The Leverage of Joy - A Study of Philippians: Philippians 4:4 - Philippians: Joy Leverage

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Let me just tell you, your financial problems, your marriage problems, and your issues aren't even remotely close to where Paul was when he went.

I mean, he's in prison, he's awaiting execution, which eventually is going to be beheaded.

He's in a Roman prison next to a sewer system.

He's lost all his friends except for three.

And he's been forgotten.

Rejoice in the Lord always?

Again, I say rejoice?

Kidding me?

So out of 104 verses, 19 times he mentions joy and rejoicing.

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We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Well, guys, we're starting a new series today, and it's going to go on for several months on the book of Philippians.

And probably one of the most prevalent books, uh, prevalent movies, prevalent YouTubes out there is under the theme of success and happiness.

Everybody's looking for success and happiness.

And we've been taught since we were kids that happiness flows out of success.

That if you're successful, if you make enough money, if you have the right job or the right size house or the right woman or the right man, you'll be happy.

And so it's kind of been a viewpoint, even in psychology, of kind of outside in happiness.

That we find happiness through being successful at something.

It's interesting, though, that the recent research in what I would consider what we what's now starting to be called classically positive psychology and neuroscience, even looking at statistics and interviews with the brain, they're finding actually it's the opposite.

That one of the reasons why in America we have the most success that the world has ever known.

I mean, financially, the kind of homes we live in, the kind of jobs we have access to, the type of help that we have in uh in our medical fields, and yet we are the most medicated, the most depressed, and the most divorced nation that's ever existed on the face of the earth.

And positive psychology and neuroscience has been an attempt to dig into this issue and say, what's the problem?

If success makes us happy, why are we so successful and so unhappy?

And so, as they did empirical research, they actually began to find out just the opposite, that it's not success that makes us happy, but it's happy people who become successful.

It's interesting, isn't it, that we've been taught for so many years, just accept Jesus.

Accept Jesus, and your problems will go away.

Now, none of us would say it that crassly.

But in a sense, when we look at, especially TV evangelists and certain types of preachers, you can get this idea that all your problems are solved if you just accept Jesus.

And yet, the depression is just as high, and the anxiety levels are just as high with Christians, so-called Christians, as those who are not.

So we've got a major cultural issue.

And the new research is finding, especially in neuroscience, is finding the opposite is true.

Here's what they're finding.

They're finding that when people find a joy within, now they use the word happiness, and I'm going to give some definitions of happiness and joy.

I believe there's a difference.

From a Christian perspective, there's a difference.

In the positive psychology and neurosciences, they're not sure.

Um a number of authors actually mix the two, but they're finding that those who have an inner peace, inner peace, and a joy within, they're the ones who actually find success.

So, doctors, this is tons of research, I'm just gonna give you a few.

But doctors in a positive, joyful mood before making a diagnosis, and it was interesting how they did this, they gave them suckers.

Seriously, I guess doctors like sugar too, right before they go into work with patients.

Doctors in a positive, joyful mood, after suckers, before making a diagnosis, show almost three times more intelligence and creativity than doctors in a neutral state.

And they make accurate diagnosis 19% faster and more accurate.

So the moral of the story is take a sucker the next time you go in for your flu vaccine.

I don't know.

Optimistic salespeople outsell their pessimistic counterparts by 56%.

Here's what they're finding out.

It turns out that the brain is literally hardwired to perform at its best when it's positive and joyful.

Over 200 studies on 275,000 people worldwide has found that joy leads to success in nearly every domain, including work, health, friendship, sociability, creativity, and energy.

Research is showing that a joyful workforce in a joyful work environment results in 60% more creativity and productivity.

So what do we mean about happiness and joy?

So before we get to the word, let me give you some definitions.

This is what the positive psychologists and researchers, this is how they would define happiness.

Happiness is defined as the experience of positive emotions, pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose.

Happiness implies a positive mood in the present and a positive outlook for the future.

Martin Seligman has broken it down into three measurable components: pleasure, engagement, and meaning.

Pleasure, engagement, and meaning.

I'm not going to go into that, but it's a very interesting study.

Aristotle used the term etaumonia, which translates human flourishing.

Flourishing as a human.

I like the definition of Sean Accor in the Happiness Advantage.

