The greatest joy

is to be an instrument of Jesus Christ in helping people walk in the Truth.

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. 3 John 1:4

It may need to be clarified that walking in Truth, before God, may be quite another thing than someone thinking that they have a lot of Bible or theological knowledge.

Also, someone may say, But knowing the LORD is the greatest joy.

The strength of John’s statement, that he has no greater joy than his children walking in truth, rests on the strength of John’s relationship to Jesus.

It tells us that knowing Jesus and doing the will of Jesus are synonymous and inseparable.

John’s joy was not exclusively in the intimacy of his own personal relationship to Christ, it was also in the fulfillment of the purpose of Christ thru him :  both intertwined, for Jesus’ joy is that His people walk in Truth, therefore Jesus’ joy was John’s joy, a common-union.

And this delineates today between disciples and navel-gazers.

Which is why the LORD is not known thru ‘worship’, or by a concentrated effort to worship God, as in the modern ‘worship service’ methodology, which many unthinkingly follow, never pausing to consider that the NT church did not practice such a ritual, or any ritual.

It’s commonly understood that by getting the worship ‘right’ and anointed that thru that medium we enter into intimacy with and know our LORD.

John is saying something so ‘other’ than modern thinking. If John is right, then the modern understanding of worship and worship service is a dead end, it leads no where, it promises much but doesn’t deliver the very thing it’s ‘designed’ to achieve.