John 15: The Joy of Seeing Ahead of Time What God Is Preparing

Introduction

"I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full." Pastor Kim Yong-jun of Full Gospel Dobong Church delivered this message on John 15:11 at a special early-morning prayer meeting at Full Gospel Tokyo Church on September 25, 2026. He titled it "The Joy of Seeing Ahead of Time."

He begins with a simple question: do animals laugh? Then he talks about our thoughts, about what steals our joy, and about the different kinds of joy. The last one he gave a name: prophetic joy, the joy that already sees what God is going to do while nothing is yet visible.

He did not learn this joy from a book. He received it alone in Hong Kong, as he was coughing up blood and thought he was going to die.

Outline of the Message

1. Laughter, and the Thought That Shapes Your Destiny

• The pastor shows photos of a dog, a chimpanzee and a horse that seem to be smiling. But, he says, researchers observe that human laughter is different: the diaphragm shakes, the laugh comes in bursts, and the face takes on a thousand expressions.
• Laughter changes the body and the heart of the one who laughs and of those around them. He cites concrete effects: better results in job interviews, more sales for salespeople, more favor with superiors.
• He reports a study from the University of Göttingen in Germany: a cheerful group and a depressed group read the same book. When it came to recalling the content, there was no difference. When it came to applying that content to solve problems, the cheerful group did clearly better.
• He recalls a saying from a pastor that he keeps in mind: "I have tried laughing and I have tried crying: laughing is better."
• In the same circumstances, one person can be unhappy and another happy. The difference comes from thought. He has the congregation repeat: "My thought is my destiny."
• Each of us chooses which muscle to train: the muscle of criticism and negativity, or the muscle of positive thinking. Examine yourself: is your thinking right now active, productive and creative, or negative and destructive?
• According to him, negative thoughts affect even the body: blood pressure, a weakened heart. People who succeed, he says, have no excuses in their mouths: "It will be all right. Good things are going to happen to me. My life will not end in failure."

2. Three Thieves of Joy

• The first is guilt. Blame no one, point your finger at no one. Everyone knows their own faults: the only way is to come to God, repent and be washed from your sin.
• He tells a memory about his daughter, who was married a few days earlier. Around the age of two, she was constantly quarreling with her older brother and would come to report him: he had taken her doll, he had taken her sweets.
• He explained to her: when you point your finger at your brother, one finger goes toward him, but another goes toward God, because your brother is also his work. And the other three fingers come back toward you. She listened attentively. For him, it is an example he will never forget.
• The second thief is comparison. An inferiority complex and pride are, he says, the palm and the back of the same hand: the proud person easily falls into feeling inferior, and the reverse. Do not hold on to bitter memories of the past in your heart, and train yourself to think with light.
• The third is anxiety, worry and fear. "Dreams come true," he says, the positive ones and the negative ones alike. To worry is to dream for a long time about something that has not yet happened. And when it happens, we say: "I knew it."
• Job already said it: "For the thing which I fear comes on me, that which I am afraid of comes to me." Fear involves punishment. The pastor calls for a life of "absolute positive trust and absolute gratitude."

3. Receiving, Giving, Understanding: Three Joys

• The pastor distinguishes several dimensions of joy. The first is the joy of receiving. Everyone likes being given pocket money, and he does too. But what do we have that we have not received? God created the sun, the earth, the air, the water, life, the freedom to choose, and he chose us for eternal life.
• He likes a Japanese expression, "shizen no megumi," the grace of nature, which has no equivalent in Korean. And from our parents too, we have received everything.
• He tells the story of a beagle that was entrusted to him during a move. He would bring home leftovers from restaurant meals for the dog. One day, after giving it a good bone, he stepped out of his office to get a glass of water, and the dog lashed out at him, thinking he had come to take the bone back.
• "I wouldn't even want it if you gave it to me! You could offer me one to thank me." Then he thought of Christians: health, family, food, air, water, grace, we have received everything. But when God asks for the tithe or an offering for a building project, the reaction is the same.
• The second joy is the joy of giving. Receiving is pleasant, but a greater joy comes when you offer to God what you have received, when you consecrate yourself and serve others. According to him, the words "give" and "grant" appear in the Bible far more often than "faith," "prayer" or "love." God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son: his joy in giving, he says, must have been immense.
• He cites Rockefeller and Carnegie, who spent their lives giving and who, he says, lived to a very old age.
• The third joy is the joy of understanding. The greatest grace is the grace of understanding. When a churchgoer tells him at the door, "I received a lot of grace," it should mean: my thinking has changed, it has broadened. Finding the pastor funny is also a grace, but a smaller one.

4. The Joy of Seeing Ahead of Time

• The fourth joy is spiritual, of another dimension. The pastor calls it "the joy of seeing ahead of time," "prophetic joy": "I'm the one who came up with this name."
• Jesus says of Abraham: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it, and was glad." Abraham lived about two thousand years before Jesus. He did not see with eyes of flesh, but with spiritual eyes: one of his descendants would be the Savior who would bring salvation and eternal life.
• They answer Jesus: "You are not yet fifty years old! Have you seen Abraham?" He replies: "Most certainly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM." For the pastor, Jesus sees the past, the present and the future at the same time, beyond our notions of time.
• Applied to prayer: you prayed here, today. The answer is still in the future, you do not see it. But the Lord says: "It is there." You reply: "I see nothing." He already sees it.
• This is the meaning of the word linked to Abraham: God "calls the things that are not, as though they were." The pastor prays that everyone's eyes of faith will be opened.
• On the cross, Jesus saw the multitudes who would be saved by his death, and he rejoiced over them. He saw ahead of time, says the pastor, the greatest church in Japan founded in Tokyo by Pastor Shigaki, and even a man as small as himself, saved, become a citizen of heaven and working zealously for the Lord.

