The Crossway blog recently posted my “Ten Reasons Joy Brings Christ to Our Culture,” based on my forthcoming book (which you can totally buy now, thanks for asking):

10. It gets people with their guard down. People are naturally wary of canned gospel presentations, political agendas or “Christian cultural impact” campaigns. They’re not wary of joyful people.

9. It offers an alternative to lust, sloth and gluttony. The joy of God rips people out of their selfish fantasy worlds, and gets them off the couch and doing something meaningful with their lives.

8. It offers an alternative to pride, greed and wrath. The joy of God casts out the fear and guilt that drive people to build fortresses of misery around themselves.

7. It liberates people from worldly enslavement. People who have the joy of God can’t be controlled and manipulated by systems of sex, money, and power.

6. It reveals new possibilities for our lives. The renewing of our minds by the Word and Spirit reveal how the world really works, showing us things we would never have dreamed of on our own.

5. It changes our priorities. You can’t address cultural problems like financial chaos, family breakdown and cutthroat politics unless you have people who care more about doing what’s right than about doing what’s easy or makes us feel good.

4. It makes us responsible. People with the joy of God want to be good stewards of all that comes under their care, and pass on a flourishing world to the next generation.

3. It reconciles Christian cultural influence with religious freedom. You can’t Christianize people with the power of the state ; the only way to genuinely influence culture for Christ is to get people to want what we have.

2. It’s good training for the New Jerusalem. Sharing the joy of God will be the whole basis of our cultural life.

1. It’s the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit in us. Why show our own cultural efforts to our neighbors when we can show them God’s?