Quote, happiness, and you'll understand later why I like this.

Happiness is the joy we feel striving after our full potential.

Let me say that again.

Happiness is the joy we feel striving after our full potential.

So the question is, as a believer, as a whole-hearted Jesus disciple, as a Christian, does the Bible give us any guidance on joy?

Well, I've got some good news.

The good news is that this ancient book has been saying the same thing that modern psychologists and neuroscientists are just now beginning to discover.

And we're about to study the most joyful book in the Bible.

You are going to leverage joy in a whole new way over the next few weeks and months because we're going to discover that the Bible has a lot to say.

Let's begin with who the author was.

The author is a man named Paul, sometimes known as the Apostle Paul.

Paul is writing Philippians.

It's a letter to the church in Philippi at a time when, if anything, he should be the most unhappy, unjoyful person in the whole world.

And yet, this book is full of joy, rejoicing.

He's constantly talking about joy throughout the book.

He's in prison.

He's in a Roman prison.

And I've been to the prison in Rome, supposedly, probably not, but anyway, you think it is when you go on the tour, that he was in.

And I think they just found a prison that was still left over from ancient times.

They said, This is the prison that Paul was in.

And then people would pay to go see it.

But the ceiling's about this high, and the room is about half the size of this stage.

It says about right here.

And there was a, and there would be a metal window that opened up through a lock into the sewer system of Rome.

So the sewer system of Rome would flow right past the prison that Paul was in.

And there was a little perch.

There was a little place where he could sit up on a ledge, and you can still see the pot marks in the stone from the candle that he would have used.

No natural light, except any reflections that came through the sewer window.

And he was there at the time of his writing, two years or more.

He's been forgotten.

There's a story of Anesphorus coming to Rome and he couldn't find him.

He searched for him, he couldn't find him, which means that the church in Rome had forgotten about Paul.

He only had about three friends that are mentioned actually in the book left in his relationship with him.

So if anybody should have been lonely, bitter, anger over his situation, it should have been the apostle of Paul, and yet we're about to study one of the most joyful books in all of the Bible.

Philippians is a manifesto.

Listen to this, guys.

Philippians is a manifesto on the secret to joy that Paul had discovered.

Philippians is a manifesto on the secret to joy that Paul had discovered.

And I say that because it is a secret.

It's a secret that very few of us have discovered.

But our thesis is this: that if we could start bringing more joy into our marriage, what a difference it would make.

If we could bring more joy into our workplace, what a difference it would make.

If we could bring more joy into our singleness, what a difference it would make.

If we could bring joy more strongly into our family, what a difference it would make.

So turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 4, and let's look at the theme of the book of Philippians.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

Philippians 4.4.

Philippians 4-4.

This is the theme.

This is the main point by Paul.

And we are going to see the purpose of this book in the weeks ahead.

I hope, I pray, like you never have in the past.

I know I have personally been impacted by Philippians in a mighty way.

Three and a half years ago, going through some things that I went through and some deep, deep struggles of turning to Philippians and reading Philippians again and again and again.

And then over the past few weeks and months, preparing for this, reading it.

I just love Philippians.

I just love reading it.

You can read it, it's only 104 verses, you guys.

I mean, you can read it in one sitting in about 30 minutes, and it's just chalk full of kingdom principles about joy.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

And if you don't, if you don't get that, again, again, I say, rejoice.

Exclamation point.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I say rejoice.

We can memorize it right now.

Let's say it together.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I say, rejoice.

That's the theme.

That's the theme of Philippians.

That if we could grasp in the midst of your problems and your circumstances, which we can, I think we could, we could accurately say that that's how we define happiness is your outward circumstances.

That in the midst of outward circumstances that are even on this same level, and some of you guys are in that, some of you are in the midst of cancer or loss of job, or you're looking at the bank account, and you're really in dire straits.

Some of you women want to go to the retreat really badly, but the finances aren't there.

Rejoice in the Lord always?

Again, I say rejoice.

Let me just tell you your financial problems, your marriage problems, and your issues aren't even remotely close to where Paul was when he wrote this.

I mean, he's in prison, he's awaiting execution, which eventually is going to be beheaded.

He's in a Roman prison next to a sewer system.

