Father, it has been said so clearly already that what needs to happen in this room,

a sermon, a human cannot make happen.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

There is a spiritual taste.

There are capacities for enjoyment in the soul that cannot be awakened any other way

than by the miracle of your indwelling, empowering spirit.

So we invite you to come in power and to do that kind of awakening of joy in Jesus

that is greater than joy in anything else.

I ask this in his name, amen.

So the focus for the weekend is enjoying Jesus,

and so I want to begin by making the case from the gospel of John that saving faith in Jesus,

as basic as it can be, saving faith in Jesus is the awakening of the enjoyment of Jesus.

So I don't think the Gospel of John or the New Testament

teaches that the enjoyment of Jesus is stage two.

So first you get saved,

you believe, and then maybe sometime later you learn that there's

such a thing as enjoying Jesus.

I'm arguing that to be saved, to be converted, to be born again, to have saving faith,

is to experience an awakening of the enjoyment of Jesus.

And that can be very threatening, very unsettling to you.

Because there are genuine believers among you who think that you don't enjoy Jesus.

And you've been scratching your head since you heard of this church and saw that,

...