Joy Pt. 1 // Restoring Joy

Discover the biblical truth about Jesus and joy that challenges common perceptions of faith and happiness. This message explores how Scripture consistently portrays Jesus as full of joy, from the angels' announcement of great joy at His birth to His celebration-filled ministry. Learn the difference between temporary happiness and lasting joy rooted in relationship with God, and why both matter for Christian living.Explore practical ways to cultivate joy in daily life through communion with God, gratitude practices, and learning to experience joy even during difficult seasons. Understand how modern culture works against joy through constant messages of discontent and fear, and discover how pursuing joy becomes an act of spiritual defiance.Key topics covered include: biblical foundations of joy in Jesus' life and ministry, overcoming cultural obstacles to happiness and contentment, practical spiritual disciplines for cultivating lasting joy, the relationship between suffering and joy in Christian maturity, and how gratitude rewires our hearts for contentment.This message offers hope for anyone struggling with discouragement, depression, or spiritual dryness. Whether you're seeking deeper relationship with God, looking for practical ways to experience more joy in daily life, or wanting to understand how faith relates to genuine happiness, this teaching provides biblical insight and actionable steps.Perfect for those interested in: Christian living, spiritual growth, biblical joy, overcoming depression through faith, gratitude practices, presence of God, Christmas message themes, and finding happiness in relationship with Jesus Christ.

This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. The church of the lookout is a full vision of Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family and living on his mission to transform the world with the all inspiring love. Visit us online at the lookout.church. We are going to jump into the sermon today. The message, if you have your Bibles, we're going to start in John chapter 15. If you don't have your Bibles, it's okay. You can always download the Bible app on your phone, but we're going to have it on the screen behind us, okay? And we're going to enter into the Advent season together. I'm going to start in John chapter 15, in verse 7. Here's what Jesus says to his disciples. He says, If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So take a moment with me. Close your eyes wherever you're at in the room. And I want you to picture Jesus with whatever comes to mind. I want you to picture Jesus as he was walking the earth. And hopefully your picture is a picture of a man, probably with dark hair, probably dark long hair, probably bearded, olive skin, probably not white skinned, a cloak, sandals. Just imagine what comes to mind as you picture spending time with Jesus. Now, in your picture of Jesus, I'm just going to ask this question. In your picture, is he smiling? Alright, just take note of that. If in your picture of Jesus, the first picture that comes to mind is Jesus smiling. You can open your eyes. My guess here, I'm not going to have you raise your hand. My guess here is probably a certain population of this room. Your picture of Jesus was maybe not a smiling Jesus, maybe it was a solemn Jesus, a serious, a super serious Jesus. Right? But sometimes when we picture the face of Jesus, though in our lives we long for a pathway to joy, to happiness, to a sense of delight, when we picture Jesus, that's not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind. So in our culture and even in the church, oftentimes we see Jesus as the guide to a lot of things. So if you want answers to life's biggest questions, you go to Jesus. If you need wisdom, you go to Jesus. If you need faithfulness, courage, if you want the pathway to serving others, prayer, even the miraculous, you you go to Jesus. But oftentimes in our culture, when we think of uh when we think of how do we actually grow in joy, Jesus isn't the first picture that comes to mind, but when we look through the scriptures and we even look at the Christmas story, we see something completely different, and it challenges our view of what comes to mind when we think about Jesus. And this is where we're gonna take time in this Advent season to explore really the anatomy of joy and the source of joy and the theme that saturates the Christmas message is the life, and the life of Jesus is one that is saturated with joy. Are you guys with me? So, Luke, and in the Gospel of Luke, is as as Luke is introducing the whole Christmas message, and we didn't read this today, and we will over the next couple weeks, it shares the story of the angels that came at the birth of Jesus, and and they're in the sky, and and the angel said to uh the angel said to the shepherds, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. So the very introduction of Jesus into the life, into the world, incarnated God and flesh, was one of what the scriptures called glad tidings, which basically means this is really good news, and good news should produce great joy, right? Good news should produce great joy. He's coming, and what that should do to you is enlighten