What To Do With Joy

Chapters

• 0:00 A Pastor’s “Not Normal” Positivity
• 2:45 Donuts In A Hospital And Simple Joy
• 5:55 Honest To God: Joy In Prayer
• 8:40 Gratitude Versus Gratitude To God
• 11:20 When Good Feels Like Chance Or Self-Made
• 14:15 Prayer As Connection, Not Just Fixing
• 16:35 Psalms: Praise For What God Has Done
• 19:20 Who God Is Shapes How We See Him
• 22:00 God At Work Right Now
• 25:10 Trusting God For The Future
• 27:10 Joining Creation’s Song Of Praise
• 31:05 Praise That Multiplies Joy
• 33:20 Seeing Reality With New Eyes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

My name is Cameron. I'm one of the pastors here at Cross Point. It's good to be here with you guys worshiping together. I've been told that I am not normal. I've been told this for a lot of different reasons in my life. Many of you told me last week when I wore shorts on the nice, beautiful day that it was outside. But one of the reasons is because I seem to be different than most people in the world around me. You know, one of the things with our brains is that often negative emotions register more strongly than positive emotions, right? And so this is why if some if five people gave you positive feedback and one person gave you negative feedback, you're more likely to fixate on that one negative thing someone said than all the positive things someone said. Um I do this too sometimes, uh, but apparently I'm not normal because I tend to see the positive in most situations. Um it's while I'm going through it, it's when I'm looking back at them. Like that's just kind of how my brain works, which I'm very thankful for. Someone recently uh called a brain like mine a simple brain. I'm happy to have a simple brain. I will joyfully take that. Um, one example, so this was back in the spring. Our youngest daughter, Rosalind, she over her life, she's had a couple times she got sick with like RSV. And so this time in May, she started to have like some breathing issues, right? And went to the doctor, ended up coming back, and then when she's back home, she starts having like this, she's like, you know, can like barely breathe. And so we took her to the hospital. Luckily, my dad was there. Um, and so like visiting, so we were able to just me and my wife to go with her to the hospital. This is a picture from that time. This is Megan sitting in the hospital bed with poor Rosie. We were there for a couple days, they had to do all sorts of tests and stuff. Now, I know this was like a scary scenario. You can actually, I know I told you to take the picture off. You can throw it back up though. I know this was a scary scenario. When I look back on this time, what I remember is this box of donuts. Okay? We were right near like our favorite donut place. So we're here in the hospital, gonna be here for a couple days. I'm like, oh my gosh, we can go get donuts every morning. This would be so much fun. Like, we're getting the doctors are, of course, they're gonna take care of her. I'm sure she'll be fine. We'll get some donuts. My dad was watching the girls, so I was like, I just get to hang out here and like read a lot of extra stories, get a lot of extra snuggles with Rosalyn. Um, you know, I we went right near one of our favorite Greek food places, so got Greek food one night and just made like a fun event out of this hospital stay, right? Um, even looking back, I remember this was the same time that Exonia had the hail storm, and both of our cars were in Milwaukee, so we didn't even get hail damage on our car. It was great. And this is like how my brain works about most things. And you might think, wow, that's crazy. I don't know what's wrong with you. Um, sometimes this can be a negative way of like bypassing difficult feelings and pushing them down and pretending like they're not there. But it's also, I think a lot of the times it's something that feels very genuine to me. Now, I share this because we're in a series called Honest to God, where we're looking at the Psalms as a way to help us express more honest prayer to God, to be real with God about what's happening in our heart and in our soul and in our emotions. And I'm gonna bet that most of us, when we hear, like, hey, we're gonna be more honest with God, think about expressing all of the raw, tough, edgy, like uncomfortable, ugly emotions in us up to God. This is what we usually uh associate with, okay, I'm gonna finally be honest about this, right? But today we're talking about how do we bring the more positive emotions to God in prayer, right? Our joy, our gratitude, our thankfulness. Now, you might think like, oh, I'm sure you're really good at this, right? If somehow you could be excited about donuts when your daughter is like having breathing troubles in the hospital. Um, but and so on the one hand, I think it's probably easier for me to be more joyful uh because like that's just how I'm wired naturally. But as I was reflecting on this, one of the things I realized is that positivity is not the same