Joy Week 1: "Enjoying God"

Music.

Faith every day. Today, we're kicking off a brand new series called Joy.

Joy is something every single one of us longs for.

But let's be real, so many people are living without it. Maybe you've been feeling

the weight of stress, worry, or sadness lately. You're not alone.

Music.

The truth is, real, lasting joy isn't something we chase after.

It's a gift we receive through a relationship with Jesus.

In today's message, we're talking about where true joy begins,

how it's rooted in salvation, how it glows through obedience,

and how joy can endure even in the hardest seasons of life.

So whether you're listening in the car, at home, or on a walk, lean in.

God wants you to know that joy isn't just possible, it's available to you right now through Him.

Let's jump into today's message, Joy Week 1, Enjoying God.

Joy. It's what we all want in our lives, and we spend most of our lives seeking it, don't we?

Statistics show us that more than 280 million people around the world suffer from depression.

In fact, a recent Gallup report found that 40% of the global population experiences

elevated stress levels on a daily basis.

A daily basis.

Nearly a third struggle with worry and sadness. Yes.

Here in the United States, it's reported that only 13%, 13%,

if you went up to someone and asked them if they were happy or if they had joy in their lives,

only 13% would say they have joy in their lives.

One in three people are battling anxiety and depression.

These numbers are more than just statistics. They're stories.

It's been my story and my struggle in my life experience. It's been some of your struggle.

I know that a lot of us struggle with anxiety and worry and depression and sadness.

Why is it that joy just seems to be like the carrot dangled over the donkey

or horse, and it's just something that we're always chasing,

but we never are able to attain it.

Well, over the next few weeks, we're going to be taking a look at how we can

find joy, more importantly, how we can live with joy.

And here's the good news. True joy is not based on our circumstances.

It's a good thing too, right? Because our circumstances most of the time are pretty hard.

This life, we know there's trouble. Jesus even said that in this life,

you will have trouble, but take heart because I've overcome the world.

You see, what we need to understand about joy is that real, lasting joy is only

found through and in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And he offers a joy that the world can't give and that circumstances cannot ever take away.

And if you're taking notes, you should have been handed a sheet of paper.

If you don't have one of those and you need one, go ahead and raise your hand.

And because I am so ADO squirrel, like it helps me when I take notes.

Like I just, it just helps me. So I figured if it helps me, it might help you.

But here's the big idea of this morning's message.

Joy isn't a feeling we chase.

It's a gift that we receive through our relationship with God.

It's not a feeling that we chase.

It's a gift that we receive through our relationship with God.

This morning, some of you are in luck.

Because it's a little longer day this morning and we have a business meeting,

I'm going to try to go short. I said try. I didn't say I would. I said try.

But I'm going to try. I'm going to give it a good college effort, right? But...

Let me give you four principles of joy this morning. In other words,

if you want to have joy in your life, you need to know and understand these truths.

And the first one is this, that joy is always found in God's presence.

And a subtitle for that would be, this is where the joy starts.

Apart from the presence of God, you'll never experience true joy.

I love Psalm 1611. and it says, you reveal the path of life to me.

In your presence is abundant. Other translations might say is fullness of joy.

It's the understanding that when you have the presence of God,

there is a full and complete joy.

It's full. You couldn't have more joy because it's complete. it's full.

At your right hand, David says, are eternal pleasures.

See, when you and I are in God's presence, we experience God's joy.

You can't help but experience it when you're in his presence.

You know why so many people are hopeless and without joy?

It's because they're trying to do life chasing better circumstances,

better materialistic things, instead of living a life that's in the presence of God.

Here, David isn't just being in God's presence every once in a while.

He's attached it to this phrase, you reveal the path of life to me. What is he saying?

In the Hebrew Bible, the term path often symbolizes not just the course of someone's

life, but the moral conduct prescribed by God.

So what he's saying is that when we live a life that's aligned with God's ways

and his purposes and his moral conduct and values,

when we are living that life in his presence, there is that fullness and abundance of joy.

The term presence here translates to the notion of being before God's face. I love that.

Suggesting that there is the closeness of your relationship.

It's your relationship that you have with the Lord that ends up giving you the joy of the Lord.

It's not religion.

It's not tasks. It's not doing things.

It's walking face to face with God, hand in hand, arm in arm,

and everything you do that gives you joy because you're doing life in his presence.

You're not just trying to go meet him on a Sunday.

You with me? It's continually being in the presence of God.

Joy is found in an intimate face-to-face relationship, right?

