S1 E10 Joy

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Darling, why'd you go and listen?
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They ain't got nothing good to say.
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Now there's so much life you're missing.
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So-called friends led you astray.
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You know the devil keeps us company.
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With all his bright and shiny things.
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When I think of that question, when you ask it that way, who is the
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most joyful person you know? I think of like giddy and
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bubbly and just super energetic,
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energetic, you know? And there's a difference. When I think about who's the
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most joyful, I think about a lot of people come to mind and it's— and
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my initial relationship with them was joyful. And I don't know if it was me
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or what, but over time it's like they Oh,
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you're not as joyful as you once were. Maybe that's me getting to know them
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more and, oh, they're just a person like me. Maybe it's like
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a first impression thing that, you know, you meet somebody, you want them to think
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the best of you at first. I don't know. But somebody that is not super
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swayed or affected by emotions— well, outside circumstances.
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Yeah. Yeah. So honestly, I mean, just this is just
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because it's fresh on my mind. John Ciotti coming here for a to
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air up a tire for the food pantry over there.
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And John's been through a lot and
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losing his vision, but he's still talking to him
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and he's just here serving, happy to be here,
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happy to be alive, happy to be on earth. And that's encouraging
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to me to see somebody that struggles as much as they
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do but continue to have a great outlook on life.
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Yeah, that's good. What's y'all's favorite
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season, like, of the year? Yeah, springtime.
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Spring. I love it. I think, I think I go
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back and forth with fall and spring, but I love fall. I love fall.
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It's definitely not summer and it's definitely not, uh, winter.
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I like fall because it's— the heat is over. Yeah, well,
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yeah, yeah. Yeah, sometimes it's less.
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September's still hot. September's pretty hot still. Like when
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you get that first smell of a coolish morning
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and like some leaves are falling on the ground. I'm not
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a pumpkin spice latte. I was about to say you like the pumpkin spice candle.
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No, I don't. Yeah, those smells.
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Anyway, I love fall scents. Yeah, college football on
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a Saturday. They both— I think spring and fall both have Similar
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aspects. Well, just I think they have, uh, very unique
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things about them that I like. Like spring,
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everything's becoming brand new, then there's green. That's why I
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love it. Yeah, the mornings are crisp and there's dew on
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the ground and it's starting to get a little warmer and starting to get that
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same temperature, I guess, of fall but in a different season.
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But yeah, oh, maybe we should just live somewhere else where we could
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experience that year-round instead of for 4 seasons
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a year. If, if Texas had the, um,
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perfect, uh, environment to live in,
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then we wouldn't be able to live here because we'd have too much going for
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us. Well, it'd just be covered up with people.
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Yeah, yeah. The, the, the hot summers and the,
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and the weird winters and the, the 90-degree,
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uh, Decembers sometimes. Yeah, we'd be a
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bunch of snowflakes. Yeah. Yep. It wards the people away.
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Yeah. That's a good deterrent. The hot
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summer sun. I shouldn't be that way, but. Well, speaking of choosing to
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be happy, even through bad circumstances, we're talking about joy today.
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Yep. The segue. I'm working on my segue.
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We started last week talking about the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians
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chapter 5. The evidence of the Spirit in
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our lives, God's presence in us that is working us, changing us,
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shaping us, forming us into Christ's image.
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And we talked about love last week, and obviously
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you, listener, and us have mastered that one now. And so we're going
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to move on to the second one in the fruit of the
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Spirit, but I want to read it to get started. Um,
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I'm just going to start at the fruit of the Spirit, not the the fruit
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of the works of the flesh. I don't really want to think about that today,
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but the fruit of the Spirit. Verse, uh, chapter 5:22. The fruit of
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the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
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faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such
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things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus
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have crucified,
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crucified the flesh with its passions
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and desires. That's the original Greek, is crucified.
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Shane Stover was texting us saying, for a podcast about
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words, y'all sure do use a lot of wrong words,
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new words. So welcome, welcome to the War on Words.
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But our goal on this podcast is to talk
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about, um, the words that God uses in the word and
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the ways that culture and society and the enemy
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twist and shape and change those words, um,
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and emphasize them differently than maybe how God intends us to understand them.
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And so we talked about love last week and all the different ways love
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gets interpreted and understood and lived out. And today is joy,
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and, uh, I think it is an easily misunderstood
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word. I think we Yeah, I think the high level is we often use
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the word happy as an equivalent, as a synonym.
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And more often, probably more often. And even when
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we were talking about who's the most joyful person, you're just thinking of like,
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oh, who's happy all the time? Yeah. You know, and when in reality,
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probably the most joyful people we could name are the ones who
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have gone through the most suffering. That's right. According to the biblical definition, which is
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not near as exciting to talk about.
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So even though it is a happy word,
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it is a positive word, a word of good emotion.
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Really, we got to talk about the suffering and the rough
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side of it. So what is joy? How would y'all— how
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do you think the Bible defines it? Well, I looked
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up a little Bible definition, but we can— before
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I read that, if you want to— No, go for it. So a biblical definition
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of joy, is not simply
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happiness based on circumstances. It is deep, a deep
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enduring delight and confidence that comes from knowing God,
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trusting his promises, and living in his presence.
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Joy can exist even during suffering because its source
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is God rather than your changing situations or life situations.
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So it's deeper. It's being rooted
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on something that's more firm than I'm happy, I'm sleepy,
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I'm tired, hungry, whatever. Not just what you're feeling in the moment,
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but it's, it's like you said, through suffering, it's, uh, I'm gonna choose
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to have— be positive or have a good attitude even when I'm faced with,
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you know, a rough day or certain life circumstances. It's not—
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you're not easily shaken, I guess. It's not just,
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well, this happened, my whole day's ruined.
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No, it's, this happened, but I can move on because it's not— this
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isn't the end-all be-all, um,
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of life. There's so much more. No, that's, that's the way I see it.
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But I don't know, what about you, Casey? You want anything to add anything to
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that? Well, yeah, I know, just to kind of say the
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same thing but differently. Yeah, that's what a podcast is.
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Yeah, yeah, that's what talking is differently.
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Yeah, yeah, the, the contrast.
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So what helps us define what
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true joy really is? And I think that one of the
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biggest contrasts in all definition when
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we're really studying a word is happiness
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is temporary, joy is eternal.
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So when we look at it through those lens, okay, so what
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are some temporary things? That may bring joy or happiness.
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That's our circumstances. So compared
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to what God defines joy as, joy is something that
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transcends. It's a gift from God,
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but it's also— he said joy
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comes from suffering, oddly enough.
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You don't know you have it until you go through something. Yeah, it's like I
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was thinking about this earlier, like I can't breathe because I've
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got a deviated septum. I pulled the trigger on the, on the nose
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thing. Oh yeah, the magnet. And let
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me tell you, it works. Life-changing. It brings me joy.
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It brings me joy to be able to breathe. I'm like, oh my goodness,
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I can actually breathe now. And now it's like without it, I'm like Where
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have I, you know, I can't hardly operate. Yeah. Yeah. I'm contemplating.
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Debbie's like, are you going to go out in public like that? Like,
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I'm thinking about it. I don't think you
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get a skin tone. I don't care what, what people
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think, but anyways. Yeah. So the, one of the things that we don't want to
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admit as humans is that,
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that joy comes through suffering. And that's, which is
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a part of it. And in the world— maybe it's
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revealed through suffering. Yeah. There's maybe a
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revelation there. I think you can have the fruit of the Spirit of joy even
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if you're not in a season of cancer or
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death or whatever. I don't think that it, I haven't really landed maybe
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that suffering is the root of joy,
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but maybe— it helps develop it. It helps develop it. And so
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what is the root of joy?
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That is a question worth asking and thinking about. Well, I think
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that's Christ. It's being in the Father. I think
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you can have suffering, you can go through hardship, but I don't think it always
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produces joy. It can. It's got the opportunity to, but if
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you're not going to choose Christ in the moment of suffering, then the alternative
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is turning to the world, turning to your own desires. Trying to
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fix the problem, and you're not going to find joy in that. But I think
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through suffering, it's the root.
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How is joy produced in us through suffering? It's whenever we're seeking God in our
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suffering. In James, it talks about count it pure joy,
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count it all joy, brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials and temptations.
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I think that that's only when we're pursuing the Father through
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that suffering, through that confusion or whatever that life circumstance is.
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But if you don't, then you're not going to find joy. You're going to find
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hardship, more hardship. You're going to find more confusion. So when we're
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in the Father, that's where the joy comes from, is being in his presence.
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And that can look like a lot of things as well. But for
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me, that's what I think about the root of it. It's God.
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I'm trying to divide it maybe maybe
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even further within the human experience, in our experience with joy.
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So where does it derive? And I think we want to define
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where it comes from, but through our circumstances,
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the world anyways.
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Our happiness is dependent on our circumstances,
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which is not a good foundation because then anything
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can take your joy. Then anything, if it's really relying on my circumstances,
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then if life is good, God is good. Yeah.
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And that's shaky ground. Yeah. And when something
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bad happens, why God? Yeah. But the
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opposite of that is that,
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okay, if it's not something that is circumstantial,
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if joy is everlasting and it comes from God, where does that come from?
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Why do we feel that joy? Why is it— why Why is joy a
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thing that God allows us to feel? Because it's obvious
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that it's there. Um, in, in a deep
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thought of that, I think that it's through
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God's grace that we experience joy, which is a, which is a very,
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uh, actually I was looking that up, which is a very related word.
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It's a closely related word in Greek.
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Grace, charis, and then joy is
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Kerah. So they're like same word family. Yeah.
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So what, what is that? Trying to think of those 2 words. If we
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find joy through God's grace, what does grace
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mean? We're getting something that we don't deserve.
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So, so that mindset that, that I
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am able to receive something that I don't deserve
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helps build the framework of in the mindset of
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what true joy really is. And I don't
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know, and that's, uh, um,
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that, yeah, that really does take it to a
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deeper level of understanding, is,
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is that we don't deserve joy.
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And, and through— it was through Christ's suffering that
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we get that. I wrote down that happiness is primarily
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an emotional response to what happens to me,
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right? Happiness is primarily an emotional response
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to the circumstances, to what happens. Joy is primarily
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a response to who God is and what he has done.
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And so joy is rooted in, um,
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eternal truths. And happiness is rooted in
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temporary truths. And yeah, there's a
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huge, huge difference. So I don't think that— and I think we
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think the word joy as an emotion. Yep. Yeah.
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And I just think biblically that's the wrong
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way to think about it because we're going to be given the command,
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same word, rejoice. Right. Yeah.
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Which is another— if it's an emotion,
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Yeah, that's just a response to circumstances.
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We can't actually be obedient to that, right? I can't produce an emotion.
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I don't think— I don't know how to do that. Make yourself— maybe I'm not
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emotionally intelligent enough. I think, but like, make yourself happy.
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But I don't think that's what he's saying. No, I think he's saying choose.
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Yeah, make the choice to be joyful.
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Yeah, in your circumstances. I think whenever scripture tells us to rejoice
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though, it's that's how we outwardly act, I guess, and show—
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kind of like we talked about repentance. It's, you know, we say it, we say
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that we, you know, God, we ask for forgiveness, but a big part of repentance
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is actually turning and actually acting out my repentance. I'm gonna choose
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to follow Christ. So whenever scripture tells us to rejoice, I feel like
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it's very similarly saying like that is the outward expression of realizing
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your joy, which is not an emotion, kind of like in the
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very similar to grace, right? Grace isn't an emotion.
