Embracing Joy in Surrender with Dr. Merrill Greene // Part 1 // In Rest

Have you ever felt a profound joy bubbling up from within, in moments of quiet surrender to something greater than yourself? That's the theme that Dr. Merrill Greene and I, Noah, explore in our latest episode. Merrill, with infectious enthusiasm, recounts his journey from a nominal Christian to a man with an insatiable thirst for Christ. Together, we explore a view of how surrender to God's leading can lead to life-changing joy.

This episode isn't just about joy—it's about the surprising ways that joy intertwines with sacrifice, and how this paradox is at the core of Christian faith. Drawing inspiration from biblical figures like Hannah, to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, we reflect on the profound happiness that comes from giving of oneself. Merrill and I ponder the power of intentionality in our worship and obedience, imagining a spiritual journey enriched by the choice to infuse sacrifice with joy and love. This conversation is full of insight into finding the extraordinary in our ordinary lives, and how embracing our God-given identity can lead us to the deepest wellsprings of joy.

But this isn't even where things got good! Tune in for part 2 next time on the In Rest Podcast.

Check out Merrill's work at weirdgod.com. Check out his latest book, The Weirdness of God, and follow his socials to stay up to date on his next book, Drunk in the Spirit.

https://www.weirdgod.com/

https://www.instagram.com/weirdgodministries/

Also, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I trust you had a great Christmas, and i am trusting God has even greater things around the corner for you. Thank you for being a listener of the In Rest Podcast. You helped 2023 be a special year for me--I appreciate it! God bless you.
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Transcript

Noah: 0:09

Welcome to the In Rest podcast with Noah James Wiebe. I'm your host, Noah, and today we are talking about joy. We're talking about joy as, yes, a theme in scripture, yes, as theology in our society, but also joy as something that can be received in our union with Jesus. I have here with me Merrill Green. Dr Merrill Greene. I'm really thankful to have him to be an interviewee today. Welcome, Merrill. Thank you very much, glad to be here.

Merrill: 0:40

So glad to have you. I didn't know that was your middle name.

Noah: 0:42

James? Yeah, I had no idea. Do I look like a James Middle Name guy?

Merrill: 0:46

I don't know, I'd have to pray about it. Okay, pray about that.

Noah: 0:49

I like that. Yeah, tell me about you. Tell us about your background, how you've started following Jesus, how long you followed Jesus, where you went to school, all those things.

Merrill: 1:00

Okay, well, I grew up in the church. My parents were nice Baptists. They brought me to church every.

Merrill: 1:04

Sunday this is my born and when I was a teenager I made a under pressure profession of faith. I would say, okay, that was definitely not genuine, but I still was always interested in theology and the Bible and I went to church in youth group and all that stuff. I was very much interested in God, but I didn't have a meaningful relationship with him. After high school I ended up going to a pretty conservative Bible school. While I was there, I was one of those places where you couldn't ask a lot of questions. It was. It was. I felt like I was being stifled to a certain point. I was like there must be more to God than all of this. And after I ended up leaving there, I ended up going to Crandall University and through some of my friends, I got connected with a pastor who ended up leading to meet the Lord when I was 21 and been following Faithful Labor since.

Noah: 1:58

So wow, that's so cool.

Merrill: 2:00

Yeah.

Noah: 2:01

So you have the title doctor, that being heading of your name.

Merrill: 2:03

Oh yeah.

Noah: 2:04

I just want that really cool. Not necessarily because it makes you better than other people, although that is some ways that people understand that. Tell me about the journey to get from getting your bachelor's degree at Crandall University in Munchen, new Brunswick, to having a PhD.

Merrill: 2:21

Yeah, well, the funny thing is is that I really don't like academia and I had a very difficult time thinking that this was going to be the path that I would take. So when I was finishing my undergraduate degree, I thought I was going to go into ministry. The Lord has spoken to me saying that I was going to work with First Nations people and work with the poor, with the Salvation Army. So I was like, yeah for sure, this is, this is what I'm doing. And while I was praying, the Lord just spoke to me and said I want you to do a master's degree. So I applied to the school that he told me to apply to, and I got accepted and I went and I spent two years doing that and then afterwards I was certain I was like the Lord is definitely calling me to ministry.

Merrill: 3:01

And so these guys from my church invited me to a men's retreat in Quebec in the middle of the woods, and so I had applied before that to have a job working as a youth pastor at a Salvation Army church, and the interview went really well and I was planning on you know that was going to be where I was going in the future and while I was in Quebec after the interview. They were trying to get in contact with me, but there was no cell phone reception and so I couldn't get the call. And while I was there, the Lord's like I want you to do a PhD, wow. And I was just like, oh, I really rather not.