as being good at bringing that to God in prayer, right? Think of it in our culture, like there is a huge value of just being grateful or recognizing our blessings. Well, there is a way to do all of that really without God involved at all, right? Just to be grateful for the blessings in my life. Who am I grateful to? Just the universe in general. I don't know, sending good vibes out into the universe, right? And so gratitude is not the same as being grateful to God. Feeling blessed is not the same as recognizing where that blessing comes from and praising God for it. And so while I can kind of tend to see the glass half full on a lot of things, this can be a challenge for me as well. And as I was reflecting on this, I think there's like a few reasons why bringing our honest joy to God in prayer can be a challenge. One, I think we can attribute the good things in our life to random chance. Okay, when I first kind of became a Christian and I used to hear people say things, and if you say this, I'm sorry, like I'm not trying to be offensive to you right now. Like, oh, God gave me a good parking space today. It's like that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Like, that was just totally random chance that there's a good parking space there, or God gave me a green light, right? Like, that doesn't make any sense at all. Um, now, Neil, maybe God does give us parking spaces and green lights, I don't know. Um, but I think this uh perspective can kind of be uh can get applied to a whole bunch of other things in life. Oh, this good thing I experienced, that's just random chance. That's just how things happen to work out, it's all coincidence. And so instead of seeing these as opportunities to go to God and our joy and our gratitude, they become just kind of random things that happened in our life. Secondly, I think we can attribute the good things in our life to our own hard work, right? Which there is a piece of that. Like when we work hard or we work towards a goal and good things happen, like that is partly because of our agency and what we were doing and how, you know, all of those things. And yet, I think this can again become applied to way too many things in our life, where we just assume that our life, with all of its blessings and gifts and joys, is something we've created instead of something God has given us. I think another reason why it's a challenge to bring our joy to God in prayer is we just don't recognize the joy and the good and all the gifts around us. Right? Again, those negative things can stand out, and so we take the positive and the good for granted and just kind of move on. But the fourth reason here is when I was reflecting on this, I think this is for me, and I think for a lot of people, is when things are going well, we don't really feel like we need God for anything. Right? When life is falling apart, whether it's because of sickness or job stuff or whatever it might be, we turn to God as a refuge to help us get through life. When I'm overwhelmed, when I'm frustrated, when I'm stressed, when whatever it might be, God becomes someone we turn to to help us get through those things, to give us wisdom, to give us courage, to give us endurance to keep going through life. And so in that case, it feels like there's a point to prayer. Like, oh, I'm going to God so He can fix me or give me wisdom and how I can navigate this situation. But when things are going well, we just don't really need anything from God in that moment. If anything, it's like, oh God, that's fine. Just I'll be there whenever I need you next for something difficult, right? And as I was reflecting on this, I realized it kind of reveals a messed up view of prayer. That prayer becomes something that I go to God in order to fix something in my life only. And really, prayer is ultimately about connection with the God of the universe who created us and wants to be near us. And so our bottom line for today is God wants to connect with you in your joy. Right? It's not so much about how God can help you through your joy or get through it or navigate it, although there's definitely benefits to all of that when we come to God in prayer. Ultimately, though, God, as our good father, wants to connect with us in the things that are joyful, in the things that are good, in the things he's given us. Just like you would want to connect with a friend if they got good news. You'd want to hear them talk about it, be there to congratulate them. Like God wants to connect with us in our joy. And so today we're gonna spend some time, because again, you might be like, okay, cool, like how do we actually do that? And the Psalms are a great guide for this. If you've been reading through the Psalms, you see that there's a lot of psalms of praise and joy and lifting, you know, thankfulness up to God. And so as you read through the Psalms, there's some themes that emerge, so they're all over the place, but specifically we're gonna read a bunch of stuff from Psalm 98, uh, which was just a psalm that had a lot of these things in them. Um, so there are a few things we see in the Psalms that we praise God for. Number one, we praise God for what God has done, right? What he's done in our life, what he's done in history, what he's done in the past, how he's led us through difficult things. Here's Psalm 98, verse 1. Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. Like we praise God when we look back in gratitude at our life, at all that God has brought us through, the things he's sustained us in, the ways he's comforted us, the ways he's led us. And when we do that, it fills our faith bucket for today as well. Here's what there's an author, W. David O'Taylor. I don't know why there's so many abbreviations in his name. Um, he wrote a book called Opened and Unafraid about the Psalms. It's been really helpful for me as I've been reading it this year. He says, All Psalms of praise describe in some fashion who God is by telling the reader what he has done. That's how we learn who God is by seeing what he's done for us. And they invite the reader to bear witness to such a God, and here's what's important, to yield oneself to this faithful God. Like when we look at what God has done, we need to also give ourselves over to God in praise. So, what God has done, we also see in the Psalms, we praise God for who God is. So, for his character qualities, for like who he is to us. Uh, verses two and three in Psalm 98. The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel. So there are all these character qualities of who God is loving, righteous, uh, the one who brings salvation, that when we praise God for those things, we are like meditating on who God is, and it helps us gain a deeper appreciation for who God is. Right? One of the things we talk about a lot is how easy it is to slip into really unhealthy pictures of who God is. Right? We treat God as if he's just like this demanding judge or he's critical or he's, you know, distant or all of these things. And one of the things I've noticed in my life is when I'm diligent about praising God for who he is, coming to God in praise for his character qualities, for how he shows up in my life, for his compassion, for his love, for his grace, it changes the way I relate to God. Right? It's way harder to start like adopting some of those jacked up views of who God is when we are constantly meditating and praying and thinking about and letting our brain space get taken up with the truth about who God is and all he's done for us. The right theology comes so much more naturally when we meditate on that truth. So, who God is, what he's done, but also what God is doing right now. And this is from Psalm 145. It says the Lord is good to all, he has compassion on all he has made. Like God is acting right now. Not just something he's done in the past, he's also acting now. And when we're quick to look to the worries of the future or the regrets of the past, uh, we can see God is present and at work in this moment. And praise it for me, praising God for what he's doing right now in this moment, uh helps me stay more connected to him in a more intimate way, like moment by moment, day by day. So, one example I thought of is you know, I have three girls, uh three kids. There's an endless number of things I could worry about regarding them. Like what their what might happen in school in the future, what their faith development might look like, what their friendships are, what dating might be like, social media, like all these things. Uh let alone like from I worry for myself, right, 10 years from now, when I have three girls that are teenagers living under my house. Like, I am very worried for myself, so please pray for me. These are, of course, important things to think about and to like, you know, be try to be wise about and proactive and all of that. But if we're not careful, we can get caught up in those things. But if I stop and look around at my life, like right now, in this moment, in this day, I have so much to praise God for right now. Right, and what I found is when I do that, when I'm diligent about praising God for the gifts that are around me and how he's working right now in my life, it makes trusting God for the future so much easier. Right? Because I see like, wow, God is taking care of me right now. God is moving, God is working, he's giving me wisdom for this moment. I can trust that he is going to do that 10 years from now when I'm you know tempted to go crazy in my own household, right? I know God will be working because I know God is working right now. Um, and then third, fourthly, um, we also see in the Psalms there's a lot of praising God for what God will do. So the past, the future, or the past, the present, who God is, but also the future. You see, if you were to read through the Psalms, you'd see a lot of verses about God, and you will do this, or we hope that you will do this, and you will come and you'll rescue us, or you're you'll sustain us, or you'll bring about