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It's something that we receive, and joy— whenever we receive
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God's grace and we have a relationship with the Father,
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the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and then also
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joy dwells in us. So I think whenever it's telling us to rejoice,
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it really challenges us to reflect,
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self-reflect, and oh yeah, I can
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rejoice through this trial, through this situation, because I
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have the Holy Spirit in me. I have accepted the grace of God and I
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have so much to be joyful for. That feeling is so
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much grander than an emotion that is fleeting. Like you were saying, it comes and
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goes. That's something that's everlasting. That's going to get you through whatever
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you find yourself in. It's deeper rooted. Yeah. The emotion
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that you feel is an actual byproduct of joy.
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Yes, for sure. Which, to your point, you can You
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can. Joy is, if we
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define it this way, then joy is a decision,
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is an attitude more than it is. And then, like I said,
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we feel the emotions that that comes from.
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Sometimes the emotion follows. Yeah. Right. And maybe it's the same
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with love, right? Where we talked about. Yeah. Yes. When I decided,
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hey, I love Maddie and I'm going to marry her and I'm going to commit
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my life to her, I choose to love her.
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Sometimes those emotions follow, some days they don't,
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right? And that's okay. That doesn't mean that I don't— I love her less.
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No, because love is a choice and a commitment. And,
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and I think maybe the same is true with joy and rejoicing. Like,
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sometimes happiness follows. Yeah, sometimes that's associated
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with it, sometimes it's not. And yet I will rejoice anyway,
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right? Yeah, I will choose to have joy. There's a lady in our
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church that's got cancer and is in the hospital and going through chemo
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stuff, but she's got a Facebook group where she's putting out updates and
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it's called Joy in the Journey.
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And hadn't really thought about that until right now. And it's her
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way of choosing to have joy.
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Choosing— things aren't real happy. I don't think she feels a whole
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lot of happiness. I don't think any of the family feels a whole lot of
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happiness in this moment. But it is her way of going, you know
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what, God is still good. God is still on his throne no
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matter what happens. Good, bad, good days, bad days, good chemo, bad chemo.
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Uh, I'm gonna choose joy, which means I
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trust God, I love God, um, I, I place
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my life in his hands, you know. And that's a— like,
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would I have called her a joyful person before? Probably. But now Oh
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yeah, that's way more evident here. Yeah, it's a choice.
18:53.464 --> 18:57.105
Sorry, I was going to say that it's a choice
18:57.394 --> 19:01.356
to not focus on your circumstances and to focus
19:01.388 --> 19:04.019
on what you've already been given.
19:05.238 --> 19:07.788
And you've been given salvation,
19:09.168 --> 19:13.274
you've been given eternal life, you've been given forgiveness,
19:13.980 --> 19:17.447
and you've been adopted into God's
19:17.947 --> 19:21.537
family. There's so much good that you've already been
19:21.634 --> 19:26.029
given, and to receive that makes
19:26.384 --> 19:30.590
all the circumstances diminish. So once we focus on things
19:30.606 --> 19:33.433
that we've already been given and we receive God's grace,
19:34.582 --> 19:36.321
then we can rejoice,
19:37.883 --> 19:40.652
and our circumstances begin to fade away.
19:41.773 --> 19:44.740
And that's really encouraging to me,
19:45.304 --> 19:48.770
to see people go through that and to
19:49.173 --> 19:52.729
face it in my own life too. It's really
19:52.940 --> 19:56.526
encouraging to me to help me focus on
19:56.656 --> 19:57.435
what really matters.
20:00.216 --> 20:04.678
There's a lot of other words the Bible uses to
20:05.178 --> 20:09.215
translate this word qarah, charah, We don't
20:09.715 --> 20:12.456
know how to pronounce it. We're not Greek. Yeah. Um, joy,
20:12.986 --> 20:16.323
gladness. Gladness is one that's often used,
20:16.356 --> 20:19.741
which again I think of as like a almost more emotion.
20:19.805 --> 20:23.657
So I like the word joy. Uh, delight, uh,
20:23.881 --> 20:27.492
or rejoice. Um, the verb is to rejoice,
20:27.508 --> 20:30.348
to be glad, to be joyful. Um,
20:30.781 --> 20:34.167
but there's a lot of, a lot of connection, like you talked about, to the
20:34.667 --> 20:37.944
word grace. Charis,
20:37.961 --> 20:41.258
um, and rejoice. Yeah, so rejoice
20:41.758 --> 20:44.961
is the, the verbal form. Okay. Joy is the noun, right?
20:46.340 --> 20:50.116
I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One is— sounds right.
20:51.176 --> 20:54.615
So one is a thing, one is an action. Yes, that makes sense.
20:55.660 --> 20:59.498
But how does that, how does that change
20:59.998 --> 21:01.678
how you think about it? Joy, gladness, delight.
21:03.420 --> 21:07.211
Rejoicing. How does that help understand what— I guess why, why use all those
21:07.324 --> 21:10.471
different forms in English to
21:10.971 --> 21:14.665
describe one word in, I think, another language? It helps to fully encompass,
21:14.762 --> 21:17.745
encompass that word. We could probably throw in a few more.
21:20.048 --> 21:23.574
Um, like you said, happy. I mean, we can— it's not full, it's not the
21:24.074 --> 21:25.941
full depth of it, but it may help describe a little part of it.
21:25.989 --> 21:28.634
But it's a joy, it's a good thing. It is good. Yeah, don't get us
21:29.134 --> 21:33.599
wrong, this is good pleasure. Pleasure is good. Gladness, or the
21:34.099 --> 21:37.400
temporary things. But just recognizing that happiness is fleeting.
21:37.528 --> 21:40.815
I'm glad I had a great day, but I may have a bad
21:41.315 --> 21:44.840
day tomorrow, but it's okay. That's the joy, is that whether my
21:45.161 --> 21:49.202
circumstances are changing, it's good. I'm okay. So your question was,
21:49.635 --> 21:52.826
why do we use all those words? I think it helps best describe
21:53.326 --> 21:56.643
because through joy, you're going to choose it. And it
21:56.691 --> 22:00.395
looks like delighting in life. It looks like being glad,
22:00.443 --> 22:04.768
having a glad heart. Ecclesiastes tells us is something
22:04.817 --> 22:08.762
I've observed under the sun is no one's
22:09.262 --> 22:12.206
better off than to enjoy and be glad in their heart with their toil,
22:12.335 --> 22:15.990
with their work. Having just regular mundane life
22:16.038 --> 22:18.274
is just finding happiness, gladness, joy.
22:21.063 --> 22:24.095
That's what Ecclesiastes tells us. I mean, we have
22:24.595 --> 22:28.140
so many different characters,
22:28.156 --> 22:30.596
I guess you can say, in the Bible. Paul writes all about joy,
22:31.046 --> 22:34.482
finding joy, and a lot of the times he's writing, he's sitting in prison,
22:34.498 --> 22:37.966
right? In Romans and Philippians, he tells us rejoice
22:38.111 --> 22:41.515
in the Lord always again, and I will— I say rejoice,
22:41.948 --> 22:44.967
and in Romans he says, may the God of hope fill you with all joy
22:45.240 --> 22:49.045
and peace, and he goes on and on and on, and his life circumstances—
22:49.093 --> 22:52.273
we can look at Paul. He's a great demonstration of that just like
22:52.786 --> 22:56.471
a cancer story or whatnot. And he finds himself in prison,
22:56.792 --> 22:59.419
shipwrecked, hungry, lost, beaten,
22:59.531 --> 23:02.736
stoned, and yet he finds joy. So I mean, he's the
23:03.236 --> 23:05.652
extreme— Is the word contentment maybe connected here?
23:06.245 --> 23:09.449
We could, I think. Yeah. I think you find joy in contentment.
23:10.892 --> 23:14.433
Or like they're kind of almost synonyms maybe. I think so.
23:14.513 --> 23:18.006
The way we use contentment, like I'm okay no matter what bad
23:18.102 --> 23:21.724
happens. That's kind of the same thing as I'm gonna choose to be
23:22.224 --> 23:25.655
happy because no matter what happens, I think
23:26.155 --> 23:29.970
there's a lot of connection there. Yeah, I agree. Like Philippians 4:13 Shane preached
23:30.470 --> 23:34.077
on a couple weeks ago or whatever it was, you know, like it's
23:34.577 --> 23:38.152
not about I could run a marathon through Christ who gives me strength. It's about
23:38.730 --> 23:42.227
I've, I've been shipwrecked, I've been beaten, I've done all these things,
23:42.725 --> 23:46.334
I've been hungry, I've been fed, but the secret I've learned
23:46.834 --> 23:49.816
is I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, right? Which is
23:50.316 --> 23:53.856
a verse Speaking to being content and joyful, really. Exactly. It's what it's talking
23:53.872 --> 23:56.341
about. Yeah. James says, like you quoted,
23:57.575 --> 24:01.150
count it all joy, the trials and tribulations that you
24:01.166 --> 24:04.885
face in this life. And so what
24:05.385 --> 24:08.443
is the greatest, what is the greatest example of that?
24:09.918 --> 24:12.932
What is the greatest example of a trial,
24:13.365 --> 24:16.939
tribulation, suffering? Well, I'll give you the church answer. Jesus.
24:17.084 --> 24:20.322
Jesus. That's all. Yeah. That's where I was going. Yeah.
24:20.578 --> 24:24.137
Jesus. This is the right answer. Yeah. Yeah. On the cross. And so,
24:24.650 --> 24:28.417
um, so the author of Hebrews, which we
24:28.433 --> 24:31.431
can start a debate here on who wrote Hebrews. It's Paul. It's Paul.
24:32.104 --> 24:35.808
Yeah, it's Paul. I'm just kidding. I think, I think it's Paul. I think
24:36.308 --> 24:39.302
he had reason not to sign it. So, but anyways,
24:40.040 --> 24:43.102
not going to go there right now. Another podcast for another day.
24:43.567 --> 24:47.751
Chapter 12, verse 1, it says, therefore, since we are surrounded by
24:48.248 --> 24:51.859
such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off
24:51.907 --> 24:56.240
everything that hinders and the sin that
24:56.740 --> 25:00.927
so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance
25:00.975 --> 25:03.125
the race marked out for us,
25:03.799 --> 25:07.860
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and
25:07.972 --> 25:11.808
perfecter of faith. For the joy set
25:11.904 --> 25:15.828
before him, he endured the cross, scorning its
25:16.328 --> 25:20.364
shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne
25:20.864 --> 25:24.893
of God. As difficult
25:25.022 --> 25:30.549
as it is to understand, Jesus was
25:30.806 --> 25:33.562
joyful to bear the cross,
25:34.620 --> 25:38.657
and that is— if that is the ultimate description of
25:40.770 --> 25:43.363
how joy comes through suffering,
25:45.239 --> 25:49.066
it's important to look at and to try to understand what joy
25:49.374 --> 25:53.947
could come through. Seems like God allowing
25:54.043 --> 25:56.304
himself to submit to the cross,
25:57.758 --> 26:02.344
the God of the universe. And so how
26:02.717 --> 26:06.453
does that produce joy? He just knew.
26:06.598 --> 26:11.616
He knew that he was making a way for
26:11.648 --> 26:14.101
us, and that brought him joy.
