Remember the Source of Your Joy (Pastor Vann Trapp)

Good morning, good to see you all here.

Got to see some of you guys last week

we were at Goddard Park that was fun

to just kind of gather there for a kind of a soft kickoff

and then to be back here together

and just as we get into the fall.

It's great to see you guys here.

It's great to have Emily.

She's going to be such a blessing for our kids.

We are so thankful to God for what he had done

in providing just bringing them to the church

and just kind of really opening her heart up to the idea

of investing in CC kids and just pouring into those lives.

So we just want to constantly be thanking God for that.

Amen, amen.

And so many good things that are getting kicked off

this fall here at Christ Church.

We're going to hear a little bit more about those

at the end towards the end of the service.

And we're going to find out kind of some of the opportunities

that we have to get invested in the things

that God might be doing here.

But right now I want you to think about,

I want you to think about the beginning of this fall

in your life.

Okay, I want you to just kind of,

you're here at church and you're going,

oh, we're getting to church

and we're trying to get away from thinking about that.

But I want you to think about the fall.

I want you to think about what's changed

for you this fall, what stayed the same

maybe as you got started.

Maybe there's some challenges that you're facing this fall

that you were hoping would go away during the summer, right?

And they didn't.

Maybe you're looking and there's a lot of unknown

in front of you or maybe there's a lot

that is just the same old, same old,

but you're not sure whether it's going to stay that way

or whether things are going to kind of get changed

because things just,

the fall is that kind of opening up of new things, right?

And so we, a lot of times we see it that way.

Here at Christ Church,

we have a lot of things that kick off every fall.

We have these groups and they're meant to,

we start them so that they'll equip us

and so that we'll get connected together better

and so that we'll be able to reach out to our community

and to the world better.

And we start these things up but we're never sure.

We're never sure.

Do we start the right ministries?

Do we kick off the right groups?

Do we have the right leaders?

Do we get the information out in the right way

so that you guys know what's going on

and things that you guys are interested in

and that will help you?

Because whenever we go into a new situation,

we know that whether it's a new situation

or a new season, or just think about it.

I mean every new day, right?

Every new day we go into it

and we're not always, it's new

and so we're not always sure how to approach it.

And we look to God at times to give us some important,

just some insights

and God has given us some important insights

for how to approach those times of transition

which happen more regularly than we would admit

but to approach those transitions most effectively.

And so there's a story in the book of Second Chronicles.

Now that may be a unfamiliar book to some of you.

I don't know that we always go into the,

we say I think I'm gonna read Second Chronicles today

but we're gonna start in Second Chronicles chapter 20

2 Chronicles 20 · chapter mention

where Judah, who is God's people

and Jehoshaphat, who is Judah's king,

they're facing a threat, a challenge

that they don't know how to approach.

And so if you stand with me,

we're gonna start in Second Chronicles chapter 20 verse one

2 Chronicles 20 · chapter mention

through four.

So as now it came about that the armies of Moab

and Ammon together with some of the warriors

from the Mu Knights who were from this other territory

called Edom or Seer,

they came to make war against Judah

and Jehoshaphat, their king.

And messengers came to him and told him

a vast army is coming out against you

from beyond the Dead Sea out of Aram.

And they have already reached HaZazan Tamar

which is another name for Ingeti.

Jehoshaphat was terrified

and turned his attention to seek the Lord

and proclaimed to faster out all of Judah

and all Judah gathered together

to seek help from the Lord.

Let me just pray for us.

Father, we wanna ask that this morning

that you would open our hearts to see

and to hear your words

and to really get insight.

You give us eyes to see, ears to hear,

hearts to understand

so that we would hear your instructions.

So that we might be those

who with wisdom approach these different transitions

and openings in our lives

in a way that honors you,

a way that brings in your kingdom,

a way that continues to allow us to grow in Christ.

So we give you this service

and give you our full attention.

Speak to us, spirit of God,

come and teach us and change us in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen.

Have a seat.

So later in this passage,

so if you have your Bibles

and they're open at Chronicles 20,

Second Chronicles 20,

you can kinda look down through here.