How many of you ever did long-distance dating?

How many of you married that person?

Okay, well, then you can ignore this part. You know what?

Most of us, if we try long-distance relationship, it's not too fulfilling, is it? It's heartache.

It's hard. We never get to see that person. But man, when I get to be with my

wife's like, oh, please don't point me out.

But when I get to do life with my wife and we're face to face and we're hand

in hand and we're arm in arm, isn't that when that relationship brings me the most joy?

It's the same thing with our Heavenly Father. as we live in relationship with

him on a hourly, minute, minutely, not sure that's a word, but you know what I'm saying?

It's a consistent living face-to-face in the presence of God.

And experiencing intimacy with God always, always results in complete and abundant joy.

I found this quote, and I could not find who said it.

Google didn't even know. So if Google didn't know, you know, I mean.

But listen to what one author said. He said, when we draw near to God,

we step into the atmosphere of joy. He doesn't just give joy.

He is our joy.

He's our joy. If you ever did the Bible recap plan, a new version,

or the Tara Lee Cobble, she always ends her podcast saying, and hey, he's where the joy is.

That's because he is joy.

Let me give you one more verse.

Psalm 21, 6 says, Surely you have granted him unending blessings and made him

glad with the joy of your presence.

Again, David connects blessings and gladness with the joy of walking the path

that God has established for us to walk.

So if you want to have joy, number one, you have to be walking in the presence

of God because he's where joy is found.

But number two, you need to know that if joy is found in God's presence,

then obviously joy comes through salvation.

Through salvation. And here's the tagline for this one.

This is where joy is rooted. If joy is being in the presence of God in a face-to-face

relationship, then it's rooted in salvation.

Because you cannot be face-to-face in a relationship if you haven't first come

to him in complete surrender.

And so it's through salvation that joy takes root in our life.

Our deepest joy is knowing that we are saved and forgiven and made new.

That will carry you through a lot of things when other things don't go your

way. when the money runs out, when the food runs out, when your kids take off,

when you find yourself abandoned and alone, guess what?

The joy that you have of your salvation is more than enough to carry you.

It's true. Isaiah 61.10 says this, I rejoice greatly in the Lord.

Isaiah says, I exalt in my God.

What's his reason for rejoicing and for having joy?

Isaiah said, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and wrapped

me in a robe of righteousness.

Those righteous robes are not my own. Those righteous robes are the robes from Christ.

It says, as a groom wears a turban and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.

How can we not have joy in our lives when the creator and the God of the universe

sent his one and only son for you and for me to die for us? We just celebrated Easter.

And one of the things that overwhelmed me all throughout my studying of Easter

and throughout the, you know, the Holy Week of Easter, quote unquote,

is that God had, Jesus had the foreknowledge of everything that would take place.

He knew it. He knew it. That's why he prayed, Father, if this cup could pass

for me, if there's any other way that we can do this plan, can we do it?

Because I know what's coming and it's not pleasant, but because I love them

so much, God, if this father, if this is your will, then I'll do it.

And he did it for you and for me.

And he's clothed us. He's taken away the sinful Jeff and he's replaced it with

clothes of righteousness.

It's not my own righteousness.

He's taken you, and if you've trusted Christ, the blood of Jesus,

like the Passover, he looks at the blood and he sees the righteousness of Jesus on your life.

Your deepest, darkest secrets, your deepest, most painful, ugly sins are gone,

clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

As I was studying in my quiet time this week, I came across John 15.

And if you're not familiar with it, it's where Jesus is talking about he's the

vine and where the branch is and that the father is the gardener.

And as I read about this, this phrase in Christ continually was jumping out at me.

And the thought occurred to me that almost everyone in the world wants at least

some of these fruit that are being described. The fruit of the Spirit is found

in Galatians 5, and everyone wants it. Everyone wants some peace.

Everyone wants a little joy.

Everyone wants love. It's all about love, love, love, love, love. It's all about love.

We all want these things, yet they come from the Holy Spirit.

Everyone wants peace. It's all about peace, right?

Bob, peace, down by the river in a van. You were probably a hippie down there.

I can see it promoting peace and love.

But these are the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

If they start with God and they're rooted in Christ, then you have to be in

Christ to have them as part of your lives.

If you want joy in your life, you need the presence of God in your life. You need salvation.

You need to be in Christ. The third truth about joy is this.

Joy grows through obedience. Why?

Because obedience is where joy is lived out.

As we walk in obedience with the Lord, the closer that we get to him and the

closer we are face-to-face doing life with him, the more joy we experience,

the more we're with him and honoring him with our lives.

