The following resource is from desiring God.org.

Let's pray together.

Father, I pray for strength for us all now to have a mouth to speak and ears to hear so that your word and how it directs us to

fight for joy will be rightly understood and rightly appropriated so that we do this battle in the

most fruitful successful way in our ministries. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So in the first message I said that Christian Hedonism is a life devoted to experiencing Christ himself as our

supreme treasure with as much satisfaction in this life and the next is possible.

And I argue that that life is essential, necessary

for glorifying God as he deserves.

The entire emphasis of the message

was on vertical Christian Edenism, not horizontal Christian Hedonism.

That is, it was on the focus, it was a focus on the fact that experiencing joy in Christ is the key to glorifying Christ.

That's vertical.

So Christ gives joy, joy glorifies Him, I call it vertical hedonism.

The focus was not on the fact that experiencing that joy in Christ is the key to loving people.

That's horizontal Christian hedonism.

So putting the two together,

Christian hedonism is a life devoted to maximizing joy in Christ

as the key to glorifying God and loving people. It's the key to worship and virtue. If you

cultivate a way of life that ignores or opposes that pursuit of joy in Christ you will not

worship God and you will not love people as you ought. That's vertical and horizontal Christian

Edenism. Now the reason I'm bringing it up is because horizontal Christian Edenism and how we as Christians are called to love

...