Merrill: 3:37

So when I got back to Ontario they finally got a hold of me and they're like do you want this job? Like we thought you'd be good for it, and I was like, no, I'm going back to school. So then I went through all of that and I just finally finished my PhD in the spring of this year.

Noah: 3:53

Wow, that is exciting. So good to have that burden off your shoulder. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, that's really cool. Tell me about something that has given you deep joy.

Merrill: 4:11

I think that the thing that's given me the greatest joy after I got saved. I mean before I used to have this idea that God was very distant and then, when I ended up becoming a Christian, when I was 21, I was very involved in a more charismatic stream of Christianity and I saw the spirit moving, and in such tiny ways, in amazing, huge ways too. But it was amazing to me, not always the big spectacular things, but the little things that we care about. That it just made me think like he knows us so deeply and he knows us so intimately, the things that get on our nerves or the things that get on our that would frustrate us or the things that would give us panic or anxiety, and he's just in the background a lot of the time just working those things out. And I think of a really interesting example when I was I was supposed to be traveling home for Christmas.

Merrill: 5:14

I told this story in a church one time and they were like why in the world? But it's a funny story. I was going to get a cab to go to the airport to fly home, and the night before this was happening the Lord spoke to me in the middle of the night, like a midnight, and was like I need you to make banana bread. And I'm just like why? Why do I need to make banana bread? He's like you just need to and you need to bring it to your friend Michael. And I'm like Michael, it was one of my friends from my PhD program. We weren't that close or anything at the time, but I was just like, ok, lord, I got everything out, I made the banana bread, I went to bed, I got up early, I went to class and I gave him the banana bread and we got to talking. He's like well, what are you doing for the holidays? I was like, oh, I'm going home today and la, la, la, la da. And he's like, oh, well, I'll drive you to the airport. And I was like, ok, that's great, I was just going to take a cab.

Merrill: 6:03

So we got to the airport and I go into the Tim Hortons and the airport to buy a coffee and I tap my debit and it's declined. I was like what is going on? So I look at my bank account and I don't know how this is possible. I had like negative $2,000 in my account. So and then I got to thinking I was like, man, I couldn't have paid the $50 for the cab fare to get here and God could have told me why I was making banana bread, but he's too good for that. He likes to spend the disbelief to a certain extent and make us think, like he likes to ask us to do things that are not naturally logical. And that gave me great joy because I was like I'm a very curious person and I like that there is an endless creativity and an endless investigation into what God's like. Yeah, so I think that curiosity that God has given me gives me joy.

Noah: 7:03

Ok, I love that. That is so cool. Yeah, I found that in different devotional readings I've done. If anyone listens to the book, if you're a listener of this podcast, I quote Oswald Chambers every day of my life.

Noah: 7:17

Anyway, Oswald Chambers, my almost first highest. He talked about how the longer that you are a disciple of Jesus and the more you grow in maturity, the more that it will be true that the only reason you can provide for the seemingly odd behavior that you act out is obedience. And he also says in other places joy is the fruit of obedience. I think it's also cool to live out our wiring and the things that God gives us. In one sense, in our wiring, in our programming, in our personality of who we are, deep within us, there's this way of when we actually just live that that we're okay with being as he made us to be, living the life he intended us to live, Even if it doesn't necessarily look like someone else's life. It kind of seems odd to a church in New Brunswick in.

Noah: 8:10

Canada, somewhere that Dr Merrill Green or almost Dr Merrill Green is making banana bread for his classmate Michael for some odd reason. But it's okay and good. In fact, not just permission but approval that almost Dr Merrill Green would do something like that because that's what God wanted him to do. And if God calls you to do something, listener, that it's okay, not just that you have permission, but you have approval from God to live that out and to be that and to receive joy in it. Tell me about joy from a scriptural perspective, because I know that when Oswald says joy is the fruit of obedience, where he's getting that is probably John 15. But joy is throughout the scripture. I mean it's talked about in the Hebrew scriptures, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, talked about in celebrations and feasting and ritual holidays and all kinds of different environments and settings. But tell me about joy as a theme in scripture.