26:15.416 --> 26:18.751
That's really the reason why we experience joy, and when
26:18.799 --> 26:22.294
we come to the pinnacle of joy, which is
26:22.566 --> 26:25.917
Christ on the cross, then we understand God's
26:26.417 --> 26:30.230
heart in a deeper manner, that it brings him
26:30.262 --> 26:33.309
joy that he really, really deeply desires for
26:33.809 --> 26:37.241
us to spend eternity with him. We said it
26:37.741 --> 26:40.839
a few episodes ago, but if this is all that there is,
26:41.904 --> 26:45.927
then happiness is the best we can hope for. That's right, right? It is,
26:45.960 --> 26:47.492
because that's only temporary.
26:49.313 --> 26:53.066
If there is something beyond this, beyond the sun, as Ecclesiastes says,
26:53.501 --> 26:56.980
if there wasn't joy set before Jesus, if there is something,
26:57.028 --> 27:00.306
if there's something eternal, then we can have joy,
27:00.841 --> 27:04.618
not happiness, because no matter how bad this present circumstance
27:05.118 --> 27:10.400
is We know Jesus
27:10.900 --> 27:13.335
died on the cross to forgive me of my sins so that I can be
27:13.448 --> 27:17.455
with God forever. And forever is promised
27:17.955 --> 27:21.480
as a perfect place, walking with God. No more tears,
27:21.674 --> 27:25.037
no more sadness, no more, uh, trials to
27:25.069 --> 27:28.847
form my faith. It is everything realized to
27:29.347 --> 27:32.914
the nth degree. That is joy. And that is
27:32.946 --> 27:36.202
so much better than just happiness on this earth, right?
27:36.250 --> 27:39.695
So it's, it's the difference between temporary and eternal, right?
27:40.144 --> 27:43.461
And so Jesus on the cross for the joy that is set before him
27:43.961 --> 27:47.755
for an eternity with his Father, uh, in perfect
27:48.255 --> 27:52.546
relationship and seeing a blood-bought bride
27:52.658 --> 27:55.927
bought for him, uh, because of his sacrifice,
27:55.943 --> 27:59.068
because of that, he endured the cross, despising the shame.
27:59.789 --> 28:03.560
Uh, he, he went through it knowing there was something better on the other
28:04.060 --> 28:08.380
side. So one of the things I wrote down is that joy is not
28:08.880 --> 28:12.123
just optimism, um, that, oh,
28:12.717 --> 28:16.750
things will get better. That's not exactly the mindset,
28:16.798 --> 28:20.429
right? Because things might not get better. Things might not. Yeah,
28:20.830 --> 28:24.092
things might get worse. The world is trouble. So joy is
28:24.204 --> 28:27.337
not just a positive mindset. It's not just
28:27.401 --> 28:30.339
optimism. I think it can lead to that,
28:31.750 --> 28:35.007
but there's no assurance that in
28:35.103 --> 28:38.488
the temporary things will get better. So I don't know.
28:38.889 --> 28:42.723
To add on to that though, it's, yes, those are an
28:43.223 --> 28:45.595
outcome. Optimism, positive attitude,
28:45.931 --> 28:49.204
that's an outcome. But it's like you said, it's knowing
28:49.300 --> 28:52.268
that, yeah, I'm gonna have a good attitude about it.
28:52.348 --> 28:55.284
But even if it doesn't, even if it doesn't get better, even if, man,
28:55.412 --> 28:58.813
stuff at work still gets a little bit harder or my relationship with this person,
28:59.945 --> 29:03.876
dwindles even more, and I lose a friend or whatever the hardship is,
29:03.973 --> 29:07.289
or my sickness is getting worse, but I'm still going to be
29:07.467 --> 29:11.082
consistent in the Lord. And everything at
29:11.582 --> 29:14.338
the end of the day will be okay because I have a hope that's so
29:14.838 --> 29:18.530
much greater than my physical needs, my physical body, my physical relationships,
29:19.256 --> 29:21.322
this earth, everything under this sun.
29:23.275 --> 29:26.648
You're rooted in something so much grander than your life circumstances.
29:27.700 --> 29:30.440
So you're going to add something to that? Well, no. Yeah, I was going to
29:30.940 --> 29:34.640
try to go to another scripture. But so
29:35.140 --> 29:40.180
what you're saying is, is it's
29:40.680 --> 29:43.340
a lie to tell yourself that everything is going to get better from here.
29:43.840 --> 29:47.440
Like that. Yeah, that's— you're in denial for
29:47.940 --> 29:51.840
sure. You're in denial. Everything's fine. Everything's going to be good. It's like
29:52.340 --> 29:54.760
the little meme with the little character and the house is on fire and he
29:55.260 --> 29:59.521
says, everything's fine. That's not joy. That's not joy. That's not joy. Joy is
30:00.260 --> 30:04.422
in scripture, you always see it. There's weeping,
30:05.499 --> 30:08.943
but there's joy, right? And see here,
30:08.959 --> 30:12.888
2 Corinthians 6:10 is where I was
30:12.921 --> 30:16.301
trying to head to. One of y'all
30:21.360 --> 30:22.452
2 Corinthians 6:10.
30:27.469 --> 30:30.810
I got lost here, but I got
30:30.826 --> 30:34.360
you from there. Yeah, go for it. I did Bible drill as a kid.
30:34.440 --> 30:37.444
Y'all do Bible drill? Yeah, in Awana. I'm lost here.
30:38.536 --> 30:41.074
I'm not even— I'm not— I'm looking at what I'm going to read next.
30:41.122 --> 30:43.901
What did you say? 2 Corinthians? 2 Corinthians 6:10.
30:44.736 --> 30:47.130
Well, I'm going to scoot back just a little bit to start the sentence.
30:47.210 --> 30:50.889
We are treated as imposters and yet are true, as unknown
30:51.001 --> 30:54.863
and yet well known, as dying and behold, we live. As punished
30:55.363 --> 30:58.465
and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing,
30:59.127 --> 31:03.192
as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing
31:03.692 --> 31:06.910
everything. Yeah, he's not— Paul's
31:07.410 --> 31:11.229
talking about him and his relationship to the
31:11.729 --> 31:14.522
Corinthians, that they didn't really value his, uh,
31:15.894 --> 31:18.458
apostleship, and they didn't necessarily treat him the best.
31:19.424 --> 31:22.305
And yet he's sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
31:24.890 --> 31:28.847
Yeah, so this is kind of
31:29.105 --> 31:33.240
the irony, right? The paradox in this facet
31:33.740 --> 31:37.209
of faith is that joy
31:37.804 --> 31:41.805
comes through sorrow. It comes through suffering, and the world
31:41.821 --> 31:46.567
sees us suffer, and the world sees us sorrowful,
31:46.939 --> 31:50.962
but still sees us looking at
31:51.462 --> 31:56.514
it in the best lens we possibly can, looking at the future, not at
31:56.708 --> 31:58.314
what circumstance that we're stuck in.
31:59.547 --> 32:02.906
And that is a witness. That is a witness to
32:03.406 --> 32:06.807
the world. And that's what you were kind of saying about the ladies
32:07.323 --> 32:10.628
in the hospital, is that how we
32:11.128 --> 32:13.128
think of their situation, we're like, how can they find joy in the terribleness that
32:13.628 --> 32:14.479
they have found themselves in?
32:16.660 --> 32:20.128
Yeah. And, and, and that's
32:20.628 --> 32:23.999
like, what is different about this person? So to the world, that is a
32:24.304 --> 32:27.580
shock to people. I think that's one of the
32:27.612 --> 32:31.290
other misnomers here. Joy is not just— joy isn't
32:31.386 --> 32:35.593
optimism, but also joy isn't the absence of sadness,
32:36.268 --> 32:39.881
right? Like, we think if I'm gonna be joyful,
32:40.042 --> 32:43.286
I can't be sad. Yeah, I can't be melancholy. I can't be
32:43.912 --> 32:47.919
have any, you know, whatever. Now scripture
32:48.419 --> 32:51.813
tells us quite literally the opposite, right? And I think that, um,
32:52.070 --> 32:55.211
it tells us what I was going to read, uh, so I'll skip
32:55.711 --> 32:58.769
to it real quick. In Ecclesiastes, talking about wisdom, it says a good— or I'm
32:59.269 --> 33:02.488
gonna start in Ecclesiastes, verse 7, or chapter 7, verse 2,
33:02.504 --> 33:05.405
says it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to
33:05.905 --> 33:08.770
the house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone. The living should take
33:09.219 --> 33:12.505
this to heart. Frustration is better than laughter because a sad face is good for
33:13.005 --> 33:16.223
the heart. Verse 4 says, the heart of the wise is in the house
33:16.723 --> 33:18.576
of the mourning, but the heart of the fools is in the house of pleasure.
33:20.544 --> 33:23.967
Literally an echoed theme throughout Ecclesiastes and talking all
33:24.031 --> 33:27.454
about wisdom, and it's saying
33:27.503 --> 33:31.652
to have— you know, you can find joy in the— this
33:31.765 --> 33:36.254
is the worst of it, right? Death, right? Wisdom is in the house of mourning,
33:36.689 --> 33:40.456
and I think what the teacher King Solomon is
33:40.489 --> 33:44.628
teaching here is that Hey, you can find joy in the Lord even
33:44.741 --> 33:47.930
when, and a lot of times in mourning,
33:48.202 --> 33:51.568
God can produce wisdom and strength. There's so many things you
33:52.068 --> 33:55.559
can gain from hardship, I guess is what he's pointing to.
33:55.639 --> 33:59.325
And it's better than just in the house of feasting and
33:59.341 --> 34:03.043
pleasure and what we can learn. We can learn and grow so much in
34:03.588 --> 34:07.066
that hardship. Yeah. In the house of feasting, everything's good. Everything's good.
34:07.178 --> 34:10.928
Everything's good. Yeah. Happy-go-lucky. It's all, yeah. Eat, drink, be merry.
34:12.004 --> 34:15.289
And no contemplation of the reality of life. But where
34:15.789 --> 34:19.090
we actually grow deeper in our walk with God is in the house
34:19.590 --> 34:23.003
of mourning. And that doesn't always necessarily mean death. That's the extreme. But it's,
34:23.570 --> 34:26.911
man, it's in the house of hardship is what he's saying. And there's
34:26.944 --> 34:30.923
so much wisdom to be found in there. But it's an option.
34:31.101 --> 34:34.234
You have the choice in your hardship and your sorrow. Am I going to choose
34:34.330 --> 34:37.414
Christ or am I going to choose something to numb the pain or take the
34:37.914 --> 34:41.181
edge off or Uh, to give me pleasure. And I think there's a balance
34:41.681 --> 34:45.557
here too, and there always is, right, with wisdom. Um, we can
34:46.057 --> 34:49.901
go so far that way that we just— I'm gonna always think
34:50.401 --> 34:53.732
about death and the shortness of life, and I'm just gonna be sad.
34:53.892 --> 34:57.178
Like, I don't think that— like, we can get so— and
34:57.194 --> 35:01.281
I've lived life like this at different points— so introspective
35:01.781 --> 35:05.978
and so just consumed with, you know, eternity and
35:06.090 --> 35:09.156
just books, you know, death and like really sad.
35:09.204 --> 35:13.619
And then you become pessimistic, kind of become the opposite of optimism.
35:14.662 --> 35:19.077
And there's a balance, right? Because joy is often associated
35:19.577 --> 35:23.025
with celebration, gladness, and gladness, and rejoice and eat,
35:23.090 --> 35:25.770
drink, and be merry. Like Solomon also says that. Yes.
