Joyful Outsiders

Chapter 4
Joyful Outsiders

Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
–James

We live in one of the most consumeristic cultures in human history. Babylon promises that happiness comes in an abundance of possessions. But Jesus taught the opposite: “Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”¹ And he warned that “no one can serve two masters. . . . You will hate the one and love the other. . . . You cannot serve both God and money.”²

Jesus’s teachings put joyful outsiders in constant tension with the massive marketing machine churning around us on smartphones, billboards, and TV ads. When we look at a car, house, or outfit we want, we must ask whether we see those things as Babylon does or as Jesus does. If we let our kingdom operating system take the lead, we will seem strange to “normal” people. They’ll say, “Why wouldn’t you treat yourself? You deserve it. Just imagine how happy you’d be if you bought it!”

In the early years of our church, we met in the auditorium of a local high school. We used classrooms for children’s programming and student ministries. It was a fantastic setup. But it didn’t last. The school let us know we needed to move on, so we searched for other space but found nothing that could fit our congregation. We realized that if we didn’t build a building, our church would need to shut down. But to do that we needed to raise funds from our congregation. They gave with incredible, humbling generosity.

I will never forget opening one pledge in particular. It came from a couple named John and Tanya. When I saw the number, I did a double take. It didn’t sit well with me. They’d promised too much. I feared they couldn’t afford it. But I wasn’t sure what to do next. When you’re desperate to raise enough money to keep a church alive, it’s counterintuitive to call people and encourage them to give less. But that’s exactly what I did.

John said I was wrong: It wasn’t too much. They’d spent years saving for a boat so they could take their family to the lake on the weekends. But he explained, “We decided we’d rather invest the money in ministry than in something that will sit in the driveway and need to be waxed.” When they saw the need of the church, they decided there was greater joy in giving their money away. Happiness is not found in an abundance of possessions.

Of course, plenty of people would find their decision incomprehensible. How could giving make you happier than weekends on the lake? But to this day, John and Tanya don’t regret their decision. They tell me that when they see the building full of people worshiping Jesus, and hear the stories of changed lives, they know they made the better choice. They didn’t miss out when they gave generously. They chose joy that day. Or, more accurately, Jesus gave them joy, by giving them the strength to live as outsiders in a consumeristic culture.

John and Tanya’s story shows that you can’t resist the influence of Babylon if you don’t love something more than Babylon. You can’t say no to Babylon’s false promises if you don’t know the promises of God. You can’t say no to Babylon’s false joy if you don’t know the true joy Jesus alone offers. In Peter’s second letter to the “elect exiles” living in Asia Minor, he makes this point quite clearly: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”³

Peter is saying to those elected to the office of outsider that they will resist the corruption of Babylon only if they know God’s “precious promises.” John and Tanya knew that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”4 And because they saw the promise of future blessing and joy, they were free to resist Babylon’s influence in the present. Likewise, Jesus endured the cross not by gritting his teeth but by setting his eyes on “the joy set before him.”5 He knew that on the other side of death was a resurrection, and after that the throne of heaven. So scorning the shame that Babylon would cast on him for his crucifixion, he obeyed his father in Gethsemane and laid down his life for the world.6 When he chose to take up his cross, he chose joy.

To become a joyful outsider yourself, you must know the great and precious promises God offers to those who live faithfully as exiles, sojourners, and resident aliens. To help you see those promises in all their glorious goodness, I want to introduce you to an ancient outsider named Ezekiel. He didn’t initially experience his exile as a joy. But God showed him his promises, and that changed everything.

Happy Birthday, Ezekiel!

When Ezekiel awoke on his thirtieth birthday, he probably wanted to be happy. Many of his friends never made it to their third decade. Instead, Babylonians had slaughtered and burned them in Jerusalem. Ezekiel was one of the lucky few. He survived.

But was this life a life worth living? The Babylonians forced Ezekiel to relocate nine hundred miles to the east, where he was expected to conform to their culture, learn their language, and worship their gods. He labored for his conquerors. His captors forced him to cheer, “Long live the king!” to the man who destroyed his home.

Before Ezekiel’s exile, he’d trained to be a priest in the temple—the dwelling place of Yahweh’s presence on earth. So today, his thirtieth birthday, should have been the happiest day of his life. It was supposed to be the day he was admitted into temple service. Instead, he was an exile in Babylon.

Yes, it was his birthday. But there was nothing happy about it. So he walked alone along a riverbank and wept. He wept for himself. He wept for Jerusalem. He wept for his lost friends. He wept because he would never see the temple again. He wept because God seemed impossibly distant.

On the horizon, a windstorm was blowing in. Lightning illuminated dark clouds from within. It would almost be a relief for the storm to sweep over him, for a single lightning strike to turn him into cinder and ash like the friends he had left in the conflagration of Jerusalem. He would never forget the sight of their incinerated bodies, left in a valley just outside Jerusalem. Only their dried bones remained.

But as the storm overtook him, something strange happened. The clouds broke open. A celestial throne emerged on spinning wheels, lifted up by angels, shining like shook foil. A cosmic human figure sat on the throne. His skin glowed like heated bronze. Light danced around him. He was so bright Ezekiel could hardly keep his eyes on him. And with a rush, Ezekiel realized what he was seeing: this is the glory of Yahweh. He fell on his face. This was what he’d always wanted but never dreamed possible. Even if he entered the temple, he could never presume to see God’s glory. But here was God’s glory in Babylon.

A voice from the heavens spoke. “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.”7 But Ezekiel couldn’t move. A supernatural wind blew over him, carrying him upward like a small boat in stormy waters. In many ways, this was not a happy birthday. And yet it was the best of all birthdays because on it, Ezekiel received a joy he’d never imagined possible in exile, a joy he never would’ve received had he stayed in Jerusalem: the living presence of God.

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Taken from Joyful Outsiders by Patrick Miller and Keith Simon. Copyright © January 2025 by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, www.zondervan.com.