I'm gonna be referring to some of the verses

but later on this passage,

it tells all of the people

that were actually gathered there.

It says all Judah came together

and it says not just the men

who were gonna go fight the battle

but it says their wives

and their kids were all there

because they were worried

and they're there

and they don't know what to do

and they're fasting and they're praying

and asking God what to do.

So Jehoshaphat,

he stands up and leads them in a prayer

and in this prayer,

he recounts to God

how God had brought them into this land.

He recounts to God

how God had not allowed them on the way in

to fight against Ammon

or to fight against the sons of Moab

or to fight against Edom

but God had said, no, pass them by.

Don't pick a quarrel with them.

They're not your,

and now these are the ones

that are trying to drive them out.

And so he ends with this verse in verse 12.

He says, oh God, you be the judge

for we are powerless

before this vast army,

this threat that has come against us

and we don't know what to do

but our eyes are on you.

Have you ever been in that place?

You're going, we are powerless

before this threat

and we don't really know what to do

but our eyes are on you.

Well, just in the spirit of the Lord

came on this one guy in the assembly

named, his name is Jehaziel

and God spoke through him

and he says, don't be afraid.

This isn't your battle.

This is the Lord's battle.

Don't be afraid

because the Lord is with you

and God's promise is, man,

that he's going to be with us

in everything to his people.

But at that, it says at that point

when they heard this, everybody hit the ground.

They're on their faces.

They're just thanking God.

They're just worshiping

and the Levites are up singing

and praising God.

And that next morning when they got up

and they go to this place of battle

like God had told him, he said,

this is where you're going to engage them.

This is where you're going to see them.

They're on their way but they said,

you know what we want to do?

We want to lead with,

we're going to lead with our Levites

with those who worship God

and our worship leaders.

They're going to put those in front,

the Levites and the Kohathites

and the Korahites

and they were leading the way

and they were singing

all the way to this place

where the battle was going to take place

and they're singing

and they're pulling from their history

and they're singing these words

of, give thanks to the Lord

for his loving kindness is everlasting.

And you know what it says happen?

It says that the Lord ambushed

Ammon and Moab and Seer.

And so the Ammonites and the Moabites

they got together and they ganged up

on the Edomites and they destroyed them

and then they fought against each other

and they destroyed each other.

So by the time that Judah

actually came over the hill to that battlefield

and here they are worshiping away

on their way into the battlefield

and they come over the ridge

and there's nothing but bodies laying around

and a bunch of stuff that they had brought.

And so it's not just that there's a bunch of dead bodies

that got to take care of,

but there's, it said it took them three days

to get all the stuff gathered up

that these guys had brought

as support for their invasion, you know

and to bring it back home with them.

I don't think when they had gathered in Jerusalem

to pray and seek the Lord,

I don't think that they had anticipated that at all.

But then it says that on the fourth day

they gathered back in that same valley,

the valley that had looked like the valley

that was gonna be their disaster

and instead they called it the valley of their blessing.

And they returned to Jerusalem with joy

because what looked like Terran sorrow

God had made into joy over their worst nightmare.

You guys, that's a pretty good entry

into a intimidating situation, wouldn't you say?

I mean, that's one of the worst situations

you could think of.

So what do we see here?

When God's people are faced

with something they don't know how to handle,

first they come together in agreement

like we talked about last week, right?

They come together in agreement.

Second, they pray first, right?

We handed out these wristbands last week,

we have them I think available somewhere,

but we have these wristbands that you guys can pick one up

because we wanna learn how to do this,

how to be a people that we pray first,

they listen for God, but then what did God tell them to do?

What did God leave them to do?

Lead with worship.

Why?

Because good things happen

when we lead with worship in our lives.

We're gonna talk about that today.

Not just lead with our strengths,

not just lead with our best ideas.

Those aren't bad things to do,

but he says lead with worship, acknowledge Jesus,

give him thanks and praise for all he's done,

all that he's doing, all that he's going to do.

Give him thanks for who he is.