righteousness, or whatever it might be. Here's from uh Psalm 98, uh verse nine. It says, Let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity. Right? So we know we can praise God because we know he is going to make things right in the future. We know he's going to sing sustain us. We know he's gonna comfort and guide and lead us. Even for things that haven't happened yet, we can praise God for the way we hope or we want him or we we are know he will show up for us. All right, and then this last thing, kind of this last big theme that I see in the Psalms as I was reading through it is, and this is kind of a weird one, and you're probably gonna be like, why did we let this guy, this rogue hippie from Oregon into our nice uh church here? Uh, but it when we praise God, it joins us with the rest of creation. Okay? It joins us with the rest of creation in praise. So here, here's what I mean. And you know, if you read the Psalms, you'll see this all over the place, and it's really interesting because it's so weird compared to how we normally think about things. This is from Psalm 98, verses 4 through 8. Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth burst into jubilant song with music. Make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn, shout for joy before the Lord the King. Then here we get into some of the more creation stuff. Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy. I like the way N. T. Wright kind of sums this up, this theme in the Psalms. He says, humans join in the song and add other dimensions, right? Like the mountain's not playing a harp or any of that stuff, but we join in with the rest of creation. What looks to the flattened out imagination of wait late Western modernity, so like kind of our modern world, how we view the world as just like as lifeless matter, is in fact a world throbbing with God-given life. In that life is constantly praising its maker. Right? The world around us is lifting up praise to God in some really weird, mystical way that we can't quite wrap our head around. Um, and it feels a little silly, kind of talking about this, trying to like give words to it out loud. But until you're in a really beautiful place, right? When you are in a beautiful place or you're present in nature, there's something like intuitive beyond just like rationality and logic that says, yes, this is true. Somehow, all of creation is crying out to God. So, like here's a picture from the summer when I was on my sabbatical. We're at this beautiful spot in Yellowstone, right? This big canyon and the crashing waves, and there's something like magical about being out in the wilderness, about being in God's creation. Here's the way Psalm 19 talks about this as well. That's some really fun images. The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they reveal knowledge. So the heavens and the skies talk and reveal the knowledge of who God is. They have no speech, they use no words, no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun. And so all of creation, in some weird and mystical way, is praising God. All the flowers, the mountains, the ocean, the waterfall, the grass, like everything is crying out to God in praise. And when we praise God, we're connected with all of that. Right? We are more than grass and trees and mountains, and yet we are not less than that. Like we're part of God's creation, and so part of our very purpose, part of like who we are, just as part of God's creation, is to lift God up in praise and worship. And so when we do that, we're connected with the world around us, and we're also connected with like who we are as people and what our purpose is in life. It's kind of like it reminds me of um, you know, maybe playing music with a group of people, right? Uh you you're like, do your part and yet it's bigger than you, and you're connected to this, or being in a choir, or playing on a team sport, right? You're doing your part, but by doing your part, you're connected with something bigger than yourself. Um, another example, we went to um on my sabbatical this summer, we drove through Fargo, North Dakota, which I thought was gonna be terrible. It was a delightful little place. I really enjoyed it. Um, if you're ever there, you know, we had the time because we just had so much extra time, so we were able to just kind of stop and be like, hey, let's do this randomly. Um, there was a art meet or like a museum that was free. We're like, oh, free. That sounds great. Let's go to this. Um, and one of the one of the kind of art pieces they had at the end was like this big wall of stuff, and you wrote things on it about art and then hung it on the wall, right? This is my girls doing that. Um in a similar way, when we lift up our praise to God, we are a part of the rest of creation, giving our unique voice to God, but connected to everything else. So praise connects us with God in a deep way, it connects us with the world. We praise God for who he is, what he's done, what he will do, what he's