He's lost all his friends except for three.

And he's been forgotten.

Rejoice in the Lord always?

Again, I say rejoice?

You kidding me?

So out of 104 verses, 19 times he mentions joy and rejoicing.

Nineteen times he mentions joy and rejoicing.

No other book of the Bible does that.

So here's a little tagline.

Let's not call it just joy, let's call it triumphant joy.

He's talking about joy that triumphs over circumstances.

He's talking about a joy that triumphs, a situation that should be getting him down.

And here's what Philippians is.

Philippians is super cool.

What I love about it is so personable.

Philippians is being written to probably Paul's favorite church, and it's his personal journal.

So if you were writing a love letter to your wife or your husband, if you were writing a letter to an old classmate that you have, like I just came back from my mom's memorial service.

And one of the coolest things about the memorial service was all these Lutheran folks that I that I grew up with coming up.

Now they're they're older now, you know, of course.

They were like my parents' age, but I was flooded with so many memories.

Like this one gal came up and she was the stewardess for Delta, and my mom had mentored her.

And I said to her, I said, Do you remember that you and I went and saw the Imperials together in 1978?

She goes, Yeah, I remember that.

And do you remember who the backup band was?

And she went, um, no, it was Amy Grant.

It was the first time she ever went public.

We saw Amy Grant before she was Amy Grant.

And um, and so all these memories, so if I was writing a letter of memories to people, which I've done on Facebook a few times, maybe some of you guys have too, where someone befriends you and you're suddenly flooded with all those crazy things you did that were so fun and you wrote it, that's what this is.

This is Paul in his personal letter, a personal journal of joy, of how much he loves the Philippians.

And then he's gonna give us principles about how to overcome issues and problems in our life.

It's so, so exciting.

So let me give you my definitions of happiness and joy.

So after 40 years of being a Christian, 35 years of ministry, here's what I think it is.

Happiness is based in circumstances.

Happiness is based in our circumstances, it is the outward positive emotions based on how life is treating us.

That's what I would define happiness as.

Happiness tends to ebb and flow with circumstances.

Okay?

Now, what's joy though?

Because I really want to be clear that we understand the two, because in most of the definitions out there and in most psychology classes you take, it's kind of seen as one and the same.

They're not.

This is how I define joy, and I'm sorry that I can't give you one clear definition, so I'm gonna give you a bunch of bullet points on this.

Joy is the inner peace, the relaxed heart.

It's the inner peace, it's the relaxed heart.

It's a sense of purpose and meaning that we experience.

It's purpose and meaning.

It's inner.

It's a relaxed heart.

Joy is what we feel when we're living a life full of purpose and meaning.

So it's a full life.

It's you're you're excited about the direction of your life.

So you understand, I'm not talking about circumstances.

I'm talking about that sense of feeling within, of purpose and meaning.

Joy is the fire within that fuels your heart and mind even in difficulties.

So joy is the fire within, and it comes from the Holy Spirit, that fuels our heart and mind even in difficulties.

Joy is a vital, dynamic, growing personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

It is the joy of the Lord.

It's the joy of the Lord.

In thy, scriptures say, in thy presence is fullness of joy.

So God is joy.

Don't miss this.

God is joy, and when you're diving into Jesus, when you're learning to be filled with the Holy Spirit, when you're learning to become a wholehearted disciple, you're gonna get close to joy because you're getting close to the God of joy.

God is joy.

And it was Jonathan Edwards who talked about the importance in every Christian's life of experiencing a desire for God by which you enjoy Him.

I want you to enjoy God in worship today.

I want you to enjoy God in the lobby hanging out with believers today.

I want you to enjoy Him.

You're in His presence.

Men and women, God's presence is here.

That's why you keep coming back.

That's why we're growing, because that's what we long for.

We don't know that's what we long for.

I'm telling you, that's what you long for.

That's why you think it's in being successful, and you think it's making more money, and you think it's those outward things because that's what we've grown culturally to believe.

But the reality is, is that what we're searching for on the outward is a truth on the inward that God placed within every human being.

Because you want that joy, and you want to experience that joy, and it's a fire.

And it ebbs and flows.

It ebbs and flows in all of our.

You're not always joyful, but we can be more always joyful by learning how to walk in that joy, and that's what the book of Philippians is all about.