Merrill: 9:15

Yeah, I often like think of joy in as a parallel to adventure, in that a lot of times when you're on an adventure, you're in the moment and you're excited about everything that's happening, even the things you don't understand or the things that might seem burdensome. When you come back from a long travel or something, you can think of the awful things that happened, but the highlights always kind of peak up, and I always think of the disciples when they're persecuted. In the book of Acts it says they rejoice because they were worthy to be persecuted in the name of the Lord. The opposite of an adventure and the opposite of joy is anxiety, and that comes from not living in the moment. And for an adventure you're supposed to be living in the moment. Present, right, be present.

Merrill: 10:00

And I think that you can't be experiencing joy if you're not in the present, because you're either if you're worrying about the past or worrying about the future. How can you experience joy? Because those are things that God says not to do Right, and so, like the whole, I mean, if we read to the Sermon on the Mount do not be anxious about what you eat or what you wear or all these different things, right, you're. How can you be joyful if you're worrying about, oh, am I going to look good during this presentation? How can you be joyful if you're worrying like, oh, do I have enough money to buy food this week? Right, and it's so funny because when I work with the poor and the homeless, they're, they're, they're so joyful all the time because especially the Christians homeless because they're always like, yeah, like God does provide, right, jesus says not to worry about these things, because when you don't worry about them, you get to actually experience what God's doing. Wow, right. And then you are more likely like that builds your faith.

Merrill: 10:59

Totally Right, joy and building your faith are like they go hand in hand?

Noah: 11:03

Yeah, absolutely yeah. Do you find that one feeds the other? Mm? Hmm?

Merrill: 11:09

Yeah, yeah. I mean, like the thing is like we go through hardships and you know we always talk about how, like joy isn't happiness and happy they're not the same thing, or whatever, Although I will say that if you are joyful but you're never happy, there's probably something wrong. You know a bunch of joyful Christians, but they're all like I don't know, that's always one thing that worries me.

Merrill: 11:31

I try, I preach that to a lot of churches and people look at me or even they're like we should be happy. I don't know. I don't know about that, yeah.

Noah: 11:38

Because there's almost this sense of when you're apathetic, nothing matters. Yeah, how could you possibly be present to what God is up to and partner with him in that work, right, which then bears the fruit, like joy is still the byproduct, yeah, and that sense of happiness and that sense of fulfillment that comes from living that way. If that's not present, then what you wonder, and are maybe even concerned of, is are we actually present to what God is doing? Are we partnering with Him? Are we obedient to what he's saying?

Merrill: 12:07

Yeah, well, the thing is, God made us to work. We're built to do work and to have rest. The people who are apathetic don't have joy, because that's not how God intended us to be humans. People find joy from the fruit of their labors. God provides us the bodies and energy to do that, but he knows it's good for us. Adam and Eve were supposed to tend the garden. It wasn't going to be super burdensome, but they weren't supposed to just lay around on clouds. There's a time to rest and enjoy God in leisure, but there's also a time to experience what all of God has made humans to be.

Noah: 12:43

Wow, that is so cool. I think it's cool that work can be something that gives us joy just as much as rest could and can and should. The podcast is called the In Rest Podcast because there's a sense of bringing that rest into the work that you're doing. Like you said, it's not that Adam and Eve were doing a super burdensome slave job. They were working in union with God, doing the thing that they were made to do, and then at night they would rest, and that rest and that sense of peace, in right relationship with God, was brought into the work that they were doing. It brought a sense of delight to the things they were doing, even if some of it wasn't glamorous or fabulous. I mean they're taking. I don't even know if they had tools. I don't know what they did to tend to the garden.

Noah: 13:30

But you know what I'm saying, yeah, so tell me about one example from the Old Testament that would give us a little bit of dimension for understanding joy as a theme in Scripture.

Merrill: 13:40

Right, I often think of Hannah, you know, because she's barren, she can't have children and she just is crying out to the Lord. You know, eli thinks that she's drunk, because she's so overcome by this desire for, and then pleading with God, and God gives her a child and she is willing to give the child away. Right, because Samuel ends up staying at the temple.

Noah: 14:13

Or the tabernacle, or whatever.

Merrill: 14:16

And joy. When you have joy and you're living in the present, it's okay to give up the things that you thought would bring you joy. Right, she thought that just the child would bring her joy, but actually I think the joy that she experienced was that God listens to his children and, like, fulfills promises. Right, and after you have. Right, people love getting gifts, right, of course, and God gives us good gifts, right, but the gift isn't what matters, right, it's the giver.