This is what John said in John 15.

If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my

father's commands and remain in his love.

I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, right?

If we keep his commands, we remain in his love, then my joy is in you.

And he says, your joy may be complete.

You will never have complete joy apart from God's presence, apart from salvation,

and apart from walking in obedience.

And if you miss any of these, then you don't have joy.

You'll be chasing it. Maybe you've come to Christ and you've been saved.

And you try to do the Christian things and you try to do this and you try to

do that to be in God's presence.

But if you're not face to face and you're not living with him on a daily basis,

walking in obedience with him, then you're going to be chasing joy and you're not going to find it.

Obedience is the pathway to joy.

Obedience is the pathway to joy. And I know the Bible gets a bad rap,

even among Christians, right?

Oh man, the Bible is just a list of rules. It's just a list of do's and don'ts.

And it's just regulations. It's trying to hold me back. But that's not what

the word of God is at all. Listen to me.

Obedience doesn't drain your joy. It unlocks it.

It's a key that unlocks joy that cannot be taken away in your life.

Living God's way, doing his way, leads to lasting joy.

Jesus said, my yoke, the way of my path, it's easy.

It's not a burden. to love the Lord.

It's not a burden to go to church. It's not a burden to worship and sing.

It's not a burden to give back to the Lord what's already his.

Those are joys. And when you learn to walk in that lifestyle,

you're going to have joy that your situation could never steal from you,

could never steal from you.

Man. Let me ask you a question.

Is joy something that's given to us? Is it a gift or is it something that we, how do I ask this?

Or is it a result of something? Is it a gift or is it a result?

Both. I heard several of you say both. Both.

We know from Galatians 5 that the fruit of the Spirit is a result of the Holy

Spirit's work in the life of the believer, right?

And so this means that joy is both a gift and a process.

Let me unpack that for just a second. Here's what that means.

At the moment of salvation, the Bible teaches that a believer,

when they surrender their life to Christ and they yield to him,

he gives us a new spirit. He puts a new spirit in us.

So a believer received the Holy Spirit. This means that the capacity to bear

the fruit of the spirit is given

at salvation. So you have the capacity within you given at salvation.

It happens immediately because the spirit now dwells in us.

However, the growth of that fruit, the love, the joy, the peace,

patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Why is it that I have to start singing our kids' Sunday school songs like,

goodness, faith, and self-control?

Those are the things that run through my head. But it's that fruit that develops

over time through continued obedience and yielding to the Spirit, it grows in your life.

The more that you and I walk the path of life in the presence of God,

and we are yielded to the Word of God, and the Spirit of God begins to transform

our character so that when there was no love for people, now we have love for people, right?

Where there was no peace in our life, we suddenly find that we have peace.

When there was no joy in our life, suddenly our circumstances no longer define

whether or not we have joy.

That's why you can stand in the middle of a storm and sing, it is well with my soul.

And verses like 2 Corinthians 4, 16 become to be a banner over our lives.

And it says, we don't give up.

Even though our outward person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.

And because of God's presence in my life, I have joy that's beyond measure.

Because I've been saved, I can rejoice greatly.

If you've been saved and experienced the forgiveness of God in your life,

you can't help but live in obedience.

And that unlocks true joy. Number four, joy endures through trials.

Joy endures through trials. There's a lot of verses I could have pulled up. I pulled up 1 Peter 1.

You rejoice in this. even though now for a short time, if necessary,

you suffer grief in various trials,

so that the proven character of your faith, more valuable than gold,

which through perishable is refined by fire, may result in praise,

glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Why does joy endure through trials?

Because circumstances do not define joy. Achievements, possessions,

wealth do not define joy.

Joy is found in knowing and trusting and walking with God.

And it's rooted in who He is and what He's done.

And that never changes, no matter what our lives look like and no matter what life may bring.

When we walk through trials with Christ, our faith grows and our character looks

more and more like his than our own.

And if your character looks more like his, then you're going to be having joy like his as well.

Joy is not the absence of trials.

It's the presence of hope in the middle of them.

It's hope. It's the hope that we have in Christ that we talked about a couple

of weeks ago in heaven for us.

One of my favorite verses in

scripture in the Old Testament is by the Old Testament, prophet Habakkuk.

He says this, though the fig tree does not bud and there is no fruit on the

vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,

though the flocks disappear from the pan and there are no herds in the stalls,

he says, yet I will celebrate in the Lord.

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. And I think some of us in our circumstances

today need to say that small phrase, yet I will.