Proverbs 23, 7 says, as we think, so we are.

As we think, so we are.

Here's what's interesting about the book of Philippians is that 16 times, remember, 19 times uh we hear about joy and rejoicing, but 16 times we hear about the mind.

The mind.

It starts here, gang.

It's here.

It's an attitude of the mind.

It's the way you think.

I've heard someone say, or maybe I made it up, I don't know, but I'm sure I didn't make it up.

Because it's too cool for me to make it up.

So I stole it from somewhere.

And that is that attitude is altitude.

Attitude is altitude.

And no better place than 6,000 feet above sea level here in Colorado Springs to say attitude is altitude.

Altitude is attitude.

Because here's the deal: that that nobody, nobody can tell you how you're to think.

That is up and that is under your control.

So if you want to live a life of negativity, if you want to live a life of gossip, if you want to live a life of always comparing yourself to others, you can.

That's the way you're taught, right?

I mean, that's what that's what you learn in school.

Burday Brown and some of her research and dealing with um with vulnerability and shame says that the most pivotal time in the life of a child is middle school.

Middle school.

School to the early days of high school.

Because here's what's interesting about that time is that on one hand, you're realizing you don't have what it takes.

For guys, it usually has something to do with physical strength.

For girls, it has something to do with their looks.

Those are kind of the shame areas.

And so what happens is that kids are weird.

Because what it is is that they hear there's a dance.

And everybody's going to the dance.

But they're not going to go to the dance.

Because I don't need to go to the dance.

Because I don't like to dance.

And then they say, when's the dance?

What are you wearing?

Who are you going to dance with?

And so they're in this pivotal stage of not knowing where they fit in, right?

So you see what's happening?

We're starting to define happiness by things like the dance.

Or what kind of clothes you wear.

Or how strong you are, how good an athlete you are.

And so it starts to drum in because that's the way the culture is, in every culture around the world.

So now Jesus comes in, we get saved, and we come to know Christ, but we haven't really changed our worldview.

Primarily, that's why we started Outlier University.

And by the way, 215 of you are signed up for Outlier University.

That's pretty phenomenal.

125 in the fall, 215 here in the winter.

It's exciting because you're getting it.

You're starting to get it that you want to renew your what?

Your mind.

Because as you begin to renew your mind in a fresh, new way, there's a chance you can begin to experience joy in a whole new way.

So look back at Philippians 4.4.

Let's read it again.

Really key prepositional phrase.

Philippians 4.4 says, rejoice in what?

In the Lord.

Rejoice in the Lord.

Listen, 19 times joy, 16 times mind, 40 plus times Jesus Christ is mentioned in 104 verses.

So almost half of the sentences and half of the thoughts found in Philippians are about Jesus, Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ.

It's about a mind that's on the Lord.

And I'm gonna really dive into this next week.

So I'm just giving you a little bit of a teaser here.

The first two verses really give us the indication of the entire book, and it's about rejoicing in the Lord.

It's not just focusing on being positive, it's joy in Christ.

It's not just PMA, positive mental attitude, or putting little smiley face stickers on your problems, which is what most books are really all about.

We're talking substance, men and women.

We're talking about joy in the Lord.

And I'll prepare you.

It takes effort.

Pick your heart.

I think it's hard to be a gossip.

It's really hard to be a gossip.

And some of you women are experts at it.

I mean, you get a PhD in being gossips.

And for you guys, we compare ourselves, don't we?

We have the PhD in comparison about who makes the most.

That's why at the uh Wholeheart Advance, one of the first instructions we give you during the orientation, the beginning of that retreat is we don't want to hear what you do.

We don't care about your job.

We're here to be guys together who are Jesus followers, and we're not going to start that comparison thing.

So I don't think most of you even know to this day what kind of jobs most of us have in this church.

And it's also kind of cool we dress down, and so there's not really, I don't know if we wear cool clothes or not, but I mean I think you guys look cool.

But the reality is that to renew our minds takes effort, and pick your heart, because I think it takes effort to be an idiot.

It does.

And so we've been taught these idiotic ways of thinking in our life, and we're, and we're so unhappy, it's not working.

And what the challenge is before us is to be joyful, learning to renew our minds in Christ.