Merrill: 14:48

And I think Hannah understood that. Right, she was given a gift, but then she was also given the gift of an experience with God. And so, you know, in the New Testament, I mean Mary, when she sings out through the Holy Spirit about the birth of Jesus and things like that, you know, a lot of it's taken from that story of Hannah, right, and being given a gift like that. And so I think that sacrifice and joy go hand in hand like all the time. Right, because Jesus is willing to sacrifice himself. He doesn't want to when he's in the garden, right, but not my will, but yours be done. You know he gives himself and it's a great joy. And like that is unfathomable to the world, it doesn't make sense but in.

Merrill: 15:33

God's economy it does. Yeah, yeah, so the more you give up, I think, the more joyful you can be.

Noah: 15:39

It's almost like the giving on our part. Like Jesus said, it's more blessed or happy to give than to receive Right. There's more. There's more joy that comes from the offering than from the receiving, yeah, of something circumstantially. But then you talked about, like Hebrews, chapter 12, where it says For the joy set before him. Jesus endured the cross and there are the cross, so there's a sense of for the joy set before him, there's a sense of looking ahead and there's a joy that comes in the hope of something, and the but the offering in it does bring with it a level of joy, even if the circumstances surrounding that joy are relatively dark and unjoyful, if that's the word.

Noah: 16:24

I thought it was also interesting when you brought up at the book of Acts and how the disciples rejoiced when they were suffering because they thought, wow, god believed in fit to suffer in his name. That's crazy. And so they're rejoicing that God thinks so much of them. Right, there's a sense of God loves us so much and he's developed us and matured us to the point where he knows that we don't need to have everything work out in our favor for us to praise his name. That's awesome, and so there's a deep joy that comes from that maturity that they had.

Noah: 16:57

But I thought it was also interesting where you're talking about sacrifice, sacrifice and joy. There's a, there's a, there's a parallel and a correlation between the two and maybe even possibly a causation, where you have the giving or the offering of something or the sacrificing or the giving up of something resulting in joy. Because in the past the sacrificial system in place for the Old Testament, in the Old Testament, for worshiping God, for having right relationship with him, was all about offering. There is literally continual offerings being done all the time. But there's there's a bright, there's a sense of joy and fulfillment that came into that because they were in right relationship with God as a result of obeying that.

Noah: 17:39

But then later we're told, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, for this is your true and proper worship. I don't know about you, but practically speaking, I find so much joy when I worship Jesus, when I get on my knees and I say God, you are God and I am not, and I'm so happy to be here. You know, because of what Jesus has done and on the basis of all that, with Jesus as the worship leader, I am led into the presence of God and there's joy in this presence, like there's that sense of sacrificing and offering and sacrificing and offering, but not in the sense of bowls and goats and rams and sheep and whatever.

Noah: 18:21

But now, today, we're told to give an offering of praise or a sacrifice of praise, but in both examples, whether it's in the Psalms or it's in the New Testament, when the disciples are praising God in the midst of their suffering, like a Philippians chapter two, for example, one of these early examples of a Christian hymn from the early church is written in the context of Paul being in prison. But those offerings of worship and adoration and of sacrifice and of giving up and of offering result in joy. That is so cool.

Merrill: 18:53

Yeah, oh, absolutely. Thank you for laying that all out. That's really, really awesome.

Noah: 18:56

Do you have any response to that at all?

Merrill: 19:00

Well, now something else just came to mind. I remember visiting a pastor friend of mine and she had a painting in her house. She painted it and I think it was a quote from CS Lewis and it says Today I will choose joy.

Merrill: 19:12

And that frustrated me when I first read it because I was just like you can't choose joy. But then when I was reading 1 Corinthians 13, and it said you know, even if I give up my body to the flames, you know, if I give up myself to be martyr, but I don't have love, then it's nothing. And I was like you have to choose why you suffer and you have to choose why you do a certain thing in order for there to be the intended effect. Right, if you do things and you sacrifice, but it's not for a If you don't internally.

Merrill: 19:54

You know, people offered sacrifices all the time in the, in the Old Testament, and the prophets were like I don't want your bulls, I don't want your goats, I don't want this, I want your heart. Right, because you can do all the outward things. You can do what seems good. You know, sacrificing yourself for someone else might seem like the righteous thing to do, but there might not be any love behind it, right? And the same thing is true of joy.

Merrill: 20:18

You know, people are always wondering like well, how come I'm never happy, how come I'm never experiencing this joy? And it's just like, well, what are your intentions? What are you trying to experience? What are your? You know, are you trying to do this for you? Are you trying to do it for God? Are you trying to? You know how? How me focused is this Wow? You know, I mean, and so I thought about that for a long time and I was that, that quote. You know, today I choose joy and I was like that is so necessary. Yes, right, because some people don't want to be happy right, that's true, that's the thing like some.

