Jalopy!

According to Dictionary.com, jalopy (juh-LOP-ee) is a noun and means “an old, decrepit, or unpretentious automobile.”

Have you ever owned one? I have. Karen and I were young, newly married, poor as church mice and happier than I can describe. We needed a second car because she was working. I was still a student in Bible college and a part-time student pastor. We acquired a second car. In every sense of the word, it was a jalopy. We had a little tradition of naming our cars (silly, I know, but we enjoyed it.) So we named our jalopy after the man named in Acts 1:1 who was Theophilus because it was “the awfullest” car we saw on the highway.

Enough of my honest humor with you today. But there is a spiritual principle in all of this. Here is it. Maybe “nice things” might bring happiness for a moment. But it doesn’t take “nice things” to give lasting joy.

Think of what the Lord Jesus told us. “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11). He prayed to His Father, “And now I come to Thee: and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13).

Let me send you off today with these words. Friends, there is nothing wrong with trading in our “jalopies” and getting something newer and nicer. That’s not the point. The point of the matter however is this. Until you know Jesus as your Savior, you can have the nicest, the newest, the most expensive things and still not find lasting joy. Only a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Himself will bring you this joy.