5. From Gethsemane to John 15:11

• At Gethsemane, Jesus prayed: "let this cup pass away from me." The pastor puts words to this prayer: "Do I really have to drink this cup? I am young, I still have so much to do. Why must I die?"
• Jesus knew why he had come. But facing death, he experienced sorrow, grief, anguish and the desire to live. He was truly God and truly man: having come in human form, he carried the whole human condition.
• Three times he prayed, then he placed himself in the Father's hands: "not what I desire, but what you desire."
• And here is the text of the day: "I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full." How can the one who said he wanted to live speak of his joy? What is this joy?
• It is the joy of seeing ahead of time. With human eyes, nothing was visible. But Jesus saw, two thousand years later, the largest church in the world, a servant like Pastor Cho Yonggi, and the multitudes saved, healed, receiving eternal life and proclaiming the gospel in their turn.

6. A Missionary Who Coughed Up Blood

• The pastor was chosen because he spoke a little English and was sent as a missionary to Hong Kong. He did not know what ministry was, or how to count and deposit the offerings, or how to prepare a sermon. He had English, and a dream.
• That dream came from Acts 1:8: "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me." Having failed the evangelist exam, he thought he was not made to be a pastor. He was finally ordained, and less than a year later, he left for Hong Kong.
• The ministry was very hard. "I learned only one thing: to pray and to fast." One difficulty, he prayed. A bigger difficulty, he fasted. He fasted "the way you eat."
• One morning at dawn, coughing after washing up, blood gushed out and filled the sink. At first he thought he had strained his voice from preaching. But the blood kept coming for two days, several days, a week. Diagnosis: acute pulmonary tuberculosis, at the third stage. Causes: stress and malnutrition.
• He had to be isolated. He begged the doctor in tears: "I did not come here for this, but to proclaim the gospel, found a church and open a bridgehead for the mission to China. I will do everything you tell me, but not isolation." Moved, the doctor agreed, on the condition that he send his whole family back to Seoul.
• Alone, he coughed up blood, drenched in cold sweat at night, until the blood formed a puddle on the floor. The shadow of death passed back and forth. He asked himself: "If I die here, who will take care of my body?"
• He wept and cried out for an hour while wiping away the blood. Then, suddenly, a spring of joy burst up in his heart like a waterfall. "What is this joy? I must be dying," he thought. Then the word came: "that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full."
• It was a prophetic joy: sick today, coughing up blood, but because of that, a better future. "It is this joy that has brought me here today." It led him to Tokyo, where he was cared for, where he saw Pastor Shigaki, then an elder, serving alongside Pastor Cho Yonggi, and where he was able to resolve many difficulties.

7. Dream and Trial Go Together

• "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us." Present sufferings exist, and there is no escaping them.
• One day, he says, Pastor Cho Yonggi told him: "Pastor Kim, from now on, I don't want to dream anymore." He was stunned: if he no longer dreams, who will? "Dreaming is too hard. To fulfill my dreams, I have suffered too much. I would like to live the rest of my life a little more easily."
• The pastor drew a lesson from it: "Dream and trial are sold together. They are not sold separately." Where there is a dream, there is a trial.
• Even if your dream demands sacrifices, do not give it up. Extraordinary things await you beyond the present trial. Keep your dream to the end.
• He concludes: laughter is "the flower of flowers" and the best of remedies. And more than any evangelism strategy, what has power is the joy received from the Lord.

Key Takeaways

• Your thinking steers your life. Choose the muscle you train: criticism or trust.
• Guilt, comparison and fear steal your joy. Come to God instead of accusing others.
• You have received everything. The joy of giving is greater than that of receiving.
• The joy of Jesus in John 15:11 is a joy that sees ahead of time: he saw the multitudes saved beyond the cross.
• Dream and trial go together. Do not let go of your dream in the middle of suffering.

Personal Application

1. Which thoughts do you nourish most often right now: thoughts that build up or thoughts that tear down?
2. Toward whom is your finger pointed today? What would happen if you looked at the three fingers pointing back at you?
3. Which fear have you been "dreaming" for a long time, and what could you entrust to God instead?
4. In the way you give to God, are you like the beagle guarding its bone, or like someone who knows what they have received?
5. What prayer have you made whose answer you do not yet see? Can you rejoice right now in what God already sees?

Verses Cited

• John 15:11
• Job 3:25
• 1 John 4:18
• John 3:16
• John 8:56-58
• Romans 4:17
• Matthew 26:39
• Acts 1:8
• Romans 8:18

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "the joy of seeing ahead of time" mean in John 15:11?

For Pastor Kim Yong-jun, it is a prophetic joy: seeing with the eyes of faith what God is going to accomplish while nothing is yet visible. Jesus spoke of his joy just before the cross, because he already saw the multitudes who would be saved.

How could Jesus speak of joy before the cross?

At Gethsemane, Jesus asked that the cup pass away from him, then submitted to the Father's will. According to the preacher, his joy did not come from circumstances: like Abraham, who saw his day, Jesus saw beyond the suffering the fruit of his death.

What steals a Christian's joy according to this message?

The pastor names three thieves: guilt, which pushes us to accuse others instead of coming to God; comparison, where inferiority and pride are the two sides of the same hand; and anxiety, which dreams for a long time about a misfortune that has not happened.