"To the glory of God and the joy of the saints" isn't simply a slogan, it's my life purpose. It's why I wrote my book Radically Normal and the goal of my ministry.
Here's an excerpt from Radically Normal about its genesis:
Here's an excerpt from Radically Normal about its genesis:
Joy is one of the central themes of the Bible. When I was doing research for this book, I did an extensive study on the word joy and its synonyms, including happiness, pleasure, and delight. I trimmed the list down to the 730 most applicable verses containing those words. That’s a lot of verses—more than the number of verses that contain words like peace, grace, or even love.
I printed out all of these verses in ten-point type and set the margins at half an inch, but the list was still 48 pages long. After I printed it, I just sat and thumbed through all those pages, feeling their weight in my hand. Just seeing and feeling how much the Bible had to say about joy changed my theology. For Christians to be so easily and accurately caricatured as joyless is inexcusable. As a result of the months I spent analyzing those verses one by one, I began to sign my letters, “To the glory of God and the joy of the saints.” That has become my life mission—I want the words Christians and joyless to become antonyms.