So there are places in our world

that we know about,

that are actually experiencing right now,

literal armies, hostile armies,

come across their borders to destroy them, to take over.

Some of you guys have a love for some of these places.

Some of you guys even call these places home.

But I would say that for most of us

who are here this morning,

I would say that we don't have a strong connection

to that threat, that kind of a threat,

that kind of imminent life-changing,

life-threatening kind of a threat.

The closest we might get to that

is every once in a while we'll have these riots

that break out in some of our cities, right?

And when you're watching it on TV

and slowly it, the chaos ensues

and all the systems and structures seem to break down in.

And as you're watching that, you're going,

there doesn't seem to be anything that can contain this.

And then you start feeling like, man, this could easily,

it seems like either erupt in our own town

or drift over into our own neighborhood.

But that's really the closest that many of us get to

feeling anything like what Judah was going through

when Amon and Moab and Seer were coming at them

with their armies.

But I do think that in spite of the fact

that we don't face literal threats like that,

maybe armies coming across our borders,

every day, every day if we're honest,

has the potential, doesn't it,

to throw something at us that could really mess up our lives.

Have you ever had a day like that?

You went into it not expecting anything

and all of a sudden something happened

that just turned everything upside down.

Because every day has that potential

to bring us into a place that we echo the words

that Jehoshaphat prayed when he said,

we are powerless before this threat.

We don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

So why do we worship?

Why do we worship?

We worship in those times and in any time,

in any day, because we're never sure

what the day will bring, any situation,

why do we worship?

Because we need to remember who God is, right?

Our God, he says he is good.

Our God is good.

He acts towards us with grace and with kindness.

He is consistently good towards us.

He doesn't change.

He isn't swayed by who I am or who I'm not

or what I've done or what I haven't done.

He is constantly looking to do what is best for us

and bring us into the best place that we could be.

That's what he created us for.

That's what he intends for us.

Our God is good.

As Yahoshaphat, as he was sending the Levites into battle

and he said, he gave them these words.

He said, don't forget these words.

He said, trust in the Lord,

trust in the word of the prophets,

but don't forget these words that come from our history,

that come from our songs that we sing,

the Psalms that we found to be true.

Give thanks to the Lord for his loving kindness

is everlasting.

His kindness towards us is eternal.

It's eternal in the duration.

How long it lasts is eternal in his depth.

How deep it goes is eternal in that it's beyond

our comprehension even of how he's going to apply it

and show us that his loving kindness is constant

and that it doesn't change.

God is good.

He is good without end.

And so when we go into a new situation or a new day

or a new season or a new, we go into it,

we lead with worship.

Why? Because we need to remember who our God is.

We also lead with worship because we need to remember

who we are.

God is God and we're not.

Most situations that we go into, we're over our heads

even if we don't like to admit it.

Even in those places where we go in there saying,

hey, I got this one handled.

I got all the bases covered.

I've done all the homework.

I've done all the planning.

I got this one nailed down.

And we don't like to admit that even in those situations,

we may be out of our leak.

We may be over our head because if we admitted every time

that there was a threat that could consume us,

which is pretty much every moment of every day,

there's something out there.

If we admitted that, man, we would run into hiding.

We'd just curl up in a ball in some cave somewhere

and hope that it would go away.

It would drive us baddie.

But the reality is that there are threats in our lives

that surround us.

They are physical.

They are mental.

They are emotional.

They are social.

They're spiritual things we can't see.

They're political, right?

They are financial, right?

Every day we have threats that are out there

that can completely consume us.

So we lead with worship to remember our God is good.

And remember that we need to depend on Him,

not just on ourselves.

You know, I asked you at the beginning,

what are the challenges that are,

what's changing for you this fall?

You know, I've talked to enough of you.

Some of you guys are starting new jobs, you know?

And that's the change.

Some of you guys have kids that are going

into a new stage of school.

And that's terrifying for parents.

It doesn't matter if it's first day

at kindergarten, middle school, high school, college,

right?

Some of you who are students,

you're going into that new stage.

And as I remember it,

there was no stage that was an easy one, right?