your heart. And and it should cause something to happen inside of you to produce great joy. We read this in another place. Jesus, even before he was born, when he was being carried by his mother Mary, and Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and something wild happens. Even in utero, people are experiencing the joy of Jesus. In Luke chapter 1, verse 44, Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, says, For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And it's just this amazing picture of John the Baptist, you know, just in here, and he's just doing backflips just because he knows that Jesus is somewhere in the vicinity. Something happens, something excites him from the inside out. The prophet, the prophet prophets, but one particular prophet in the Old Testament, as he was prophesying about the coming of the Messiah, Jesus the Son of God, he said that his life would be marked by joy, and that even in his ministry, that it would be marked by the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. And that's what we are talking about even during worship, that there's something about the life of Jesus that's marked by gladness. And he, that writer of Hebrews, said that he will be uh filled with the oil of gladness even above his companion. So among all of his companions, he's the one who is going to be radiating gladness. And we keep going through all of these scriptures. One of my favorites is in Luke chapter 10 as he's doing ministry, and it says uh in Luke chapter 10, verse 21, Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, and he just stops and he prays, and Luke captures this prayer. Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, I praise you, Father, and Lord of heaven, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learning and revealed them to the children. I just capture this moment for a second. Jesus is just, he's giddy. He's he's excited. He's like all these things that I'm talking about. You God, God, I'm so thankful, I praise you, Father, that you don't need a PhD to understand what I'm talking about. Even the kids get it more than all the people who are wise and learned learned. And he said, This is amazing. Even Jesus is full of joy at his own words that they could be understood and entered into. Jesus is like, I love this. I love that I get to do this, right? And yet, somehow in church history, we've inherited, so many of us have inherited an image of Jesus that's very solemn and serious. He always means business, right? Kind of intense Jesus. He's always intense. Come on, guys, let's get it together. I got three years on earth, all right? Listen to what I do. We don't got time to waste, right? We got we got a mission. We got to stay on mission. And there's this sense that we inherit of like Jesus is always just trying to make things happen, or he's always, he's always, but that's not the picture that we get of Jesus. We don't get a picture of him as rushed, we don't get a picture of him as trying to make things happen everywhere he goes. There seems to be the sense of relaxation that he was actually able to enjoy people. Can you imagine that? He was actually able to enjoy the people he was trying to save. So, contrary to popular opinion, God is actually the most joyous being in all of the universe. Can we just be reminded of that for a second? That's not what people think about when they think about God. But God, as revealed in the scriptures, is the most joyous in the universe. It was out of the overflow of joy that he created. He did not create you or this world out of obligation. I guess I better create something that I can save later. No, it was just like there was the self-giving, the the loving, sacrificial, overflowing nature of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. It was out of the overflow of love and joy, like, let's go do something together. Let's create something awesome. And that's why you and I are here, because of the overflow of the joy of God. Some writers call the Trinity with the Father, Son, and Spirit, the cosmic dance. It's a cosmic dance of love. And out of the overflow, we are created. And so Jesus Himself, though, is a mirror of the whole Godhead. Jesus Himself is what God is like. He is one with the Father. And if you don't want to know what God is like, you don't need to look further than Jesus. Jesus and the Father are one. And so what we want need to understand about joy, we can look directly into the life of Jesus, and you need to know that Jesus was a walking party. Okay? He had no trouble. He attended the feasts, he attended weddings, he attended dinner parties. He was he was he was that it was actually confused a lot of people. All right? He made parties better. Right? They'd run out of food and wine. He's like, let's get some more. Boom! You know, and he would just make more. He's like, this party, we need to keep moving. We need to keep partying here. Jesus' healings always ended with an eruption of celebration. Somebody was healed in the power of his name, and it just produced gladness. There's a the joy of a God who sees me and knows me and is willing to deliver me even now, but certainly later he will deliver me and heal me once and for all. People