Man, I lost my job. Yet I will. My friends have abandoned me. Yet I will.

I don't know how we're going to pay these bills. Yet I will.

Make it the cry of your heart that you will celebrate in the Lord.

Rejoice in the Lord, the God. Why? What does he say? He says,

I will rejoice in the God of my.

Salvation. If you've been saved, you should have joy. Habakkuk lived in an agricultural

economy and he describes this awful, desperate situation. He had nothing.

His income, the fruit of the vine, empty.

No fruit.

No income, no fruit, no food.

Nothing in the stalls. They'd eaten everything and it was hopeless.

And in the midst of that, he was able to say, I will. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

Reminds me of the hymn I just mentioned a minute ago, It Is Well With My Soul.

I grew up going to church every Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday

and everything in between.

And there was a guy in our church. His name was Dick Marcus.

He always had root beer barrels in his suit coat pocket, so we would always go up to him for candy.

Maybe some of you should implement this. I don't know. James,

you want to be the candy man? I don't know.

But he would always, on Sunday nights, he would always sing this hymn,

and he would tell a hymn story about how it was written.

And I love the story of how it as well was written. It was written by a man

named Horatio Spafford.

Great name. He was a successful lawyer and businessman in Chicago in the 1800s.

He was a devout Christian.

In 1871, the great Chicago fire ruined him financially. He lost his business.

He lost all the real estate investments he had. He lost his home.

Everything was destroyed.

Around that time, his young son fell sick and died of pneumonia.

So, hoping to find rest and comfort and recovery for the rest of his family,

Horatio decided to take his family on a trip to Europe.

But he was delayed by business, so he sent his wife and his four daughters ahead by ship.

During the voyage, the ship collided with another vessel, and it sank quickly,

and all four daughters died.

His wife survived and sent him a telegram with just two haunting words saved alone,

as horatio later traveled across the atlantic to join his wife the ship when

it passed this place where the other ship had gone down and his children had

passed away they stopped the ship and gave him a moment to pray,

to grieve,

to mourn the loss.

And it was there at the location where his daughters had drowned that he stood

there with tears coming down his face and he penned the words to the hymn,

when peace like a river attendeth my way,

when sorrow like sea billows roll,

whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

Now how could someone who had lost

everything his money his

son his four daughters stand at the same spot

where they had recently drowned and write that it's well with his soul it's

because his joy was not built on earthly circumstances his joy wasn't even built

on his family or his wife or his son or his daughters.

It was built upon the unshakable presence and the goodness and faithfulness of God.

Let me be vulnerable with you for just a moment.

The last few weeks have been hard, incredibly hard. Some of the hardest weeks

of ministry we've ever experienced in our lives.

And as I've been pressing into the Lord and walking with him face to face,

he continually asks me these three things.

Music.

Am I good?

Yes, you're good. But this stinks, this stinks, this stinks,

this stinks. He says, no, no, am I good? Yes, you're good.

And then he says, am I faithful? Like, yeah, you are absolutely 100% faithful.

And then he says, do you trust me?

I'm trying to. And I just want to encourage you this morning.

I want you to walk away knowing that you can have joy that can't be taken from

you regardless of your circumstance, regardless how many surgeries you've had,

regardless of what people do, what people say, how people treat you.

No matter your circumstance, if you live in obedience in his presence face to face with him,

there is no trial that could come along and steal your joy. Let's pray.

Father, I thank you that you are good.

Thank you that you are faithful and that you are trustworthy and we can trust

you with every detail of our lives, no matter how big, no matter how small.

Father, I pray through your spirit that you right now in this place would encourage

my friends to put their trust in you.

To live in obedience to you, to live face-to-face, doing life with you.

I know in a room this size, there's people that are hurting.

There's people that need prayer.

We want you to know that we're here for you and we want to walk alongside you.

If you need prayer, I'll be at the front. Some of the prayer team will be at the front.

And we're going to sing a song that puts the focus back onto the goodness of God.

I'm going to invite you to stand if you can and if you're able,

go ahead and stand right now.

Lord, you are good. Your mercies endure forever.

As we sing this song, would you please meet people where they're at and may

the circumstances and the situations that they find themselves in,

fade into the background and may they focus on your face and your goodness.

We love you. In Jesus' name, amen.

You've been listening to the Generations Church podcast. If you'd like more

information about Generations Church, feel free to get in touch with us at info

at generationchurch.us or head over to our website,

www.generationchurch.us.

Thanks for listening. Thank you.