35:26.252 --> 35:29.751
So there's, there's both to it, right? He says eat food
35:30.251 --> 35:33.828
and drink your wine, actually. That's what he said. Yeah. I think we sometimes
35:33.861 --> 35:37.329
think I can't be joyful. I'm not joyful because I'm
35:37.829 --> 35:41.103
sad, because life is hard. Right. Uh, I think it's just,
35:41.231 --> 35:44.539
I think it's wrong. We're not called to pretend that everything is okay.
35:45.968 --> 35:49.566
We're called to be realistic about, no, actually this is
35:49.598 --> 35:52.874
not okay, but you know what? God's got me. Right. Yeah.
35:53.195 --> 35:55.555
That's got me. Yeah. There's this, this may not turn out how I want it.
35:55.860 --> 35:58.285
That's okay. God's got me. I trust him. Right.
35:59.650 --> 36:03.328
Another thing I wrote down is joy isn't personality. And we've
36:03.828 --> 36:07.211
kind of talked about that. It's not a personality trait. Some people are,
36:08.126 --> 36:11.271
uh, higher energy, more enthusiastic, more energetic,
36:11.351 --> 36:14.721
go-getter. Maybe that's what I was even thinking
36:15.221 --> 36:17.737
about at the beginning, like bubbly and charismatic.
36:17.834 --> 36:21.251
Charismatic, like that is not the same thing as joy.
36:21.621 --> 36:25.295
That's a character trait that God's given certain people.
36:26.097 --> 36:30.285
Um, I don't know that any of us have that sitting
36:30.785 --> 36:33.974
here. Yeah, so there is a distinction there. So it's not just a
36:34.474 --> 36:37.707
personality trait or an emotion, right? Yeah, this is something that
36:37.883 --> 36:41.889
everybody can experience. Yeah, this is not limited to— yeah,
36:41.905 --> 36:45.671
this is not for extroverts, not introverts, right? Joy is not,
36:46.376 --> 36:49.516
um, it may be easier for introverts actually,
36:49.757 --> 36:52.545
but it may be harder. I don't know, it may be different aspects of it,
36:52.561 --> 36:56.455
right? There may be different challenges depending on your personality type and
36:56.903 --> 37:00.797
your disposition or whatever, but, but it's not limited to,
37:00.894 --> 37:04.404
to that personality type or whatever, whatever, because I think it's a fruit of the
37:04.904 --> 37:08.347
Spirit. Joy is a work of the Spirit. That's right. That's what I want to
37:08.847 --> 37:11.842
hit on. A personality trait. So I would say apart from God,
37:12.499 --> 37:16.154
we can't experience the fruit of the Spirit to the fullest that God wants
37:16.522 --> 37:19.728
us to. So it's not us, it's not me producing joy.
37:19.808 --> 37:23.190
It's— no, it's God in me. His Holy
37:23.690 --> 37:26.268
Spirit dwells in me, and because of that, I have such a hope that I
37:26.768 --> 37:30.284
have joy. And it's going to be consistent. It's not going to be fleeting.
37:30.558 --> 37:34.531
So what is the tie that
37:35.161 --> 37:38.740
the word joy and love— what do they have in common?
37:38.805 --> 37:42.593
Why is joy the
37:43.093 --> 37:47.070
next word that Paul records here? Do y'all think that there is order?
37:48.292 --> 37:51.137
I mean, I do. I think that there's order here. I think that this is,
37:51.314 --> 37:53.872
even if he meant to or not, I believe he did,
37:54.622 --> 37:56.823
but why does he put self-control last?
37:58.276 --> 38:01.648
Well, we're gonna get there. I preached on the fruit of
38:02.148 --> 38:06.031
the Spirit last springtime. It was just a one-night thing,
38:06.224 --> 38:09.451
and I mean, I could have spent a sermon
38:09.499 --> 38:13.369
series, one night on each of them, probably for the best effectiveness, but it really
38:13.433 --> 38:16.981
wasn't the whole sermon. It was just the plug-in part, and I do think
38:17.481 --> 38:20.722
there's an order. I do think that he lists them specifically, and in
38:20.835 --> 38:23.998
different places they're listed a little differently. But I think here
38:24.993 --> 38:28.750
in Galatians, it's very important because everything starts, like Jesus
38:28.782 --> 38:32.378
said, the greatest commandment is love your Lord. Here's the foundation. So I think
38:32.878 --> 38:37.516
love is definitely the most important because it shows whose you are if
38:37.612 --> 38:41.273
it's produced in your life. And I think the next thing that follows is
38:41.385 --> 38:44.901
joy. If you've accepted the love of the Father and the
38:45.401 --> 38:48.610
love of the Father's in you and it's outwardly being expressed, that looks
38:49.110 --> 38:52.622
like joy. It's a byproduct, I would say.
38:53.088 --> 38:56.377
You, through loving, through accepting
38:56.474 --> 39:00.309
love of the Father and let it be produced in you, you're joyful.
39:00.390 --> 39:04.225
That's what we would think of a joyful person, someone who's loving. And that
39:04.257 --> 39:07.691
may be someone who's outgoing, but it also may be the introvert that, man,
39:07.708 --> 39:10.821
they're just really kind and loving and they got joy in their life.
39:10.917 --> 39:14.095
It's evident. You can see it. And then we're going to continue to go on
39:14.512 --> 39:17.300
in the fruits of the Spirit and What's next? Peace,
39:18.238 --> 39:20.583
patience. I mean, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but they
39:21.083 --> 39:25.110
all play on the last one. I would say that helps to fully act
39:25.610 --> 39:29.445
it out or receive it, I guess. So what
39:30.124 --> 39:33.537
does true love require? I mean, we talked
39:34.037 --> 39:37.340
about it last podcast. It requires suffering
39:38.394 --> 39:39.107
and sacrifice.
39:42.798 --> 39:46.869
Whenever we truly love somebody or truly sacrificing
39:46.965 --> 39:50.539
whatever it is, putting other people's needs above our
39:50.652 --> 39:53.713
own, through that suffering and sacrifice,
39:54.034 --> 39:57.768
we experience joy. So they're really closely
39:57.784 --> 40:02.336
tied together. Oh yeah. Like you said, it is kind of a byproduct
40:03.154 --> 40:06.696
of love. And so is the rest of the fruits
40:07.196 --> 40:11.072
of the Spirit. So what is the Spirit? Spirit is
40:11.248 --> 40:15.479
love. God is love. And here's, here's something to chew on. John 15,
40:16.312 --> 40:19.678
if you start in verse 7, if you abide in me and my words abide
40:20.178 --> 40:22.691
in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this
40:22.787 --> 40:26.249
my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be
40:26.749 --> 40:30.016
my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I
40:30.516 --> 40:34.743
have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments,
40:34.984 --> 40:38.574
you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and
40:39.074 --> 40:43.928
abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy
40:45.041 --> 40:48.300
may be in you and that your joy may be full.
40:48.994 --> 40:52.215
There's the direct connection between love and joy. Yes.
40:52.474 --> 40:56.068
I don't know if that's what Paul is thinking about as he writes this,
40:56.133 --> 41:00.263
but how does that inform what you just said? Um, the connection between
41:00.328 --> 41:04.055
love and then joy being the second. Jesus says if
41:05.226 --> 41:08.279
you abide in my love, then my joy will be in you and
41:08.779 --> 41:11.942
your joy may be full. So, and this is a—
41:12.810 --> 41:16.537
I'm starting to see God's hand and threading these episodes
41:16.569 --> 41:19.847
together and the words that we started with and the words that
41:20.347 --> 41:24.120
we're going to. And so if you really study kind of that, if you
41:24.184 --> 41:29.149
follow that thread, um, that word abide— so
41:29.181 --> 41:31.061
we already went through obedience.
41:32.633 --> 41:37.232
Obedience is a tough one, right? It takes obedience
41:37.440 --> 41:41.415
to truly love. It takes obedience to experience these
41:41.527 --> 41:43.658
things, to experience God in his fullness.
41:44.716 --> 41:48.305
And so like you said,
41:49.203 --> 41:53.369
go back and watch that episode, right? But yeah,
41:53.690 --> 41:57.119
I believe that there is a requirement for us to take action.
41:58.177 --> 42:01.846
Uh, yeah, and, and that's not said.
42:02.744 --> 42:06.221
What— so that makes me think of why,
42:06.926 --> 42:09.987
why does the world view joy the way that,
42:10.612 --> 42:14.442
that it does? Well, it's the
42:14.942 --> 42:18.752
whole point of this podcast is the war on words,
42:18.864 --> 42:23.319
that it has been distorted. Like Satan has completely
42:24.308 --> 42:27.914
tried to redefine what joy
42:28.270 --> 42:32.296
is. Why? What is the endgame? What is he trying to do and
42:32.312 --> 42:36.254
how does he do it? What does the
42:36.351 --> 42:39.767
world truly— what does the world think
42:40.236 --> 42:43.539
that true joy really is? What is the counterfeit?
42:44.476 --> 42:47.626
I think the counterfeit is earthly pleasures, pleasure, flesh,
42:47.706 --> 42:51.241
pleasures of your flesh and just what
42:51.741 --> 42:55.003
I can get, what can benefit me, what is good. And I think it tends
42:55.051 --> 42:58.391
to be what makes me happy. Yeah. So that's just like we talked about,
42:58.407 --> 43:02.180
that's just a little part of joy, but the word pleasure.
43:02.662 --> 43:06.066
Pleasure. Yeah. So that— so what does that do for you? So that joy,
43:06.596 --> 43:10.465
the joy ties into one of the 3 Ps that we talked about. Oh yeah.
43:10.530 --> 43:13.741
Bring those back. Well, no, I'm just saying, because I think that's
43:14.241 --> 43:19.329
kind of the, like I said, the foundation of trying to swim through these words.
43:20.327 --> 43:25.133
We can tie any of these back to one
43:25.230 --> 43:29.672
of those words. And so
43:30.461 --> 43:33.923
pleasure keeps you focused
43:34.004 --> 43:37.402
on what's temporal, keeps you focused
43:37.557 --> 43:41.523
on today. And sin
43:42.026 --> 43:44.152
ultimately offers pleasure.
43:47.187 --> 43:50.766
But true joy is,
43:51.183 --> 43:54.393
like I said, we keep on saying the same thing, but true
43:54.893 --> 43:59.594
joy is everlasting. It's not shortcutting or short-circuiting
43:59.626 --> 44:03.719
God's plan for our life. And that through obedience,
44:03.943 --> 44:07.555
not to fall into sin and
44:08.055 --> 44:12.755
be completely out for ourself, we love
44:12.787 --> 44:16.139
God. That's how we love God. Through that, we experience joy.
44:16.716 --> 44:20.612
I think through another thing that can help us to achieve joy is
44:21.108 --> 44:25.212
humility. Humility brings us to a place where you realize how
44:25.712 --> 44:29.492
broken you are and how, man, apart from God, I don't have joy and
44:29.524 --> 44:32.185
I am just a man. I'm just a sinner.
44:32.971 --> 44:36.513
And so through that humility though, biblical humility leads
44:37.013 --> 44:40.970
you right back to the Father and repentance and obedience. All these words
44:41.082 --> 44:44.977
do flow together. Being brutally honest with yourself. Yes. And it takes action
44:45.234 --> 44:48.812
for all of these things. That's the Christian faith, is to
44:48.845 --> 44:52.842
actually believe in Jesus. It's all on you because your
44:52.858 --> 44:55.892
faith is not your mother's faith, your father's faith, your family's faith,
44:55.940 --> 44:59.151
or, you know, I'm a Christian, I'm a part of this church. No, it's more
44:59.651 --> 45:03.052
than that. It's God is telling us to
45:03.552 --> 45:07.113
take action because there's an enemy who wants to kill, steal, and destroy us.