were generally just glad to be with Jesus. Can you we just acknowledge that children enjoyed Jesus? Sinners enjoyed Jesus, his disciples enjoyed him, the crowds enjoyed Jesus. Sure, he had a lot of hard things to say to certain people, but by and large, Jesus was the kind of person that people were glad to be around. Can I just posit this question? As we read in John 15, Jesus' core desire for even for his disciples that his joy might be in us. This is his core desire. His joy might be in us, and that our joy may be full. Let me ask you this question. Is Jesus' joy becoming your joy? And maybe ask it a different way. Are you becoming the kind of person that people are also glad to be around? How amazing is it that there's a lot of Christians that you're not glad to be around? There's a lot, that's a lot of people's experience of Christians in the church. If his joy is becoming our joy, then the kind of person and the kind of people we're becoming are the kind of people that we're actually glad to be around. Is this okay? Can we say this? So that doesn't mean you have to be an extrovert, thank God. That doesn't mean you have to be the life of the party. That doesn't mean you have to be able to sing and dance and do magic tricks, okay? That's not what we're talking about. If you don't feel good at being the life of the party, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about you is the kind of presence, the kind of substance of your life, having been with Jesus, that overflows in such a way that people generally are glad to be in your presence. Just like we're glad to be in the presence of Jesus. And this is the point of the sermon where when we talk about joy, sometimes in church world we say, well, yeah, but but joy isn't the same as happiness, right? Joy isn't the same as happiness. And you don't have to be joyful, you know, you can be joyful but not be happy all the time. And we've done that for a reason, because there's a time in church world you come, you come to church, and if you're sad or something's going on in your life, you're going through suffering, everyone tries to convince you to stop being sad. Just put on joy, you know, just ignore that part of your life and do this. And and and so we've we had to kind of find a way to be able to say, no, no, no, it's it's okay to not have to be happy all the time. So but but here's here's here's the big idea, though. Joy is actually substantially different than happiness because joy is an eternal disposition out of uh out of relationship with with God and what he's done and what he will continue to do. Happiness kind of comes and goes. But so joy is more than happiness, but it also includes happiness. Can we just say that? I think we've overplayed the card that joy and happiness aren't the same. We've overplayed that card in the church. Because let me just ask you this question. Have you ever met a joyful person who's rarely happy? It's just this is natural. Like, if you're you're like, yeah, yeah, man, like I'm super joyful. I'm just short-tempered, I snap up my kids, and if you catch me on the wrong day, you know, uh, you're you're gonna I'm gonna be grouchy, you know. It's like that's not joyful, that's something else, right? That doesn't mean we're perfect, doesn't mean we always have good days, doesn't mean we go through suffering, and we'll talk about that in a second. But I just want to point out that when the Bible talks about joy, it generally is talking about an overall state of gladness and delight. In your presence is the fullness of joy. That sounds pretty happy to me. When the scripture talks about joy and even talks about Jesus being one full of joy. Children do not like to flock to people who are not happy. Can we just, is that okay to say it doesn't mean we have to pretend, but but what I'm saying though is the ultimate destination of where God is bringing us is one of great delight in Him. A great delight in Him because our joy is rooted in an eternal reality. Okay? Are you guys with me? So the problem is we face all kinds of obstacles to joy. It's not an easy thing in this world to live a joyful life, especially among the battles and the issues of our day, right? We live in a world designed to keep us kind of locked in on what to be afraid of and what we lack. And this really plays to our brains. Our brains have this really weird, bizarre wiring that we tend to gravitate towards negative thoughts and resist positive thoughts. You can have somebody offer you 10 compliments and encouragements, and then have one person give you a criticism, and all night you're thinking about the one thing that they said to you. Why is it that? Because oftentimes negative thoughts stick to us like sticky tape, and positive thoughts uh hit us like Teflon. They just slide right off. And there's something about that, and because our brains you know generally kind of operate like that, there's a multi-billion dollar industry that is set out to exploit that part of our brains so that we buy more things to satisfy the things that we're not really stoked about in our lives. Okay, so that's why, you know, like I go online to check the score of a football game. And immediately I'm hit with like three ads. I'm a