Life is serious even when we play.

And the pursuit of joy is a serious matter.

All of it is serious and happy because God is real.

Neither he nor my experience of him as joy is a mere event in my own mind.

There is God.

There is objective truth. there is the gospel, and there is joy, and that God glorifying joy is the great end of life. In it God's glory and human joy meet without conflict.

Why is the pursuit of joy such a serious matter?

That's the question John Piper answers from the life of C.S. Lewis in this episode of Light and Truth.

This talk was originally given at the Desireing God 2010 Conference for Pastors.

Lewis experience of the Pursuit of Joy and the mistakes he made has had a huge effect on the way I think about the assurance of salvation.

How do you counsel people who come to you as they do to me almost every week with questions about the assurance?

How can I know I'm real? You preach in such a way that I almost feel like I'm not a Christian every week.

So help me and I spend huge amounts of time. I wrote a whole book about that,

when I don't desire God, trying to help people with that issue.

Well, Lewis has helped me amazingly with this.

This is very profound. What he discovered is that the effort to

know the experience of joy by looking at the experience of joy by by looking at the experience of joy is self-defeating.

He wrote this,

I saw that all my weightings and watchings for joy, all my vain hopes to find some mental

content on which I could, so to speak, lay my finger and say, this is it, had been futile

attempt to contemplate the Enjoid.

It can't be done.

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