The Joy of Personality

2 quotes from the following Chambers excerpt stick out to me;

1) There is no joy in personality unless it can create. The joy of an artist is not the fame which his pictures bring him, but that the work is a creation of his personality. The work of Jesus is the creation of saints, He can take the worst most misshapen material and make a saint.

2) …we only want praise when we are not sure of having done well, when we are certain we have done well, we don’t care an atom whether folks praise us or not.

These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (John15:11)

You can never use the word “?happiness?” in connection with Jesus or His disciples. It is an insult to God and to human nature to have as our ideal a happy life. Happiness is a thing that comes and goes, it can never be an end in itself; holiness, not happiness, is the end of man. The great design of God in the creation of man is that he might “?glorify God and enjoy Him forever.?” A man never knows joy until he gets rightly related to God. Satan’s claim is that he can make a man satisfied without God, but all he succeeds in doing is to give happiness and pleasure, never joy. Our lives mean much more than we can tell, they fulfill some purpose of God about which we know nothing; our part is to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean to our own understanding. Earthly wisdom can never come near the threshold of the Divine; if we stop short of the Divine we stop short of God’s purpose for our lives.
?“?. . . that My joy might remain in you.?”? What was the joy of Jesus? The joy of Jesus was the absolute Self-surrender and Self-sacrifice of Himself to the ?will of His Father???, the joy of doing exactly what the Father sent Him to do. ?“?I delight to do Thy will,?”? and He prays that His disciples may have this ?joy fulfilled in themselves.?
There is no joy in a personality unless it can create. The joy of an artist is not in the fame which his pictures bring him, but that his work is the creation of his personality. The work of Jesus is the creation of saints; He can take the worst, the most misshapen material, and make a saint. ?“?Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation?”? (rv mg). The fullest meaning of sanctification is that Jesus Christ is ?“?made unto us . . . sanctification,?”? that is, He creates in us what He is Himself. The Apostle Paul alludes to the joy of creating when he says, “?For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying? Are not even ye. . . ? For ye are our glory and our joy?” (?1 Thessalonians 2:19-20? rv).
?“?who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, . . .?”? It was not reward Our Lord looked forward to, but joy. “?Reward?” is our lame word for joy. When we want a child to do well, we do not say “?You will have joy?”; we say “?You will have a reward, a prize.?” The way the joy of Jesus manifests itself is that there is no desire for praise. As Bergson has pointed out, we only want praise when we are not sure of having done well; when we are certain we have done well, we don’t care an atom whether folk praise us or not.

Chambers, O. 1996, c1943. Bringing sons into glory : Studies in the life of our Lord. Marshall, Morgan & Scott: London