barbaday with commercials. Number one, an ad telling me I don't have enough hair and that I'm I'm losing my hair. So, how does it know that I don't know? Number two, apparently I need to slim my waistline. And then another ad that tells me that real men drive Jeeps, apparently. Okay, this all happened in like 90 seconds. I'm just here, I just want to know the score of the football game. And now I have this acute awareness. I wasn't thinking this before. I just want to know the score of the football game, and in 90 seconds, I'm acutely aware that I'm balding, I'm getting fat, and I'm driving the wrong car. Okay. Like that didn't happen before. And this happens like this happens multiple times a day. This is happening to you. Okay? You think you're checking the weather, and then all of a sudden, all of your stocks are invested in the wrong places. And constantly your desires are getting rearranged to what to be afraid of and what you lack. This is what you should be afraid of, and this is what you lack. Do you know what that does to you when that happens multiple times a day, every day of your life? It makes you, it disciples you to be a be to become a person of great discontent. You we become a person of great discontent. And that's why I believe it is actually our moral obligation to pursue contentment and the joy of God that does not rely on the matters of this world to line up on our behalf. In our culture, we tend to give all of our attention to solving the depression crisis and very little to cultivating joy. So if you experience depression, if you're on depression medication, there is no shame in that. I'm not telling you to get off that. But what I'm saying is we do need to take the pursuit of joy as seriously as the elimination of depression. Okay. Um, there's a book that I read recently called Dancing in the Streets. It's really a history of collective joy and cultures around the world. It was written in 2006, but even at this time, the author said this to this day, and no doubt for good reason, suffering remains almost the exclusive preoccupation of professional psychology. Journals in the field have published 45,000 articles in the last 30 years on depression, but only 400 on joy. We're obsessed with not being depressed, but very little are understanding what leads to joy. And I would contend that as people following the way of Jesus and entering into his life, we must understand that joy was not an optional peripheral add-on, but it was the very substance and fruit of the life he came to bring. Which means it's not, I'll take it if it comes, but I'm not gonna try to make anything happen. No, no, no, no. When you're a follower of Jesus, you take the pursuit of joy very seriously because when we become people of joy, we become like Jesus. Or you could say the opposite. When you be when you follow the way of Jesus, joy is the fruit. Dallas Willard said, you must arrange your days so that you are experiencing total commitment, contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with Jesus. That and that alone is what makes a soul healthy. And what he's saying is our life before God is about paying attention to our thoughts, cultivating the substance of our hearts, and making decisions that actually root us and keep us anchored in the joy that Jesus not only came to model, but he came to give us in his own words. Right? We must move in the opposite direction of the way of the world, which means we must take joy seriously, or as the great prop prophet Bono said, joy is an act of defiance. And this is a good message for us in the church because sometimes we think that joy is this great thing that happens when it shows up. But it really has not what my life has nothing to do with whether I'm joyful or not. That is not true, and that's not what the scriptures say. We're gonna talk about that in a second. But I want to continue with you as we go through go through this season, joy is not just a fleeting emotion, but it's an internal disposition and reality that can be cultivated and it can be taken seriously because not only do you need it, but the world needs it. The joy of Jesus lived out through his disciples. You guys with me? This is important to me. Uh I've been on a journey. I think this has been one of the sub-themes over the my last few years. I noticed a few years ago when I took a sabbatical, I took a few months off of pastoring in the church, and one of the things I noticed in my own heart was I um I took great, I took great meaning in pastoring and the work I get to do, but I just realized I was doing a lot of great things, but I wasn't experiencing deep joy. Maybe you've ever maybe you felt like that. You're like, everything is generally right, but I'm not experiencing deep joy. And that was one of the questions I kind of took into sabbatical with me. I'll make a very long story short, but for me, um one of the realizations was I had this picture that I was as a pastor doing things for God rather than doing things with God. I that he had tasked me to go help and be in people's lives and to teach good things, but I was really kind of doing it without him and his presence right here. And he had to show me, no, if you do that, that there's no fun, there's