Rejoice with those who rejoice

Rejoice with those who rejoice Romans 12: 15

After careful consideration, I am almost certain that playing golf can seriously damage your sanctification!  By which I mean the golf course is one of the best places to halt if not reverse the process of turning the Christian into the likeness of Jesus. The frustration and sheer incomprehensibility of why one minute you are playing like Tiger Woods and the next you hit three shots sideways is a mystery on a par with the Bermuda Triangle.  You start out a happy Christian and can end up full of bitter thoughts, anger and intense irritation.

Your own game can be frustrating enough but rejoicing with your playing partner over their incredible if not incredulous shots can be trying in the extreme. It is always easy to rejoice with those who perhaps have worked hard at their exams and got good results or with friends who have got engaged, married or are having a baby. We can rejoice with those who have got a job or promotion or moved to a new home but rejoicing with those who don’t in our eyes deserve it, is quite another matter.

I have a pastor friend who tells the story of another pastor who felt God was going to give him a new car. This pastor did not look after his present car; it was badly in need of a good clean and a service and he certainly did not deserve a new one. Nevertheless he was given a brand new, top of the range Mercedes. Rejoicing with those who rejoice in those circumstances is hard – it comes through gritted teeth. Or, back to the golf course, rejoicing when your playing partner hits a shot and with a few bounces all round the banks surrounding the green, the ball hops, skips and jumps down the hole!  It is these times of undeserved favour or good old grace that test our capacity to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Yet there is a lesson I have learned that if one can rejoice and congratulate those who do not deserve whatever it is they have got whether it is a new car or a flukey golf shot, something inside of us changes. Complaining about their good luck whether to their face or others just makes us sound what we are – bitter and jealous. Rejoicing with them and others enlarges the place of our hearts and makes us look what we may not be feeling – generous and gracious.

Yet something else also happens. As we learn to rejoice in the most unlikely and undeserved circumstances, we not only look generous and gracious; we become generous and gracious. It starts as an act of the will but gradually our attitudes start to line up with our words. We are all recipients of amazing grace and we rejoice over God’s abundance to us. Rejoicing with others over their good fortune leaves no room for jealousy and bitterness in our hearts but instead increases the sanctification process of turning us a little bit more into the likeness of Jesus