45:07.161 --> 45:10.292
That's what scripture tells us. And if we don't take action, we're going to fall
45:10.792 --> 45:14.112
into those— the worldly adverse of these words
45:14.128 --> 45:17.306
that we've been defining: love, joy, peace, patience, happiness,
45:17.658 --> 45:21.539
all of the fruits of the Spirit and more. We're gonna go to
45:21.603 --> 45:25.098
the worldly version, which is self-gratification,
45:25.355 --> 45:28.642
pleasure, power, pride. I don't know what the other—
45:29.142 --> 45:31.945
I don't know what the 3 Ps were, but I might have gotten them.
45:32.025 --> 45:35.777
Pleasure, power, prosperity. Prosperity. Okay. Those are what
45:36.277 --> 45:39.898
we're gonna go to instead of the alternative of— and all those
45:39.946 --> 45:43.763
things will give us that temporary good feeling in the moment,
45:43.811 --> 45:47.184
but It's fleeting. It's a vapor.
45:47.330 --> 45:50.390
It's just what scripture tells us, a breath. It's the chasing
45:50.438 --> 45:53.563
of the wind. It's not solid. It's not firm.
45:54.396 --> 45:57.318
If we consistently do that. If we consistently do that,
45:57.399 --> 46:00.792
yes. If we are dictating our decisions
46:00.906 --> 46:04.741
based on what makes me happy, then like
46:05.241 --> 46:10.046
I said, then we can end our marriage. We can justify doing
46:10.305 --> 46:14.072
really dumb stuff. And being extremely selfish.
46:14.794 --> 46:18.226
Um, and I think that that's the point, right? You can fall out of love.
46:18.323 --> 46:21.916
Yeah. So one, one side of it is self-gratification,
46:21.948 --> 46:26.310
self-pleasure, selfishness. And the other is self-sacrificing.
46:26.743 --> 46:29.855
It's, I'm going to sacrifice pleasures of the day for something so much
46:29.887 --> 46:33.528
grander tomorrow. And it's, it's living for a kingdom that's
46:33.656 --> 46:37.153
not of this earth. It's, um, it's choosing
46:37.522 --> 46:41.421
selflessness. And that's, I think that's the root of so many sins
46:41.502 --> 46:44.873
is selfishness or selflessness. Yeah, so talk about the root.
46:45.275 --> 46:48.807
What's the root of sin? It's all about what I
46:49.307 --> 46:52.837
want, what I can get, what's going to be good for me. And I think
46:53.337 --> 46:56.836
we're all selfish creatures at the core, and we have to take
46:57.336 --> 46:59.822
action. If we don't, that's what we're going to choose naturally. That's our default.
47:00.368 --> 47:02.905
Started in the garden. Started in the garden, right?
47:03.820 --> 47:07.385
I want to know more. Yeah, yeah. I think
47:07.885 --> 47:11.303
there's an interesting interplay between, um, God's work and
47:11.803 --> 47:15.125
our work and with joy, as with just about everything.
47:16.121 --> 47:19.172
You know, Jesus just said that my joy may be in you and it may
47:19.672 --> 47:23.026
be complete. It's like, it feels like it's something that he's giving us. Oh yeah,
47:23.106 --> 47:26.848
right. If we're saying it's a fruit of the Spirit, right, it is an outworking
47:26.880 --> 47:30.814
of the Spirit in our life, like that the Spirit is helping produce
47:31.314 --> 47:35.161
us. But there's also a choice, right? Right. Philippians 4:4,
47:35.305 --> 47:38.750
rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. It is a
47:39.250 --> 47:43.300
command. That's right. It's not a choice. Romans 5,
47:44.358 --> 47:47.803
this is a great one. We probably should spend some
47:48.303 --> 47:51.488
time here. 5 says, since we
47:51.988 --> 47:55.557
have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
47:56.057 --> 47:59.419
Christ. Through him, we've obtained access by faith into the
47:59.919 --> 48:03.235
grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the
48:03.251 --> 48:05.480
hope of the glory of God, right? So we have,
48:06.218 --> 48:09.732
um, we are rejoicing because of the salvation that we've been given.
48:09.844 --> 48:13.742
But then he says, not only that, but we rejoice in
48:13.790 --> 48:17.031
our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces
48:17.063 --> 48:20.768
endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces
48:20.833 --> 48:24.442
hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured
48:24.602 --> 48:27.650
into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,
48:27.666 --> 48:31.069
right? So So there's a lot there, a lot of connected
48:31.422 --> 48:36.108
themes. But again, joy is not based on just
48:36.413 --> 48:40.859
circumstances. Joy— we rejoice in our— even in our sufferings.
48:41.131 --> 48:44.261
It is a choice. It is something we have
48:44.761 --> 48:48.931
to choose and do, right? It is a command. It's a command.
48:49.140 --> 48:52.414
It is an action. It is a, a practice
48:52.831 --> 48:57.785
of the Christian. And yet it's also something that the Spirit is producing
48:57.961 --> 49:01.486
in us. And so, man, I don't, I don't pretend to understand
49:01.986 --> 49:05.235
all of that. Like, did I do this or did the Holy Spirit do this?
49:05.924 --> 49:09.434
I'm always going to lean on giving more credit to God
49:09.934 --> 49:13.824
than myself and more emphasis on God than myself. But I
49:14.324 --> 49:17.654
can't neglect that there is a choice, there is an action, there is
49:17.702 --> 49:21.307
a requirement. That's the obedience that you're talking about.
49:21.371 --> 49:24.833
Like, the Spirit empowers us
49:25.333 --> 49:28.813
to choose and it works together to produce joy
49:29.183 --> 49:32.639
and to overflow in joy, right? Like you're talking about.
49:34.454 --> 49:37.986
Well, I was going to say the counterfeit in that, what the world
49:38.002 --> 49:43.047
says there is that the
49:43.112 --> 49:46.653
commandment restricts joy.
49:48.835 --> 49:52.050
I don't want to be told what to do, for one. And so
49:52.130 --> 49:55.830
when I'm told what to do, and this is a rule, and rules are
49:56.330 --> 49:59.463
bad, and the world has all
49:59.593 --> 50:03.243
the plays on these words to say
50:04.054 --> 50:07.007
that joy, real true joy,
50:07.445 --> 50:09.052
isn't about following any rules.
50:10.992 --> 50:16.016
And I'm not trying to really
50:16.516 --> 50:20.185
call it a rule book either. But what God's saying is,
50:20.443 --> 50:23.804
if you follow my commands, then you will experience
50:23.852 --> 50:28.324
joy. And if God is being
50:28.421 --> 50:31.831
true here, then maybe we should look into
50:32.331 --> 50:32.893
that a little bit more.
50:36.594 --> 50:39.990
The lie is that God's boundaries keep us from joy.
50:40.586 --> 50:44.116
And that's the farthest from the truth, that God's boundaries
50:44.437 --> 50:48.367
actually allow us to experience joy. I think that's
50:48.867 --> 50:51.319
just the lie that the enemy tells, one of the lies that the enemy tells
50:51.431 --> 50:54.960
us to prevent us from fully accepting the
50:55.460 --> 50:58.875
joy that we have in God. And it's like so many things, it's actually whenever
50:59.375 --> 51:02.500
you do play it out, you get the opposite in return. You really do feel
51:03.000 --> 51:07.220
joy. And same thing with sin in general. Whenever you're
51:07.720 --> 51:10.490
going through a tough time, you're living, you're walking in sin, or you're living in
51:10.990 --> 51:13.986
sin, and the enemy wants to keep you there. He's going to lie to you
51:14.034 --> 51:18.275
in so many ways of telling you, giving you shame, guilt, all these things,
51:19.176 --> 51:22.058
and don't let nobody know or it's going to be really bad.
51:23.033 --> 51:26.293
And reality is, no, confide in your brother in Christ and
51:26.325 --> 51:29.682
come back to the Father. And that's what's good. That's what brings you joy.
51:31.514 --> 51:34.513
The enemy just distorts so much. It's like, no, no, no,
51:34.758 --> 51:38.153
this is a rule book. God doesn't want you to
51:38.653 --> 51:41.586
have all the knowledge of good and evil, or just like what he did to
51:42.086 --> 51:45.050
Adam and Eve in the garden. You surely won't die.
51:45.660 --> 51:48.130
He twists every little word.
51:49.446 --> 51:52.718
And I think that whenever it tells us here, and what you just read in
51:52.734 --> 51:56.504
Romans, Byron, boast in the hope of the glory of God, I think
51:56.520 --> 51:59.696
what that looks like is boasting in Christ is rejoicing.
52:01.091 --> 52:04.540
It's being able to look at Casey Penner and be like, man, he's got joy
52:04.604 --> 52:08.072
in his life. He's boasting in Christ. It's not in himself. It's not a
52:08.572 --> 52:11.813
self-fabricated joy. It's not in beating cancer or being
52:11.829 --> 52:15.940
rich. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, there's something, something there that's
52:16.440 --> 52:19.456
solid. It's something that's better than Casey,
52:19.536 --> 52:23.053
better than Byron, better than Ethan. It's something grander than that. And people see that.
52:23.101 --> 52:26.216
It's the evidence of the Spirit. Yes. Paul continuously
52:26.716 --> 52:30.150
calls us to walk in the Spirit. And that's always like,
52:31.112 --> 52:34.896
been really difficult for me to wrap my head around, to walk
52:35.396 --> 52:38.214
in the Spirit. What does it mean to walk in the Spirit? Boasting the glory
52:38.230 --> 52:41.981
of God. To boast in the glory of God. Right. I think when we realize
52:42.254 --> 52:46.470
that everything that the world tries to sell us is
52:46.502 --> 52:50.077
a lie, and we can then
52:50.606 --> 52:54.918
effectively step back and say, you know
52:54.982 --> 52:58.600
what? That's nothing. And then when we
52:58.681 --> 53:02.086
realize that God's boundaries are actually there to
53:02.167 --> 53:06.324
protect us and to experience the fullness of his joy and love,
53:06.935 --> 53:09.814
then it starts to make a little bit more sense. And then we can really,
53:10.329 --> 53:13.787
once we really start trying to build that framework and change
53:14.287 --> 53:18.369
our mind, then we can really lean into
53:19.537 --> 53:23.799
what it means to walk in the Spirit, is to I
53:24.299 --> 53:28.314
can now pretty effectively pick out what's
53:28.814 --> 53:32.634
not good and what is good, and that helps me make decisions.
53:32.682 --> 53:36.173
Yeah, this world's going to be full of sorrow, full of trials
53:36.673 --> 53:39.938
and temptations, but what does James say? Yeah, I want to read
53:40.438 --> 53:43.859
it. James 1:2-4. Mine says,
53:44.036 --> 53:46.109
count it all joy. Y'all say, consider it?
53:47.651 --> 53:51.572
How'd you memorize it? I've memorized it both ways. Yeah, I think
53:52.072 --> 53:55.329
mine says count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of
53:55.829 --> 53:59.071
various kinds. I consider it pure, uh, or consider it pure joy.