no joy in going doing things by yourself. That's why, and even in John 15, Jesus said, Abide in me. And I and and he he goes to this whole picture of the vine and the branches, this interconnectivity. And he then he ends with, I'm saying, I'm speaking these things to you so that your joy may be full. If you want to know where joy is, it comes from the abiding thing. And I had to relearn that everything I do, even this this very moment right here, I'm not doing something. To you, I am like I'm I'm I have to be I'm consciously aware that the presence of God is here with me as we talk about Him and as we share this moment together. I'm not off doing something else, and that was so helpful for me just to know that my life is lived in communion with God, and communion is what produces joy. But that can has continued even over the last few years, and I've been acutely aware of even in my life, I have the way I'm wired, I can think about really big picture, big complex issues, and I like tackling big things and talking about philosophical things all the time. I I enjoy that. All my friends know, like if they come into town, they get off the plane within five minutes, we're talking politics, we're talking theology, we're talking, we're talking all of life's biggest issues. And I love that. I love kind of going to the super deep, ethereal things. I love reading, I love learning, um, I love devotion to God and all these things. But when I honestly reflect on where in my life is God inviting me most into Christ-likeness, I would say it's mostly right now. It's not in learning more devotion and more discipline and more intensity and more how do we solve big things. It's learning to experience everyday life through the lens of a child. So it's so for me, my greatest obedience to Jesus right now when I get home is learning to take everything that I am, that's in my head, in my heart from the day, and all these big issues that I'm with people, and learning to kind of set those down so I can get down on my knees and play with my kids. That's where Christ-likeness looks the most. Uh, that's the biggest invitation for me right now is don't check out of the the very opportunity for joy with the kids that I've given you right now. How many of you guys know intensity is not a fruit of the spirit? Joy is a fruit of the spirit. And so, to me, that's part of my own discipleship to Jesus as learn as taking joy seriously and learning how to play again in the way that even Jesus embodied in his very life. Are you guys with me? Jesus seemed to enjoy God and enjoy other people while being enjoyed by others. Do you do can you just think about how wild this is that the Savior of the world actually enjoyed the people he was trying to save? That's good. So choosing joy, joy is something that we don't wait to happen. It is the fruit of a life cultivated before God, but just a few things. And next week, Mary Jean Powers is gonna be here. She's gonna be talking about cultivating joy and what it looks like to enter into the life of joy. So she's gonna do an incredible job next week. I'm gonna talk about three things before we end here. Number one, like I already talked about, joy comes through communion, it's the abiding life. Psalm 16, 11 says, You make known to me the path of life in your presence, there is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures for every more. And this is really good news for us because even if the circumstances in your life are not necessarily joyful, if you are in communion with God, which basically means in relationship with God through Jesus, and you're aware of his presence with you in your life, that has enough power with you to sustain joy even through unideal circumstances. That's good news. Because it means your life is rooted in something that cannot be taken from you. Communion is always available even in suffering. Even when your character or circumstances are broken, you do not have to be cut off from joy. That's good news. Joy also comes through gratitude. And this is where Paul, his his angle on joy is just go take joy. That's what Paul, like, so you read through the the the New Testament, Paul would use phrases like rejoice in the word, uh rejoice in the Lord. In other words, go go joy in the Lord. It's like this verb, go find joy, just go do it. He seemed to, he made it seem a lot easier than maybe what it feels like sometimes. But Philippians 4, verse 4 is probably one of the best passages on this. And he says, Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Rejoice in the Lord always. Take joy in the Lord always. And he says, Do not be anxious. In every situation, in prayer, in thanksgiving, just let it all be made known to God. And something will happen to you. Peace that transcends understanding will come upon you. If you learn the movements of rejoicing and learn the movements of Thanksgiving, that's why gratitude actually rewires us from the inside out. Gratitude is one of those things that when you're being discipled by your phone or your computer and the discontent of the world, gratitude is what roots you in what God has made available to you every day of your life in Himself. I love that even Thanksgiving Day, we just come off