We open up potential.

Don't miss this now.

You open up the potential of the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit working in your life.

So I'm calling it the leverage of joy.

So I want to do an illustration.

I've got two beautiful assistants coming up.

One's very handsome, one's very beautiful.

And uh here they are.

This is Haley Flores, and she's my personal assistant today, and and uh and this is Ben.

Ben Paul is a is an Air Force Academy almost graduate.

And so we are proud of him and Haley.

And and by the way, Haley built this.

Ben didn't build this, he never has time.

But Haley built this, and so this is a fulcrum and lever.

So everybody sees that.

So you remember when you were a kid, you got on a seesaw, right?

And if you were smart, you kind of got on the seesaw with somebody that was about your same size.

Well, that was difficult for me because I was always the littlest guy in the class.

So I can remember being like 50 pounds, 60 pounds, or whatever I was in fourth grade, and then I my best friend was Eddie, and Eddie was 120 flipping pounds.

Okay?

So, so Eddie, this would be kind of what it would look at Eddie, me.

Right?

Eddie and me.

So Eddie had to push off to get me going, and then we'd start doing our thing, right?

But Eddie had to do the work.

I just went along.

I did learn, though, that there were times where every once in a while I could find someone who was lighter than me, and it was usually a girl.

And you know, you're really trying to impress girls and all at that age.

So I did things like, I'm here and she's there, and then I just jump off.

And she crashes to the end, and I think she'll like me now.

I said, we're all idiots, right?

Okay.

Anyway, that's what I did.

God was saving me for Liz.

Because every girl in the class hated my gut.

Um, so this there's a great quote.

I don't want to read it to you.

I'll jot this down.

Archimedes, A-R-C-H-I-M-E-D-E-S.

Archimedes said this.

He was the greatest scientist and mathematician of ancient Greece.

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I shall move the world.

Let me say it again.

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I shall move the world.

Well, what he's saying is he's talking about the fulcrum, a place to stand.

Archimedes is saying that if he has the right kind of lever and the right kind of place to stand, which he meant a fulcrum, he can change the world.

You can move things based on where your fulcrum is at, correct?

So we know that if we were to take weight on one end, and then we were to move the fulcrum closer to the weight, increasingly it just becomes very like we could do this with one finger.

Because it's all in the leverage and the fulcrum.

Now let's turn it around and we're gonna show you something here.

Take the weights off.

That's the reason you're still single, bro.

Okay, so we're gonna move this and we're gonna put, let's let's uh bring it on down, Ben, and let's get the joy in Jesus.

There we go.

Okay, now let's put it in the middle.

Put it in the middle, Ben.

Perfect.

Okay, there we go.

Look at that.

The fulcrum of our lives, men and women, is joy in Jesus.

And the leverage is God's power.

So what we've grown to understand about the weights of our life, we've misunderstood in how we deal with it.

So let's put, let's put the uh bricks back on there and let's call it marriage, let's call it finances, uh, let's call it work.

And the closer we begin to learn how to take the joy of the Lord into our issues, as best we can.

There we go.

Great.

Now you come over here, Haley, and just show us how much pressure it takes.

She takes her finger.

I mean, she couldn't even do that, probably with what with each brick, but she can because of leverage and fulcrum.

Thanks, you guys.

You guys are awesome.

So this is really important.

This is really important.

What most of us do is we think it's more effort that we need.

It's more work that we need.

And what we're finding in our research is that actually it's not more effort, it's where you put your effort.

And if you begin to renew your mind with a new attitude and look joyfully and positively at problems that come your way, and there's a lot of them.

And this is this is the freedom of leadership.

For any of you that are leading anything, if you can discover how to take the issues of your family and the issues of your work and begin to just renew your mind, God's got solutions for this.

God has put me in this position to make me a better leader.

God has placed me here because he can trust me to be the person that he wants to use to change people's lives.

God calls me to marry her.

God calls me to marry him.

God gave me that problem child, and I have got to learn how to move the fulcrum actually into the problems instead of away from it.

Because here's the lever.

The lever is not your power, it's God's power.

It's not your ability, it's God's ability.

It's not your ability to come up with a solution, it's God's ability to give you the answers to your solutions as you trust him.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.