53:59.279 --> 54:02.780
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. For you know that the testing of your faith produces
54:03.053 --> 54:06.264
steadfastness, and let steadfastness have
54:06.764 --> 54:09.652
its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete,
54:09.909 --> 54:14.293
lacking in nothing. Right? He's saying mark
54:14.793 --> 54:18.490
this down in the column of joy. Mark what down? Suffering.
54:18.990 --> 54:22.660
Your trial, your suffering. Why? Because of what it produces.
54:22.810 --> 54:26.910
And what does it produce? It ultimately produces fullness
54:27.410 --> 54:30.110
of life. Spiritual maturity. You will lack nothing.
54:30.610 --> 54:34.270
Perseverance. Let perseverance. You'll be perfect. You'll be complete. Finish its work.
54:34.770 --> 54:37.530
You'll have it all. Maturity. But that's not on this earth. Yeah.
54:38.030 --> 54:41.370
Right? No. But the ultimate, it's just like Jesus. Yeah. For the joy
54:41.870 --> 54:45.701
that was set before him. Right? He endured what he endured
54:46.023 --> 54:48.637
on the cross, right? Count it all joy.
54:49.009 --> 54:52.607
Put it in that column. No, this is, this is for my joy. This is
54:52.720 --> 54:56.305
for my ultimate— God knows what he's doing,
54:56.884 --> 55:00.742
right? I mean, that's, that's the, that's the ultimate
55:01.242 --> 55:04.486
fruit of the Spirit in our life. God knows what he's doing. Yes. And I'm
55:04.986 --> 55:07.956
gonna trust my life to him. I'm gonna sit back in the chair. I'm not
55:08.052 --> 55:11.169
driving this ship. Yeah. I'm not in control of this.
55:12.326 --> 55:15.782
And being able to let go of that,
55:16.585 --> 55:20.105
uh, the need for control, the need for understanding of every
55:20.281 --> 55:23.772
little thing that we go through, he's— he gives it to us right here.
55:23.934 --> 55:26.931
You don't need to know. You don't. Count it all joy,
55:27.659 --> 55:30.121
whatever you're going through. Yeah, count it all joy.
55:30.924 --> 55:34.860
Right. What a, what a different and
55:35.360 --> 55:38.886
weird, and it's foolish to the world. To act
55:39.386 --> 55:42.993
like that. Yeah. But what a difference it can make
55:43.493 --> 55:47.067
in your life to— when you really
55:47.164 --> 55:51.058
put this to practice, then money's not the
55:51.558 --> 55:54.904
thing. Then your happiness is not the thing. The new item.
55:54.969 --> 55:57.346
Yeah. Whatever it is. And it's like, okay,
55:57.975 --> 56:02.332
something happens and like, whatever. I trust God's
56:02.380 --> 56:06.631
got it. But like Byron said earlier, we gotta watch out not to Well,
56:06.807 --> 56:09.980
whatever happens. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. There's a happening on both sides of
56:10.028 --> 56:13.073
the road. There's a ditch on both sides. Yeah. And so,
56:13.794 --> 56:17.287
and that's a, and it becomes, when we start doing this,
56:17.544 --> 56:21.710
our path becomes more and more narrow whenever
56:21.726 --> 56:24.819
we realize the ditches on both sides. Okay. You hit one,
56:25.155 --> 56:29.258
you cross the road, hit the other. And what does Jesus say?
56:29.883 --> 56:33.605
He says, seek out the narrow path. What does that even
56:33.750 --> 56:36.016
mean? Path is narrow and there's only one way.
56:36.385 --> 56:40.949
Yeah. To follow him means
56:40.981 --> 56:45.127
to notice that you're in the ditch and then
56:45.625 --> 56:48.951
notice that there's a ditch on the other side. And then as we do that,
56:48.999 --> 56:52.036
we start recognizing the pattern and we start understanding,
56:52.775 --> 56:56.246
okay, it narrows the road. I shouldn't confess this
56:56.746 --> 56:59.906
publicly, but Driving home from here to my house,
57:00.660 --> 57:03.933
y'all know there's that T at 1669. You can go
57:03.965 --> 57:07.463
right, you go to Payhow, you can go left. Well,
57:07.479 --> 57:11.153
we go left. So my kids like to ask if they can drive home,
57:11.169 --> 57:14.393
and what they mean is when we get to the stop sign off the highway,
57:14.923 --> 57:18.549
can they drive that small road home? And, um,
57:19.174 --> 57:23.506
Addie and Ellie— Hudson doesn't really care to do it, but Addie and Ellie love
57:24.006 --> 57:27.293
to overcorrect. And that's what I'm picturing as you're talking about the ditch, like They
57:27.793 --> 57:30.586
don't see the mailboxes over here. And as soon as I point it out,
57:31.245 --> 57:34.715
I'm obviously, I'm holding the wheel, guys. They're not literally— they're not, you're not in
57:34.763 --> 57:38.137
the backseat telling them what to do. No, no.
57:38.602 --> 57:42.217
They're sitting in my lap driving, but they just overcorrect.
57:42.635 --> 57:46.490
And I think we have a tendency in our human life, like we
57:46.990 --> 57:50.057
hit one ditch, won't go all the way to the other, all the way back.
57:50.185 --> 57:53.896
But in time, what I've noticed with them is they're starting to learn,
57:53.945 --> 57:57.810
like, small adjustments, steady hands.
57:58.310 --> 58:01.350
It's not— but that's immaturity to maturity,
58:01.850 --> 58:06.000
right? We move from— No, no, that's a good analogy.
58:06.010 --> 58:09.570
I think the driving is a good analogy. The road, just thinking
58:10.070 --> 58:14.250
about that is, if you're not—
58:14.750 --> 58:17.850
if you end up in a ditch, how'd you end up there? Your eyes weren't—
58:18.350 --> 58:21.790
you weren't looking ahead. Maybe you were looking ahead, but it was something right there
58:22.290 --> 58:24.190
in front of you. You're not looking at the bigger picture. Your focus isn't there.
58:24.690 --> 58:27.890
And I think I think, how do you stay on the road? You got to
58:28.390 --> 58:30.890
fix your eyes on what's ahead. Oh, there's a turn. I got to follow the
58:31.390 --> 58:33.930
turn. I can't— I'm going to end up in a ditch. And I think if
58:34.430 --> 58:37.150
our eyes aren't fixed on what's true,
58:37.290 --> 58:40.430
what the truth is, and that's the war on words.
58:40.930 --> 58:44.730
If we're not fixed on the truth, every little thing the world says is
58:45.230 --> 58:48.470
so important to understand these words. Yeah. And if we're not fixed in
58:48.970 --> 58:52.290
God's truth, then we're going to fall for the counterfeit. We're going to fall
58:52.790 --> 58:54.920
for what seems to be good and we're going to end up in that ditch.
58:55.457 --> 58:59.263
Very easily, and sometimes we will recognize it and we'll try
58:59.763 --> 59:02.428
to overcorrect, but we're still not looking at the truth, and we end up going
59:02.460 --> 59:05.785
to the other extreme, the other ditch, and you're trying
59:06.285 --> 59:09.447
to self-fabricate the way whenever the way
59:09.463 --> 59:12.130
is in front of you. It's right here, and we just gotta look here.
59:12.563 --> 59:15.728
This is the truth. That's the way I think about it. I think the road
59:16.228 --> 59:19.406
is a great analogy, and then there's so much that we can learn from just
59:19.906 --> 59:23.513
fixing our eyes on the truth. What can we get? And through talking
59:24.013 --> 59:27.200
about joy, and as we go through the fruit of the Spirit, we get a
59:27.248 --> 59:31.481
strength through every fruit of the Spirit. We get encouragement.
59:31.994 --> 59:34.944
We get the playbook. We get the, this is how you do it. This is
59:35.444 --> 59:38.006
how you keep your eyes fixed. This is how you don't fall for the counterfeit,
59:38.247 --> 59:41.357
is knowing these definitions, knowing what it looks
59:41.857 --> 59:45.028
like to have joy. And, or I mean, love,
59:45.060 --> 59:48.668
joy, peace, patience, kindness, all of them. It's understanding
59:49.168 --> 59:53.251
what God intends for that word. It bleeds over, and then that
59:53.300 --> 59:56.729
road is super easy. My eyes are fixed. I can see there's
59:57.229 --> 59:59.309
a turn up there on the road, but it's good. I'm watching. I can stay
59:59.809 --> 01:00:02.257
in my lane. I'm not going to end up in a ditch.
01:00:03.587 --> 01:00:07.449
It starts there, but there's strength that we can get here, and this is how
01:00:07.481 --> 01:00:09.836
we fight. My joy is in God.
01:00:10.846 --> 01:00:14.451
And in Nehemiah 8:10, it tells us, do not grieve, for the joy of the
01:00:14.951 --> 01:00:18.442
Lord is your strength. It tells us in I believe it's in Proverbs,
01:00:18.458 --> 01:00:23.173
you know, a sorrowful face is good for the heart. And then talking about persevering
01:00:23.286 --> 01:00:26.461
and all those things that produce wisdom, spiritual maturity,
01:00:26.958 --> 01:00:30.390
and gives us a light at the end of the tunnel. You know,
01:00:30.566 --> 01:00:34.030
it's not here on this earth. It's eternally speaking. This verse,
01:00:34.094 --> 01:00:38.023
James 1, I come back to often in
01:00:38.523 --> 01:00:40.220
my life. Oh yeah. I feel like a lot of people have. If you haven't
01:00:40.720 --> 01:00:44.999
memorized it, this is one of those key ones you ought to have memorized.
01:00:45.095 --> 01:00:47.709
Get it tattooed on your arm. Do you have it?
01:00:49.189 --> 01:00:51.186
No, that's one I've thought about, actually.
01:00:54.300 --> 01:00:57.794
But I don't remember. I can't remember the time frame,
01:00:57.858 --> 01:01:00.896
but it's been the last 4 or 5,
01:01:01.411 --> 01:01:05.761
8 years. Time's weird, right? Yeah. I can remember sitting at our
01:01:06.261 --> 01:01:10.164
kitchen table in the chair that I often read my Bible in in the mornings,
01:01:10.665 --> 01:01:14.446
and I was reading this and I don't—
01:01:14.462 --> 01:01:17.994
I can't remember the circumstances of what was going on. Here at the church,
01:01:18.026 --> 01:01:21.608
something was happening. It was hard. Just like things
01:01:21.624 --> 01:01:25.189
weren't great. And I don't know, I can't, I don't remember.
01:01:26.041 --> 01:01:28.884
And I remember reading this verse and I remember, uh,
01:01:30.136 --> 01:01:33.558
I can remember because I cried and I joked
01:01:33.590 --> 01:01:36.577
about it on the last podcast. I think Maddie said in Grace Marriage, like,
01:01:37.075 --> 01:01:39.934
I think he's cried like 10 times in our marriage, right? So there's only 10
01:01:40.434 --> 01:01:43.934
of them. It's not that hard to remember, but I sat there weeping
01:01:44.593 --> 01:01:48.048
over this verse because it's like, I don't know how to count
01:01:48.548 --> 01:01:51.486
this whole joy, God. Like, I don't, I don't know how to put this in
01:01:51.518 --> 01:01:55.551
the joy category. This doesn't feel good. This is hard.
01:01:55.615 --> 01:01:59.198
And so I think our whole conversation today is so
01:01:59.230 --> 01:02:02.107
easy when things are good. Yes. Yeah.