the heels of Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago. And Thanksgiving, I learned, was made a national holiday in 1863 during the Civil War. Like right on the heels of the Civil War. Lincoln says, All right, we need to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Like in the phase, like this was the most horrific battle that had hit the soil of the United States. And they're all reeling from loss. They all have lost people they loved, their cities are blown down, everything is not as it should be. All of their promises and dreams were dashed. In the wake of this, even Lincoln says, No, we need to make Thanksgiving a national holiday holiday because we need to learn how to see through the pain and the suffering that we're going. And remember that there's still more hope and promise waiting for us on the other side. That's the beauty of even Thanksgiving Day, that even if as we walk through sorrow, we can practice the future that is waiting for us. And that is the way of the believer, that is the way of gratitude. So joy comes through learning to choose to see what we may not be able to see in the moment. That is a choice. And the fruit of that choice often produces joy. So we learn joy through communion, joy through thanksgiving, but then joy through suffering. And this is this is a very important thing to know that even as we enter into the Advent season, we're in a season of waiting. The season is like this kind of lead up to Christmas Day. It's historically a season of waiting. And it's this picture of we have one foot in the world where there is sorrow, but we have one foot in the world to come, which means that we can walk with joy. And what I love is that the truth that if we actually want to experience joy, it does require that we open our hearts in times of suffering, that you actually your heart remains open in suffering. It's not the antithesis. Joy isn't coming in the absence of suffering, it comes oftentimes in the middle of it because suffering is how God produces joy in us most of the time. Because it enlarges our capacity to actually experience, to give, and to receive love. And it's a good word for us that we really cannot, we're unable to experience joy if we're also minimizing pain. When you minimize the negative emotions in your life, sadness, anger, disappointment, when you minimize though, because it's because they're uncomfortable, oftentimes when we stuff down the hard things, we also stuff down the good things. Your heart was made to be open and whole and alive and to feel in every possible way. So oftentimes even the feeling of sadness is actually tucked into the promise of joy because you know that joy is actually possible as well. And so it's very important that we, even as followers of Jesus, remember that when we are following him, it does require that we learn the right tools to grieve our losses, to lament the things that we've lost. And even this year, and coming into Christmas, some of you have lost people that you've loved. And you're coming into like a time where it's like, man, I don't know how to experience joy without that person right next to me. But your ability to hold that space with God, knowing that that may be true, but that's not all that is true. And that's not all that is true. It shouldn't be ignored, but the full story is that you also have this eternal life with Him that cannot be taken from you. And I believe, and and John Mark Homer said it like this the more you mature in Jesus, the more you grow in the capacity to hold both sorrow and joy and dynamic tension. Maturity in Christ means that you can hold both of them together. You can be you can connect with the sorrow and the pain, but that does not need to diminish the possibility that you can receive the glad tidings of great joy. I think that's a good word for some of us here today. That you don't have to have, they're not separate things, they can exist together. This is what Paul says in Romans chapter 5, and we'll have the worship team come up. Romans chapter 5, he says, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, which is kind of a wild idea. He says, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. So from his vantage point that even suffering has the ability to produce beauty and depth and capacity and character and hope. And we have joy because he's poured into us his Holy Spirit that's been given to us. So the invitation, I believe, in this season as we we hold this kind of advent season, we can talk about joy as the superficial, let's all be joyful things. But the deeper reality of joy is the substance of what God has done for us, the world that we're headed toward in Him, where there comes a day where he wipes away every tear from our eyes, and he makes all broken things renewed in his name. What that should do, what that picture should do of the future that awaits you in Christ, is it should allow you to walk a little bit lighter with a smile on your face, you can laugh a little bit more, knowing that that's not up to you to get to that picture, that he's already done it. Our job and our role is to trust and to believe and to enter into that. Joy is yours in Christ Jesus, and I speak that over you today. That might