doing in our life right now. All of this is to connect us with the God who created us and wants to be close with us. So we don't need God in our joy the same way we might need him in our grief or our lament or our anger or all of those things. But connecting with God in that way still affects us in a deep way and still has benefits to it. So our bottom line, I'm gonna add to it a little bit. God wants to connect with you in your joy, and also expressing your joy to God multiplies it. Right? This is something I've noticed in my life as I've leaned into praising God and thanking God and being grateful, is that the more we we praise God for things, the more we see that there is to praise. Right? The more thankful we are to God, the more gifts we notice around us. And so when we come to God in our praise, it actually multiplies our joy in a way that we can't quite understand. Because it just helps us see things differently. So here's a few things that uh like why this is important for us to practice praise. Number one, it directs our joy in the right direction, right? Not towards random chance or your own effort or the universe, mystical universe, right? But to the God of the universe who created us and is constantly blessing us and present with us at all times. Secondly, it helps us see reality more clearly. When we are lifting God up in praise, we are we might be tempted to just kind of avoid the positive because we'll as all These problems in life we have to solve, when we are diligent about praising God and coming to Him in our joy, we see the world more as it is, not just kind of the worst parts of it. We see more when we do this, when we lean in, we have eyes to see. So one thing, um, a few probably five years ago, uh in our yard, in our backyard, we planted a wildflower garden to help the bees and the butterflies and all this. I know I'm really not uh doing anything to knock this hippie like look that I'm starting to get in front of you. Um but you know, we wanted to help the bees, the butterflies, very fun. Um one of the things I noticed though, which was really weird, is uh well, one, moving out to Wisconsin from Oregon, is there are so many more wildflowers just everywhere in the spring and summertime. It's very cool. Um but I used to drive by, like drive on 67, be like, oh look, flowers on the side of the road, if I even saw them, or I wouldn't see them at all. But since we've actually like started to grow wildflowers and I notice them and I kind of have learned what they are, I now have eyes to see the world around me differently. Right? Instead, I'm like, oh, that's that type of flower. Oh, look, and there's that. And they're not just like yellow flower, right? Pink flower. Like, I see the world for what it is as I've paid attention to it. Right? And the more we pay attention to the joy and the gifts that God has given us, the more we have eyes to see where God is working, and the more we have eyes to see those good things in our life. Here's the way it says in that book, Open and Unafraid. He says, within the Psalter, which is the fancy word for saying the book of Psalms, the experience of joy is grounded in the work of God, but not in any generic sense. Like just like, hey, God is good. It is grounded in the economy of abundance that marks the life of God. Not scarcity, but abundance. So praise is inevitably an experience of, oh, it's this typo, sorry, Adam, of the overflow of God's faithful generosity. Right? God has abundantly blessed us, richly blessed us. And when we praise, we're recognizing that abundance, that our cup is overflowing no matter what is happening in life. And the more we praise God, the more we have eyes to see that. And all of this leads us to actually trust God more fully and deeply. Right? When we see how God has worked, how God is working, who God is, it allows us to trust him in a deeper way right now in the present. We expect that God will move because we've seen how he has moved and how he is moving and who he is. So all of this kind of leads me to one last point. And it's kind of a delicate one, okay? I don't want to be offensive. So uh try not to hear what I'm not saying, if that makes sense. Um, many of the beautiful verses of praise in the psalm, as I was kind of reading through, one of the things I noticed was a lot of them take place, not in psalms of praise. There's actually not like just tons of psalms of praise in the psalms. A lot of them take place, these little verses we quote, in psalms that are actually really sad, or psalms that are uh where bad things are happening, or someone's lamenting, and yet in there is sprinkled in these really beautiful verses of hope, of praising God for who he is, of what he's going to do. Um, and so most of the psalms actually have some, even if they have these really beautiful moments, have an undercurrent of something difficult happening underneath the surface. And as I was reflecting on this, I realized there's like a whole other dimension. We're talking