01:02:02.589 --> 01:02:06.059
And but when it's hard is when the actual rubber meets
01:02:06.559 --> 01:02:10.364
the road and you actually have to go, okay, God, this sucks,
01:02:10.942 --> 01:02:14.266
but I'm gonna count this joy, right? And that day I
01:02:14.587 --> 01:02:17.766
sat there and wept, and Maddie saw it and came over and was like,
01:02:18.264 --> 01:02:21.540
what's wrong? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know
01:02:21.556 --> 01:02:25.522
how to be joyful in this. And I think in my mind
01:02:25.714 --> 01:02:28.107
I had some bad understanding as well,
01:02:28.283 --> 01:02:32.298
because I think we often insert the word enjoy
01:02:33.518 --> 01:02:36.874
for joy. And that's not the same thing. Yeah. In English,
01:02:36.890 --> 01:02:40.406
it's really close. Yeah. But I was not enjoying that moment,
01:02:40.422 --> 01:02:43.521
and I didn't know how to enjoy that moment of ministry and life.
01:02:44.581 --> 01:02:47.535
And that's not what he's asking me to do. He's not saying,
01:02:48.386 --> 01:02:51.742
enjoy this suffering, Byron. That's not the
01:02:51.806 --> 01:02:55.113
command. The command is, I trust
01:02:55.613 --> 01:02:59.208
God. That's right. Trust God. I can count it joy. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put
01:02:59.708 --> 01:03:03.187
this in that category. Because I trust God, not because I am
01:03:03.235 --> 01:03:06.797
enjoying this. Right. I don't know. I think it's an important,
01:03:07.214 --> 01:03:09.219
huge verse in the Christian life. Oh yeah.
01:03:10.583 --> 01:03:14.867
Yeah. It requires trust. So what
01:03:15.367 --> 01:03:18.829
are some things, um, what are some things that we can receive as
01:03:18.861 --> 01:03:21.332
we act in joy? I know we've kind of hit on a lot of them,
01:03:21.348 --> 01:03:24.877
but what are some things that we can, uh, receive through
01:03:25.377 --> 01:03:28.120
our acting on joy? Does that make any sense?
01:03:29.470 --> 01:03:33.410
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of words, uh, tied to it.
01:03:33.910 --> 01:03:37.210
Contentment, steadfastness, right? Steadiness. I think one of the
01:03:37.710 --> 01:03:42.170
things we receive when God produces joy in our life is we're
01:03:42.670 --> 01:03:45.970
unshakable, not because of ourselves, but because
01:03:46.470 --> 01:03:50.210
of what God produces in us. I think that's
01:03:50.710 --> 01:03:53.190
something we receive. I don't know if that's exactly what you're asking. Yeah, yeah,
01:03:53.690 --> 01:03:56.980
I think it's the next word. Peace.
01:03:57.302 --> 01:04:00.412
Yeah, like I said, they play on each other. Each one I think plays on
01:04:00.605 --> 01:04:04.004
directly the one up. He did a good job,
01:04:04.021 --> 01:04:07.517
I think, in this list. Yeah, so that's something we'll
01:04:08.017 --> 01:04:11.386
get into more next week and defining that. But yeah, we get peace. Yeah,
01:04:11.450 --> 01:04:15.157
it's the resting in God's finished work,
01:04:15.560 --> 01:04:18.427
in his salvation. That's really where the end of this road goes,
01:04:19.023 --> 01:04:20.279
to receive salvation.
01:04:20.882 --> 01:04:24.238
Yeah, and this is the
01:04:24.738 --> 01:04:27.193
ultimate, right? The ultimate. And that's kind of what I was asking is like,
01:04:27.289 --> 01:04:30.661
what is the ultimate thing that we receive through
01:04:31.161 --> 01:04:34.531
joy? It is salvation. It leads us right back to the hope
01:04:35.031 --> 01:04:39.813
that Jesus has given to us through the cross, which is outlast
01:04:39.893 --> 01:04:43.811
this fleshly body, this fleshly world, this human world,
01:04:43.827 --> 01:04:47.584
right? It is something so much grander, so Yeah, whenever things—
01:04:47.840 --> 01:04:51.530
whenever I lost my mom or dad or whatever, things are
01:04:52.030 --> 01:04:55.927
going hard, someone, a loved one gets cancer, it's— this is really hard,
01:04:56.360 --> 01:04:59.071
but I'm going back to my— what I know is true,
01:04:59.248 --> 01:05:02.858
something that is rooted in eternity and
01:05:03.358 --> 01:05:07.447
not these 70, 80, 90 years I have on this earth. It's something
01:05:07.947 --> 01:05:12.212
that we— and it's something we can't fully comprehend, but it's— I'm not driving
01:05:12.228 --> 01:05:14.426
the bus, like, or the ship, like you were saying a while ago, Brian.
01:05:14.474 --> 01:05:17.740
It's I am not in control of the things in my life. I am not
01:05:18.240 --> 01:05:21.279
the author of this story or this world.
01:05:21.778 --> 01:05:25.454
It really puts you in a humble place to accept
01:05:25.648 --> 01:05:26.816
what real joy is.
01:05:29.239 --> 01:05:31.814
There's 3 legs of salvation.
01:05:33.360 --> 01:05:37.011
We've talked about justification, which we
01:05:37.511 --> 01:05:42.537
can find joy in. Right now we're working out our sanctification
01:05:43.146 --> 01:05:46.544
we're trying to think of and trying to— which can bring us joy.
01:05:46.913 --> 01:05:49.943
Notice, yeah, which can bring us joy. It does bring us joy.
01:05:50.343 --> 01:05:55.329
The third is the glorification. And so that's
01:05:55.829 --> 01:05:59.465
the ultimate final hope in eternity. Yeah, in eternity,
01:05:59.577 --> 01:06:03.040
the glorification that we'll all experience. How beautiful. Yeah.
01:06:03.489 --> 01:06:07.112
And to remain hopeful in that
01:06:07.433 --> 01:06:10.885
Um, that's the ultimate, uh, yeah, that's what David says
01:06:11.385 --> 01:06:14.674
in Psalm 16:11. You make known to me the path of life.
01:06:14.802 --> 01:06:17.258
In your presence there is fullness of joy.
01:06:17.933 --> 01:06:21.786
At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's the
01:06:22.286 --> 01:06:25.414
glorification you're talking about, right? Like, we— I, I don't
01:06:25.914 --> 01:06:29.171
know what David's perspective of that verse was. His presence, like, I guess when he
01:06:29.671 --> 01:06:32.928
got to be in the temple. We experience it, the Holy Spirit in us,
01:06:33.217 --> 01:06:36.295
in Right now, what we started with, the fruit of the
01:06:36.795 --> 01:06:40.220
Spirit, right? This joy. So we get to experience
01:06:40.317 --> 01:06:43.127
that, but it's partial right now, right? Ultimately,
01:06:44.047 --> 01:06:47.954
it's not till— to receive the fullness that Paul was talking about
01:06:48.067 --> 01:06:51.917
is not— he's not talking about here on earth. Really not. Talking about the glorification,
01:06:52.030 --> 01:06:55.935
right? That part of our testimony,
01:06:55.967 --> 01:06:59.620
that part is whenever we're done with this earthly side of things and
01:06:59.669 --> 01:07:02.885
we move on. And that's the ultimate hope. The ultimate joy that
01:07:03.385 --> 01:07:07.202
we have comes from that place of knowing that it's—
01:07:07.490 --> 01:07:10.441
yeah, there's joy in our justification.
01:07:11.595 --> 01:07:15.460
Without being justified, I have no joy. Without being sanctified
01:07:16.326 --> 01:07:21.265
throughout my day-to-day life, there's joy in it, but ultimately it's that— because
01:07:21.601 --> 01:07:25.578
not every day is good like we talked about. So whenever
01:07:25.867 --> 01:07:28.721
you're having that bad day, that tough time, that tough season, then it's,
01:07:29.519 --> 01:07:32.233
I can't find joy right now, and I'm not happy with things right now,
01:07:32.281 --> 01:07:35.822
but I'm happy. I'm joyful in what's to come because
01:07:36.287 --> 01:07:40.053
even if this situation ends the worst outcome, I have a
01:07:40.553 --> 01:07:44.027
joy in my one day being glorified with the Father in his presence.
01:07:44.619 --> 01:07:49.154
And that, that's what's awesome. Yeah, John 16, Jesus uses
01:07:49.186 --> 01:07:53.176
the analogy of birth. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her
01:07:53.676 --> 01:07:56.942
hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the
01:07:57.442 --> 01:08:00.740
anguish for joy that a human being has been born into
01:08:01.240 --> 01:08:04.779
the world. Yeah. So also you have sorrow now, but I will
01:08:04.811 --> 01:08:08.257
see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will
01:08:08.757 --> 01:08:11.943
take away your joy from you. Right? So like our
01:08:12.443 --> 01:08:16.158
present experience is a mixture of sorrow and
01:08:16.174 --> 01:08:19.845
joy, right? Because we await what is
01:08:19.957 --> 01:08:23.227
to come. But one day, I think it's
01:08:23.727 --> 01:08:27.249
just like this. We won't remember the anguish. Not really. We won't remember
01:08:27.749 --> 01:08:31.114
it in its fullness. When we experience the fullness of joy. Yeah,
01:08:31.499 --> 01:08:34.498
we can tell testimonies and remember, I think, yes,
01:08:34.690 --> 01:08:38.138
what we went through to some degree, like a woman can remember
01:08:38.638 --> 01:08:42.484
childbirth. But also we'll go and it
01:08:42.984 --> 01:08:46.943
was so worth it, right? Whatever we went through to get to here was so
01:08:47.039 --> 01:08:50.663
worth it. I think, uh, from— for me, what's helped me have
01:08:51.163 --> 01:08:55.245
joy in times in my life where, you know, season was rough or whatnot is
01:08:55.261 --> 01:08:58.553
that fact right there. It's that, man, if this is the
01:08:58.585 --> 01:09:01.732
worst that it has to be, and maybe this is the worst, maybe this is
01:09:02.232 --> 01:09:04.931
the bottom of my life, you know, the bottom of the barrel kind of deal.
01:09:05.109 --> 01:09:08.562
And even if this is the worst,
01:09:09.405 --> 01:09:12.845
if this is the worst that I have to experience, then so be
01:09:13.345 --> 01:09:16.396
it. I deserve so much more. I deserve eternal separation.
01:09:16.445 --> 01:09:19.638
So there's such a joy in that fact of salvation.
01:09:20.367 --> 01:09:24.568
Um, that's helped me personally, uh, and, and maybe
01:09:25.068 --> 01:09:28.706
someone hasn't walked through something, or I mean, just knowing that can prepare
01:09:29.206 --> 01:09:32.459
you for what's to come. Because I would imagine— I'm only 25— I'd imagine
01:09:32.795 --> 01:09:36.147
in my life, you know, next 50 years or so, I'm— in this world you
01:09:36.179 --> 01:09:39.531
will have trouble. I will have trouble. But take heart. Take heart. Yeah, I have
01:09:39.563 --> 01:09:43.059
overcome the world. Yeah. And take on taking heart
01:09:43.075 --> 01:09:46.763
in the Father and what is really true. It's Um,
01:09:47.084 --> 01:09:50.578
as a Christian, that's what helps me get through whatever the situation
01:09:50.594 --> 01:09:54.023
is, whether it's a, I stubbed my toe and it sucked, or man,
01:09:54.056 --> 01:09:57.694
this season of life is depressing. You know, whatever it is, it's, man,
01:09:57.982 --> 01:10:01.220
this is what's been constant. And God's faithfulness
01:10:01.685 --> 01:10:04.874
is good. I've been trying to think of, you know, what,
01:10:04.954 --> 01:10:08.961
what is the takeaway? Because thinking about the glorification
01:10:09.461 --> 01:10:12.535
is great and we need to, and that's our hope. Yeah. But the reality is,
01:10:12.663 --> 01:10:14.987
is we are stuck right now in the sanctification.