There's always something that you're looking at going,

oh, that looks terrifying, right?

It doesn't matter if you're going to college,

it doesn't matter if you're just going into like sixth grade.

Those changes are hard.

It may be that, maybe the summer

that you've discovered something in your health

that just changed everything about the fall

and everything that follows.

We may not be facing armies,

but we face on a daily basis things that threaten us.

And we ask, how are we supposed to approach them?

Well, we approach them the same way

that Judah approached their threat, their challenge.

Pray first, pray first, and listen for God.

And when you listen for God,

he will speak, he will speak to you,

he will reveal to you if you'll listen to him.

And then when you lead, lead with worship.

When you go into these places,

lead with worship to remember who he is and who we are.

You know, as we practice worship then,

then we become conditioned to see the good

that God has done in the past

so that we're not as intimidated

by what's coming in the future

because we know that as he's been faithful

and consistent in the past,

we can trust that he's gonna be faithful

and consistent in the future.

He's been good consistently in my life.

So why would I not believe that he's going ahead of me

and he'll be good?

You know, in Romans 8.28, it's a verse

that we don't use quite as often as we could,

just even in the good times,

that it says God will cause all things to work

for the good of those who love him

and are called according to his purposes.

Why? Because he's a good God.

Because like James says, he gives good gifts.

Every good gift comes from him.

So why wouldn't we believe that he would lead with good?

So we see, as we worship, we become conditioned

to see the things that he has done in the past.

But what that means is as we worship,

it also begins to focus our attention

so that as we trust that, yeah, he is gonna be good,

we start looking for it.

We start expecting it.

We don't miss it when it shows up.

How many times has this happened in your life

where you get through something,

you're miles down the road and you look back

and you go, huh, you know,

that was actually a pretty good thing that happened.

But you totally missed it because we were so quick

to move on to trying to figure out

how to deal with the next terror that was on the horizon,

the next threat that was in front of you.

Because we had lost sight,

not just of what God has done in the past,

but we lose sight of what God does right now

and what he has promised to do in the future.

Why do we lead with worship?

Because it trains us, it trains us to see the good

that God has done, to trust that he's going to be doing good

in the future, to also look for that.

And as we begin to look for it,

we find that yeah, he regularly pours out goodness,

kindness, grace in our lives.

He regularly targets us with good.

So we begin to see, we begin to see and enjoy the good

that God is actually doing in our lives.

We begin to understand what it means that good things happen

when we lead with worship.

So what is worship?

What is worship?

Worship is thanking God.

Worship is thanking God for the things that he's done,

things that he's done in our lives.

Worship can be adoring God for who he is.

Worship can be just standing in awe of what God has created

or just sitting in awe of what he has promised for us

or what he has accomplished in our lives

or what he has done around us.

Worship can be singing, worship can be pondering

in your mind, worship can be writing in a book

in a journal, worship can be just offering up a quick

word of praise to God as you go through your day.

Worship can be a dance, it can be a piece of art,

it can be just a walk that you take intentionally.

Worship is anything that causes us to remember

and to celebrate the good that God has done

to remember who he is and how he goes before us

and how he is with us.

So how do we lead with worship in our lives?

Well, I want you to think about me,

what is an entry point you hit every day of your life?

Well, your day.

How many of us lead with worship into our day

where we start our day and we say,

I just need to remember who God is

and that he is with me as I begin my day?

So you start, you take that his word

and you sit in it, you worship him

for what he has said about you.

You take time to pray and to just listen

for what he is saying about the day.

You take time to lay up before him and say,

God, here are the things that are in front of you

that I just don't know what to do with.

But thank you that you're with me

and that I can go into these things

now that you go before me

and that this is not my battle, but it's your battle.

And I'll do whatever you call me to do in this,

but this is yours.

What about as you walk into work

or you walk into class, right?

Or you walk into that space and as you're going in,

do you ever just say, God, thank you

for what I know is on the other side of this door,

but thank you that you're walking with me into it.

Thank you that you've been here before.