about being honest to God. This whole other dimension to the word honest that I wanted to explore a little bit. So we've been talking throughout this series is like our honesty being about expressing our raw, edgy, difficult, uh, ugly emotions to God. And this is so important, right? And Mac and I and other people have heard so many people come up and say, like, oh man, this has really helped me go deeper in my prayer life or experience a new intimacy with God in prayer. So this is all awesome, right? So this is not a but, but a yes, that, and this. And I think there's a reality that being honest with God is more than just expressing what is raw in the moment. Okay, here's what I mean by this is one of the things that I highlighted way back in January when we be uh started this series, is that part of the reason the Psalms are so helpful is they actually have a balanced perspective. Right? They kind of hold tension when we pray through them. Uh they're expressive and intense and dramatic and raw and really ugly at times, but they're also balanced. Their prayers, the prayers are both full of doubt and pain and struggle, and this like trust that God is moving in some way. And so we, as we open up to God in prayer honestly, we God also wants to speak back to us, right? This is not just about us kind of unloading all of our junk on God and being like, okay, cool, I feel better now. See you later, God, right? This is about us starting a dialogue with God in prayer where we open up honestly and reveal our heart and what's difficult, and then also allow God to speak to us, which affects then how we pray back to Him. And it's kind of like the spiral that keeps spiraling up. Um, and as we do this, if we're open, we actually see a fuller, truer, more honest picture of reality. And so honest prayer, I think, is more than just getting all the junk out of our heart to God. That is us, that's like the starting point. It's an essential starting point. If you have not done that yet, you need to do that. That's how our conversation with God needs to start in this way. But we also want to be open to God as we connect with them. And I thought of an example. This happens all the time in my house because again, there's lots of emotions. Uh, but this was from with just from the last couple weeks it happened again. Um, one of my daughters is very sensitive to any sort of criticism, right? And or like perceived criticism. So sometimes I'll correct her, and it will be like the worst thing in the world that you can imagine, right? To be corrected. Um and there was one time this happened recently, and I'm not even like that mean about it, right? Like, I feel like I'm a fairly jolly person generally. Sometimes I'm a little snappy, but anyway, uh, so correct her, be like, hey, don't do that, and it'll be like, ugh, crying, and then she comes to me, and we're talking about it, and she says, Dad, when you do that, it feels like you don't love me. It's like, oh, that hurts, right? Um, now here's the thing as I was reflecting on this interaction. That was the truth of how she was feeling in that moment. That I did not love her or want to be around her anymore. But that's not actually the truth, right? Our feelings might reflect how we're experiencing the present reality, but they don't always reflect reality perfectly. Right? We need to remember that as we come to God in prayer. And one of the things praise does, even in the midst of something difficult, is it helps us see reality more clearly. And the Psalms teach us to be okay with the gray and the tension of life. That sometimes things are not just all good or all bad, but there's often a huge mix of the two. And it's okay to hold that tension. For those of you wondering why I brought my pink lunchbox on stage. The moment has come. Imagine your life is a bunch of bananas. And Megan says, that's where all the bananas went this morning. Um a bunch of bananas, right? Everything's going good. These are maybe a little green for me, but I know everyone's everyone seems to like much uh less ripe bananas than I do. Now imagine something bad happens in your life. Again, I think this is a perfectly acceptable banana. I know most people would disagree with this. Um, so you know, this bunch of bananas is is your life. Something goes wrong in your life. What we've been talking about is hey, when life goes wrong, when it starts to rot, when it starts to get brown and smelly and yucky, you need to bring those feelings to God honestly in prayer. Right? What's your feeling, what's your experience, you need to bring those to him so that you can connect with him and he wants to connect with you and that you don't have to hide it, you don't have to pretend like life doesn't suck and your banana's turned rotten and brown. Like, you can bring that to God in prayer and he wants to hear it. So we need to do that. And the psalms show us that God wants to hear that. But the psalms also teach us that just because some things are going bad in life