01:10:15.700 --> 01:10:19.377
Process. So how can we,
01:10:19.989 --> 01:10:23.409
what are some questions we need to ask ourselves daily to
01:10:23.909 --> 01:10:26.971
self-reflect and help us in this area?
01:10:28.008 --> 01:10:31.279
So what are some things that maybe we are
01:10:31.392 --> 01:10:34.537
holding onto that if were gone tomorrow would
01:10:35.037 --> 01:10:38.832
affect our joy? We need to call those out. We need to ponder
01:10:39.332 --> 01:10:42.575
those things and we need to try to shift our focus
01:10:43.075 --> 01:10:46.767
from there because one day, one day— well, you talked about,
01:10:46.847 --> 01:10:50.172
you know, one day my health's going to be gone, one day my friends
01:10:50.221 --> 01:10:53.112
are going to die off, one day I'm going to have to bury my parents,
01:10:53.193 --> 01:10:56.807
one day I'm gonna have to, you know. So I think it does get worse
01:10:57.307 --> 01:11:00.775
from here. Yeah, to be honest with you. And not to be— but there's what
01:11:00.920 --> 01:11:03.410
I'm just trying to be— yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.
01:11:04.358 --> 01:11:08.069
But, but just to look at the reality side of things, I still
01:11:08.569 --> 01:11:11.715
got a lot of life to live, and there's a lot of suffering in
01:11:11.763 --> 01:11:14.760
store for me if things are to go, you know,
01:11:15.289 --> 01:11:19.697
as average. So I think if you— we're
01:11:20.197 --> 01:11:23.849
talking about at the beginning, right, who do you see joy presented
01:11:24.349 --> 01:11:26.478
in their life? And you talked about Mr. John, and I think that we could—
01:11:27.215 --> 01:11:30.453
a lot of examples that I think of are older people who are— they
01:11:30.502 --> 01:11:33.323
are at that last season of life per se.
01:11:34.269 --> 01:11:37.939
Yet, you know, I think of Bear, Kennedy's grandpa Eddie.
01:11:38.276 --> 01:11:42.450
Mr. Eddie Weaver. But, uh, he is— he's funny because
01:11:42.950 --> 01:11:46.063
he's pessimistic, he's off, but he's also optimistic. Yeah, he's,
01:11:46.384 --> 01:11:49.932
he's very, uh, he's very— it'll either get better,
01:11:49.948 --> 01:11:53.544
it'll get worse. And that's just— that's the saying that I've always— I'll
01:11:54.044 --> 01:11:57.878
always quote from him, um, years to come, is it'll either get better or
01:11:58.378 --> 01:12:01.105
get worse. And, you know, like, well, no, your dog's gonna die, you gotta take
01:12:01.605 --> 01:12:05.359
it to the vet. It'll either get better or it'll get worse. And So
01:12:05.859 --> 01:12:09.350
maybe he's on the far end of— sometimes he's on the far end of like,
01:12:10.072 --> 01:12:13.422
well, that's a little too pessimistic. But that circular reasoning that I
01:12:13.922 --> 01:12:17.862
was talking about. But he's someone who's 75 years old and he
01:12:18.362 --> 01:12:22.511
has been through hardship. He's had to bury his mom, his brothers. He's only
01:12:23.011 --> 01:12:26.182
got one brother left. I mean, he's had to bury tons of friends. And at
01:12:26.682 --> 01:12:29.917
that point, but I know I'm going to go to him for some wisdom because
01:12:30.173 --> 01:12:32.257
he's got it and he's not going to tell me— he's not going to give
01:12:32.757 --> 01:12:35.207
me the counterfeit. He's going to point me back to the truth. And there is
01:12:35.319 --> 01:12:38.742
a consistency in his life. Life since I've known him.
01:12:38.855 --> 01:12:42.622
I've known him for 10, 15 years, and he's
01:12:42.638 --> 01:12:46.405
been in my life and a great, great role model of
01:12:46.905 --> 01:12:51.386
what it means to finish the race. And he's never— if
01:12:51.886 --> 01:12:55.409
he sat here, he would tell us I was not perfect. I messed up a
01:12:55.909 --> 01:12:59.499
lot at our age and later on, and I wasn't always
01:12:59.515 --> 01:13:02.376
the best husband, father, grandfather, whatever.
01:13:04.138 --> 01:13:07.312
He consistently goes back to the Lord,
01:13:07.504 --> 01:13:11.527
and that has been his life. He's always been
01:13:11.592 --> 01:13:14.974
constant. And to me, there's so much encouragement
01:13:15.474 --> 01:13:19.141
in that, and seeing someone who's older and physically older, but also older
01:13:19.641 --> 01:13:24.190
in their walking, and they still have, for 75
01:13:24.690 --> 01:13:26.915
years, you're still living it out. I'm still going to have joy in the Lord.
01:13:27.155 --> 01:13:31.310
And I see that with him. It's having a consistency, even if he almost
01:13:31.810 --> 01:13:35.450
cuts his leg off, which he has. He's got joy. It'll either get
01:13:35.950 --> 01:13:38.490
better or it'll get worse. If he had to lose his leg and they had
01:13:38.990 --> 01:13:41.790
to amputate it, he would be someone who had joy in it. I know he
01:13:42.290 --> 01:13:45.930
would. He wouldn't have knee problems then. He wouldn't have knee problems then.
01:13:46.430 --> 01:13:49.050
He's got my leg off. It is what it is. He would be like that.
01:13:49.470 --> 01:13:53.590
He would find the joy. So there's such an encouraging aspect to
01:13:54.090 --> 01:13:57.490
witness people who have joy in their life, and knowing that, it's like,
01:13:57.990 --> 01:14:01.004
man, I want to be that encouragement to someone who's younger in
01:14:01.020 --> 01:14:05.151
their faith or physically younger or my friends.
01:14:05.456 --> 01:14:08.958
I want them to be able to see that because there's an alternative to
01:14:09.249 --> 01:14:12.614
what the world offers. The world offers that grumpy
01:14:12.711 --> 01:14:16.044
old person who hates life. I'm just ready to go,
01:14:16.515 --> 01:14:19.601
and I just can't wait for Jesus to come
01:14:20.101 --> 01:14:23.483
back. I just can't, and they just hate every moment about life now,
01:14:23.500 --> 01:14:27.043
and that's That's the opposite of joy. That's not what God has promised us.
01:14:27.139 --> 01:14:31.228
God has promised us joy to the fullness, and it's just
01:14:31.728 --> 01:14:35.606
such an encouraging— encouragement to see it played out in
01:14:35.782 --> 01:14:39.198
your life. So leaving, I guess we're wrapping up here
01:14:39.791 --> 01:14:43.607
as just be an encouragement to your
01:14:43.656 --> 01:14:46.478
brothers and your sisters in Christ and display joy in your life.
01:14:46.606 --> 01:14:49.685
Rejoice and rejoice in the good times,
01:14:49.733 --> 01:14:53.380
rejoice in the bad times. Um, rejoice in
01:14:53.880 --> 01:14:56.200
the Lord always. The Lord always say rejoice. I don't want to ramble on too
01:14:56.700 --> 01:14:59.640
much, but I just, just talked about Bear a little bit. I like when you
01:15:00.140 --> 01:15:03.380
ramble. I don't know, you just never know what might come out. Yeah, I know.
01:15:03.880 --> 01:15:07.410
That's why I need to stop. So I'll let you rambling. You can ramble.
01:15:07.460 --> 01:15:10.880
No, I'm good. I am rambling,
01:15:11.380 --> 01:15:15.040
man. Yeah, I'm done. I'm, I'm out of words. The words have
01:15:15.540 --> 01:15:19.222
escaped me. Wow. Be joyful. Yeah, there you go. Thank you
01:15:19.270 --> 01:15:22.943
guys. I hope you learned something today. I think I did. And it's always
01:15:23.039 --> 01:15:26.615
good reminders just to come back to, you know what,
01:15:27.080 --> 01:15:30.656
sometimes it'll get worse, sometimes it'll get better, and that's out of
01:15:31.156 --> 01:15:34.953
our control. Yeah. What do we— what has God formed in us? Joy is
01:15:35.453 --> 01:15:38.593
something that endures, uh, regardless of our circumstances. So for
01:15:39.093 --> 01:15:42.490
sure, it's always a good reminder. Hope you learned something today. Hope you're enjoying this,
01:15:42.939 --> 01:15:46.470
uh, series through The fruit of the Spirit. We'll pick up
01:15:46.970 --> 01:15:50.730
next week on peace. So I was thinking before we
01:15:51.230 --> 01:15:54.530
close out, I was gonna say peace out. Oh, sorry, you ruined it. Uh,
01:15:55.030 --> 01:15:57.950
we should probably pray, huh? Uh, no,
01:15:58.450 --> 01:16:02.010
I was thinking, uh, I forgot to talk to
01:16:02.510 --> 01:16:04.990
you guys beforehand, but yeah, we should probably end our podcast with a prayer or
01:16:05.490 --> 01:16:09.310
start it with a prayer. That'd be a great new tradition. Yeah, we could either—
01:16:09.810 --> 01:16:11.290
do you want to— should we, should we start it? Do we need to start?
01:16:11.790 --> 01:16:16.331
Yeah, I think so. Oh, you start over? That was the practice
01:16:16.363 --> 01:16:20.072
run. Maybe we should pray to start. Maybe we should. But since
01:16:20.120 --> 01:16:22.657
we didn't do that today, you want to pray to close? Yeah, I'll pray us
01:16:22.769 --> 01:16:25.595
close. Yeah. Dear Lord, we just come to you, um,
01:16:25.900 --> 01:16:29.496
today, God. I just thank you for this time that I've got to have
01:16:29.513 --> 01:16:32.675
with Casey and with Byron and just getting to dive into your word and really
01:16:32.724 --> 01:16:35.790
dissect the word joy and how we can, uh,
01:16:35.806 --> 01:16:38.985
see it in our life and apply it in our life and really rejoice in
01:16:39.485 --> 01:16:43.174
you, God. And I thank you that we do have pure joy through your
01:16:43.674 --> 01:16:46.366
truth, Lord, and through what you've done for us, through your love, Lord God,
01:16:46.382 --> 01:16:49.829
and your grace that you've given us. I pray that just everyone who's listening to
01:16:50.329 --> 01:16:53.454
this podcast, Lord, would just learn a little bit more about what it means to
01:16:54.304 --> 01:16:58.457
have joy, God, and just help us, God. Give us strength, Lord, whenever we're going
01:16:58.489 --> 01:17:02.915
through a hard season of life or hard trials or tribulations
01:17:03.415 --> 01:17:06.074
or whatever we find ourselves, God. So I pray that you would just give us
01:17:06.138 --> 01:17:08.367
strength, Lord, that we would abide in you, God, always,
01:17:09.228 --> 01:17:13.152
And just help us to see you in
01:17:13.265 --> 01:17:16.095
the everyday, God. We love you. Pray this in your Son Jesus's name.
01:17:16.465 --> 01:17:18.766
Amen. Amen. See you guys soon.