It says in Ephesians that God goes ahead of us,

that he has created us in Christ Jesus

for good works that he has planned beforehand

so that we should just walk into them.

Do you ever think about work that way?

God has planned for something here

so that I would just walk into it.

Do you ever think about like school that way?

Do you ever think about just the daily activities

of just you walking into your normal life

that God has set you up?

Start your day, start your time.

You go to spend time with a friend.

Do you ever just go into that

and you just say, God, thank you for friends, right?

Thank you for time to spend with them.

Thank you for what you want to accomplish,

your good intentions for this time

that I'm about to, how I will be blessed,

how they will be blessed, how you will be honored.

Worship, lead with worship.

The hardest one is, do you start your walk into a challenge?

When you know that something that there's a disaster,

you got to walk into the middle or a minefield,

you have to navigate through and you just say, God,

I thank you, that you know challenge I'm facing.

You know it better than I do.

You already have a solution.

And Corinthians says that he's already provided

a way of escape.

He doesn't leave us to figure it out on our own.

He's already provided the way out.

So I thank you that you've done that

and I thank you that you are.

You love me always and you are with me always,

his promises.

You know at the end of the story of Jehoshaphat

and the people of Judah, we read in verse 27, it says,

And so every man of Judah and Jerusalem

returned to Jerusalem with joy,

with Jehoshaphat leading the way,

for the Lord had made them rejoice over their enemies.

Now I imagine that the women and the children

were rejoicing with them too,

because their sons and fathers and husbands and brothers,

they weren't all dead somewhere

and they weren't in prison or in captivity or worse.

So they were rejoicing

and what were they rejoicing about?

They were rejoicing not just because

they hadn't ended up with the worst possible scenario

they had thought,

but it's because whenever an enemy is defeated too,

to the place that that place of threat

becomes to us a place of blessing

where they could call this valley

that they knew they were gonna get slaughtered in,

they knew that they could now call it this

as the valley where God blessed us.

Anytime that kind of thing happens,

it brings joy, doesn't it?

Where God completely turned something around

from your worst expectation

and probably highly probable expectation

to an outcome you couldn't have even imagined.

And it says God is the one who can and does do that.

That's the type of good that he wants to do in our lives.

So when Jesus turned the cross and the grave

into a place of life and a place of new beginnings

for us, he took that place of death

and made it a place of life instead.

There was joy.

There was joy in that.

When God in your life, when he reached out

and somehow grabbed a hold of your heart

and he led you away from sin and destruction

and hell and separation from him,

and instead he got a hold of your attention

in a way that he brought you into this life

that you didn't even know was possible,

where you relate to him, you know him as a father,

you know Jesus as a brother,

you know the Holy Spirit is the one who indwells you.

There's joy.

There's joy that comes in that.

And anytime when God takes the circumstances of our lives

and even if it's that he just takes something

that seems ordinary and mundane in every day of our lives

and he transforms it into a time that we begin to say,

man, this is where I encounter God in this moment.

We used to think of it as,

this is just the time I trudged through in my day,

but now it's the time that I see God at work.

I see him walking with me.

There's joy.

Because anytime a place of destruction

becomes a place of blessing, there's this great joy

and a joy that comes from God.

We lead in worship because we know

that good will follow because we know that our God is good.

And when God's good is brought into the picture,

we know that joy becomes a piece of it.

We look for it, we expect it, we walk in it.

That's why James could say at the beginning of his book,

he could say, count it all joy.

Even when you encounter trials, count it all joy.

You know it's coming.

You know it's coming because God is good.

And because we have chosen to lead with worship.

We wanted to start out this fall.

We wanted to start out this fall in worship.

We wanted to be a time where we worship

because we know that good things always happen

when we lead with worship.

But we also wanted to lead out this fall in worship

because we want to be a people

who have this as a habit of our lives.

We wanna be those who constantly, every step,

every part of our lives, we lead in worship.

We lead with worship.

We start out by saying, God, my eyes are on you.

I don't even know what the threats are,

but I know they're too big, so my eyes are on you.

I remember who you are.

I remember who I am.

And I thank you that you're with me.

Amen.