doesn't mean everything is going bad in life. Right? The Psalms remind us that even in the midst of our deepest pain and suffering, that God is still present and there are good gifts all around us, and that God is still moving in ways we maybe don't understand and see. That in the midst of a difficult, raw season, God wants to hear our pain deeply, but he also wants to connect with us in our joy and the good that is around us. Now, I am not saying all of this to say, like, hey, look, like some people, right, and this is you positive people, listen up, because sometimes you are really mean to people and you don't realize it, myself included. You might be tempted to say, hey, you got five good bananas. Who cares about that one? Like everything's gonna be fine, right? And so for us that are more positive, we need to be aware of like, no, these are still important feelings to tend to, but for those of you who maybe aren't so positive, need to remember that, hey, in the midst of life, when things feel like they're falling apart, God is still good, he's still faithful, he's still around you, he's still blessing you. Even if you don't feel it, God is there. Right? And this is the tension that I think the Psalms navigate so beautifully, and why it's important to pray through them. Because they navigate that tension of like things are falling apart, and yet I'm going to trust. I'm lamenting because of the brokenness in the of the world, and yet God is still active and moving. Right? The presence of something difficult does not erase all the goodness that exists in the world and in life. So, all this to say, if you're sitting here like, hey, this whole praise thing, I'm in more of a lament season. I don't really want to deal with this right now. Like, I'm just saying, like, looking at the Psalms, that's not entirely true. Because praise is something that is weaved throughout all the different prayers that we see in the psalm. Praise is for every season, and it doesn't need to be an either or. Like, one doesn't have to win over the other. We can hold both of them in tension. Um, you know, we can we can praise God and we can be like angry at God and trying to trust him. We can be lamenting the brokenness of the world and looking at all the good in the world and praising him for it. One of the things we used to do uh mission stuff through the CMA in the Watts neighborhood of LA, um, you know, in the projects, like just extreme poverty. But one of the things that uh always like struck me was uh one of the common prayers I heard kind of walking through the projects is God, thanks for waking me up today. Right? And I just loved that. It like really stuck with me. It's like, wow, like even in the midst of everything in life might feel difficult, but there is still something to praise God for. Again, not in a way that we just shove down the difficult things and don't deal with them, but in the way that we can hold the tension between the two. Both can exist. I really like the way Dietrich Bonhoeffer uh sums this up. He says, the joy of God has been through the poverty of the manger and the affliction of the cross. Therefore, it is indestructible, irrefutable. It does not deny affliction when it is there, but it finds in the very midst of distress that God is there. It does not argue that sin is not grievous or bad, but in that very place of sin is found forgiveness. It looks death in the face, and it is just there that it finds life. So I want to encourage you as we uh wrap up here uh to bring your honest self to God, right? All the difficult, all the negative, but also don't be afraid of bringing the joy and the praise to God as well. So at least what I found in my life is when I do that, I'm actually able, it helps me trust God more with the difficult things when I'm also coming to Him in the joy and the good that's in my life. So here's some action steps, and then we're gonna do communion and end with some worship here. So here's some reflection questions. You can find these online. But then for the practices on the next uh slide here, uh, there's a few practices I want to encourage you to try one of them. Uh create some space to daily express gratitude to God. Again, not just to the universe, but like to God. Uh maybe that's in a journal, maybe that's a certain point in your day. Uh, maybe if you have like, if you do like family dinners, uh grab a sheet of paper or something and do this at dinner with your family and say, hey guys, where have we noticed God working and moving? What can we thank God for today? Then pray a psalm of praise. You know, so what we're trying to do is so there's a few options. Again, you can find all these online. And then lastly, if you are in a season of struggle, along with bringing your honest, difficult feelings to God, ask him to just say, God, I don't see the good, I don't see the joy, help me to see what might be right in front of me, and I don't see. And there's a psalm you can pray as well that's a little more hopeful.