to live. Then he turned it into an instruction:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (v12)

That’s the way Jesus says we’ll find his joy inside ourselves. He didn’t say this to be bossy, he said it for our own good - to bless us. Every time you show love towards other people, you are living the way Jesus showed us. And that’s the way we find his joy.

• Maybe not right away. When I’m cleaning the toilet, I don’t feel especially joyful at that moment!

• Maybe not every hour. No one is perfectly happy every minute of the day.

• Maybe not every day. We all have good days and bad days.

• Maybe not every time. Sometimes I do experience joy while I’m serving another person, and other times I wonder “why me?”.

But in the long run, the more you love like Jesus loved, the more joy there will be — for you and for the people around you.

Let’s sing – Oh Happy Day

Let’s pray:

Dear God,

Please help us to love and serve other people this week, and as we do, fill us with joy, and lots of it! In Jesus' name,

Amen.

Download

• Joy - activities

• Love one another - activities

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