Merrill: 20:48

If you think of like church culture and stuff you know you all have. You have sometimes these people who are like always, you know, bickering and saying like, oh, I wish the pastor did this instead of that and all this stuff, but they'll never leave. Yeah they never want to actually improve things. They just want things to be as miserable for everybody else. Yeah, or they want everyone to bend to their will Right, so that they can be happy, right, and that's not where joy comes from. Joy doesn't come from controlling other people, right?

Noah: 21:15

Yeah, having this sense that God is in control brings us a sense of joy in my mind, because you know that that thing whatever you're trusting God with, you were truly are trusting him with it it's gonna get taken care of. It's funny when you said that about some people don't want to be happy. I think that sometimes we think why wouldn't you? I was literally having a conversation about this yesterday with my supervisor and she was talking about how, why would you not? Why would you choose to live a life of scarcity rather than abundance? Why would you do that? It seems to make no sense at all because it's not really rational. Live that way, right. But I think that when we have pride in our life or a Relentless self orientation that says that life is all about me and I'm self-sufficient, right, the sense of self-sufficiency that says I can control not only my life but the lives of my neighbors as well.

Noah: 22:05

That that is so irrational. Hmm, when you look at it For all it is, and when I look at pride in my own life, I'm like why am I being so ridiculous? But when we Shift out of that motive of self Orientation, the motives that are associated with self orientation, I suppose getting out of that self-centered approach to looking at life as a whole, then we get into that other scope of love which, from its very core a gap, a Love in the scripture as we hear it and see it and understand it, is always self offering. There's always a sense of love, is a gift. That love isn't given because someone deserved it. We see it in 1st Corinthians 13. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not post, it does not, you know, all easily angered. It is not self seeking. I love the way the nlt translates that, because it says, instead of saying it, love is not self seeking. It says love does not insist on its own way.

Noah: 23:08

Yeah, isn't that so crazy, but you notice that when you have some sort of self seeking being part of me, I will Insist that things be my own way.

Noah: 23:22

I did an episode I'm not sure, guys, if you remember a while back I did an episode about submission by submitting to life as it is, reality as it is, life as it is and God's way of doing things as they are. Rather, whether we like it or prefer it or not, that brings peace to us because there's a sense of focus and wholeness that comes from just letting go and letting God take control. But on the flip side, being self-seeking refuses to let something else take control. It refuses to come under the initiative of another thing or another person. And even if it seems on the outside that they are doing that, they're doing that with somewhere within that they've rationalized it in their mind that they're doing it for their own good purpose and that, oh well, I always wanted them to do that. I'm not sure if you've ever had to deal with a narcissist before listener, but if you do, you'll notice that their approach to life is absolutely nonsensically self-seeking. And it looks like it's not, but it is. But a person who is so self-oriented cannot experience joy the way that God offers it in living. The kind of love-oriented, giving-oriented, others-oriented, God-oriented, God-centered, Christocentric, et cetera, kind of life. So yeah, you just really got me going on that thought pattern, because when I'm struggling with pride, choosing joy is extremely difficult, if not impossible, and God's like, hey, be happy, aren't you content? You have the things that you've been praying for for such a long time. And I'm like, well, I can't because I have the blah blah. But there is definitely something to be said to when we choose to receive love and live in love and live out the love of God in our life, that that will result in a life of joy, not as the point but as the byproduct, but adversely, a life lived with a self-centered, from a self-centered place, insisting on its own way, being controlling in a negative sense. Although it looks really happy on the outside, the byproduct is a life of emptiness and hopelessness and anxiety. Make sure you tune into part two of this interview with Dr Merrill Green. We get into some of our best discussion in the second part of this interview, so please don't miss it. You're going to want to tune in to this amazing conversation. It also gets a lot more fun and we have a lot of laughs in this next part of the conversation, so make sure that you tune in to part two of this podcast interview with Dr Merrill Green If you are an In Rest podcast subscriber.

Noah: 26:26

Thank you, hey. Leave a rating on Spotify or wherever else you're listening to this so that the word can get out to other people. Share this with somebody who you think will benefit from it, and feel free to send us a DM as well. @inrest. insta on Instagram. Facebook it's just In Rest podcast Facebook page. That's awesome. We'd love to hear from you and connect with you. This is on Spotify. It is also on YouTube, but we'd love to connect with you. We'd love to hear how God is moving in your lives and hear how to pray for you. Thank you for being a listener. Thank you for joining us today on the In Rest podcast.