not be how you would describe your current season, and that's okay, but I'm telling you that Jesus' desire for you, every single one of you, is that his very joy, he is the source of joy. His desire is that his very joy does not just stay with himself, but that his joy may become your joy and not just a dose, right? Not just a little sprinkle of joy, but that your joy may be full, that your joy may be full. He is after your deepest joy, which means he's after your heart. He is after your heart. And I speak encouragement and blessing over you today. That where you are told by even in the world that there's all these things to fear, there's all these things to lack, your life sucks, your life is broken, all of these things. The truth of the matter is that Jesus has given you his joy, and his joy is full. The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Let's stand together. Let's stand together. Part of the way that we can enter into this right now to even begin cultivating joy is just the movement of gratitude. We train ourselves to see what we may be unable to see. We train ourselves to remember that this is not guaranteed. We're in a fantastic room with beautiful people. We get to worship God in freedom. We have been given breath, we've been given air, we've been given heat, water, shelter. And that's just the start of what we can name. Likely you're surrounded by people who love you, who know you. And even if you aren't, there's other people who would love to get to know you here. And I just want to speak for a moment. Maybe you don't, maybe you have yet to experience that kind of eternal joy that just goes beyond circumstance. I'm saying it's found in Jesus. It's found in, there's a lot of people who have paths who say they have paths to joy. I'm telling you, Jesus is the source of joy. If you want to know Jesus, just entrust your heart to him. Just say, Jesus, I want to follow you. That's all you have to say. I trust you, I believe you. And you give your heart to Jesus. You can come with a simple prayer like that. But we're gonna sing here. Before we sing, I just want to take a moment. Close your eyes again and just take a deep breath and start to become aware of what you are thankful for even in this moment. Even if it's hard, just become thankful. Feel free to whisper out thanksgiving to Jesus today. God, we thank you for all the gifts that you've given us. That it's so much more, this world is so much more full of love and your joy than anything else. And I just ask that even today we can tap into that even a little bit. God, I thank you that you are the source of joy. And it was for the joy set before you that you endured the cross. This is why we are here today. It's because you had joy in your heart. So I thank you today, Jesus, to help us to cultivate, to choose, to rejoice in your name so that we can experience your life. Jesus, let's sing this together.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

So, in the fruit of just what we're talking about with joy, um, a number of months ago we were praying as worship leaders about like what is the Lord speaking for this next season and things like that. And the Lord spoke to me, he said, you need to make room for joy. And I was like a little taken back because I am the type of person like Luke where I just drive on intensity. So I love intensity, I'm all about it. But the Lord was like, hey, you need to make space for joy. And I just want to encourage us not only to like expect joy to happen to us or to expect it to come out of us, but I think even internally to give a little risk and room for joy to be present. Does that make sense? Because it's an active choice, like joy is automatically having warfare against it. Everything in our society is warring against joy. And so for us, we need to take an active posture and an active stance of saying, I will make space and I will make room for joy to be present and for it to happen. Like for you to actually have awareness to it. So that's my encouragement.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Come on. Hey, listen, um, and before we end our time, we're gonna have some ministry team members on the sides of the room. And maybe you're here today and you just want prayer with someone. It's like someone to pray with you that you can experience joy, maybe something else in your life that you just want someone to pray with you. Maybe you need prayer for sickness or healing in your body. Uh, you'll see people on the sides of the room that will have a purple badge on. These are people you can trust to pray with you. If you don't know how to pray yourself, or you just want someone to pray with you, we'd love to do that. And as you go, and listen, as you go, we have gifts for you to take with you. Take one for yourself and your family, take one for a neighbor, and then share that soul up a moment later so we can get to thousands, alright? Let me pray this one prayer over you as we go here. We're going in the spirit of joy. Just put your hands up in front of you, like you're receiving a Christmas gift. Here's what Paul says: he says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Come on. Thank you, Jesus. Go enjoy, go rejoicing. Love you guys.