Last week in the comments on my post about virtue Adam asked for a proper definition of “Happy Holiness.” I gave a decent answer - in my opinion - but a few days ago at the Friday night service Dana Candler gave us all a much better answer as she approached it from a different angle: happy holiness is rooted in loving God without reserve.

From Dana’s notes (emphasis mine):

These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full…Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. Jn. 15:11- 13

This is where all the joy is found — the secret of the kingdom, the treasure of the saint. When one is wholly given to God, emptied of all, withholding nothing, truly and entirely, then begins the grandness of joy unspeakable, then begins the entrance of eternal pleasures.

It is the final fraction that holds the fullness of enjoyment, the last portion that imparts the brightness of living in the light. And this fullness is found, this brightness is experienced, not in general seasons of life but in moments, not in years but in seconds—small snatches and flashes of wholehearted living.

In loving Him entirely, in this single moment of this specific hour of our existence, we taste the glory of living in the light, the wonder of walking in the realm of Heaven.

As we come to this great crossroads, the point on love’s journey where sincerity must meet severity and be converted into entirety, [sincerity with application] may we embrace this conversion. May we receive wholly the tender affections of God that fuel and empower the heart to make the leap from fear and compromise into pure love and holiness.

You can download the whole document from the IHOP-KC website here.