Discovering Joy

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

It's so great to be in the house of God again.

Let me tell you, on behalf of Maria and myself, every weekend we don't get to spend with you.

We miss you like crazy.

Honestly, we have a lot of you guys coming to us and saying, thank you for being here with us this season.

We want to say, just so you know, that we consider it an honor from God to be here this season.

Because we love this house.

And we do because we feel the presence of God in this place.

We feel the hand of the Lord in this church, and also because this church is full of amazing people that we get to meet.

Every single service after it's done, we'll be out in the lobby meeting people and talking to you and hearing life stories that just are so amazing.

Like yesterday, we met an elderly lady in the church that shared her story about two years ago.

She had stage four blood cancer.

And today she's cancer free by the grace of God.

There's just some amazing people in this house.

And just let me give you another example.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke on walking with Jesus through the seasons of life.

And I happened to mention that I like Lego.

And that I'm building Lego cars.

Believe it or not, next time I spoke here, a young man called Hayden, 12 years old, came up to me with a bag.

And he said, This is a gift, and I want to give it to you.

And I opened it up, and it was a little Ferrari Lego model.

And his mother told me, taken from his own savings, to buy me this little car.

And I see Hayden on the second row.

Hayden, come up here.

I'm going to say thank you.

Come on, give me a hug, man.

There's some great people in this church.

I tell you, praise God.

We're so happy to be here.

And I'm excited about sharing a message that I call discovering joy.

Discovering joy.

So let's pray and prepare our hearts.

Lord, we thank you for your word, and we pray that as we dive into it today, that you will open our eyes so we can see, that you will open our ears so we can hear, and that you will open our hearts so we can receive your word in spirit and truth, and may it make us a little bit more like Jesus.

This we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Alright, would you turn to your neighbor and ask them, Are you ready for the word of God?

Then you turn to your other neighbor and ask them, Are you ready for some Swedish accent?

Discovering joy, y'all.

And I mean it's a relevant question.

Can we even speak about joy as we're navigating through a tough season?

Honestly, actually, I think it is in the tough seasons that we need joy the most.

Because Nehemiah 8 verse 10 says, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Nehemiah 8:10

And I look back in my life and the tough seasons I had to navigate, and I can tell you, every single one of those seasons, joy has been instrumental in giving me the strength to proceed and push for it.

And I do believe that joy is not necessarily at all kind of limited to our present circumstances.

Joy is an inner force that is poured into your heart as you accept Christ.

And this is a knowledge that we need to come back to.

I mean, Romans chapter 14 and verse 17, if we're starting there, says the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

I love this verse so much.

It says the kingdom of God doesn't only contain these three elements, these three things are the essence of the kingdom of God: righteousness, peace, and joy.

If it's not righteousness, it's not the kingdom of God.

If it's not peace, it's not the kingdom of God.

And if it's not joy in the Holy Spirit, it's not the kingdom of God.

So this is the essence of the kingdom.

Now take this truth and add to it what Jesus says in Luke 17, verse 21.

Luke 17:21

For indeed, he says, the kingdom of God is within you.

So that kingdom that is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit is within you.

Meaning you don't have to achieve joy, joy is already given to you when you accepted Christ.

When the kingdom moved into your heart, joy moved in there too.

Praise the holy name of Jesus.

And then you might ask, but I don't feel very happy all the time.

Shouldn't I feel happy all the time?

If joy lives in my heart, well, that's how that's when we need to define joy and especially joy versus happiness.

Because though they are related, they are not the same.

Let's look at temporary happiness versus it enduring joy.

Temporary happiness versus enduring joy, because it's so important that we understand the difference between the two.

Now, a lot of times when preachers kind of bring up two different things, 99 times out of a hundred, it's one is good and one is bad.

One should be avoided, one should be embraced.

Not so this time.

This is the one time out of a hundred where this is not true.

Both these great elements are amazing.

Temporary happiness is wonderful, and I pray you will have as much as possible of it.

Eternal joy, even better.

Enduring joy and temporary happiness are perfect combinations.

The difference between them is not that one is good and one is bad, the difference is that one is temporary, it has a beginning and an end.

Versus the enduring joy is eternal, it's everlasting because it's based on eternal facts.

Now, as I prepare this message, I asked a number of Gateway staff to give me some um like statements of things that will bring them temporary happiness.

So I got a whole list here of different things.

And let's you just do a little scientific experiment here in the house of the Lord.

I'm gonna read them out, and if you can relate to a certain statement and you will agree that, yep, that will give me temporary happiness as well, then you just shout out, yay, as I finish the sentence.

Are you with me?

Okay, I know you can be loud, you can be louder than Swedish people, so I expect a lot from this crowd.

Okay, I'm gonna read out a number of statements that brought the gateway staff, obviously, temporary happiness.

And again, if they run with you, just go yay.

Number one, the cowboys, cowboys go into the Super Bowl.

That's great, kind of great.

We have some other fans in here, it seems.

Um number two, being asked out on a date.

That was a way weaker, yay.

Come on, this goes for married couples too, right?

Oh, it's like a revelation coming.

Oh, it goes for married couples too.

Yay! Turn to your husband and say, Yay! Okay, when someone pays it forward at Starbucks and you get free coffee, welcoming your first grandchild.

I love this.

People noticing your new haircut.

Oh, I love this next one.

It brought me back to my childhood.

Finding money on the ground.

Oh man, that was better than being asked out on a date and having grandkids.

But can you remember that joy when you found money on the ground?

Even when you come to an age where, like, a one-dollar bill doesn't really make a lot of difference.

The joy of actually finding it there, temporary happiness at its best.

First day of retirement.

That was a that came from a person in their 20s.

I don't know what's going on there.

And here's the weirdest thing, at least for me as a Swede, when it's 70 degrees in the middle of summer.

Come on, guys.

I'm coming from a nation where there's always 70 degrees in the middle of summer.

I don't know what's so remarkable about that.

So, oh yeah, just wait.

But all these things are examples of temporary happiness, and it's all great, it's all good.

Nothing wrong with it.

The only thing we have to realize is that it this is temporary, they have a beginning and an end.

However, enduring joy is based on things that are eternal.

And I'm gonna mention the number one thing that enduring joy is based on.

And if you shouted for finding money on the ground or first eye of retirement, you better shout for this one.

Enduring joy is based on the fact that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

And he will never die again, which is why we can build our enduring joy on this eternal, everlasting fact.

On your worst day, he is still risen, on your best day, he is still risen.

If you have temporary happiness, he is still risen.

If you don't, he is still risen.

Amen.

Now, if you don't have peace with God, if you don't have if you haven't accepted God's gift of salvation, if Jesus is not Lord of your life, then your situation is pretty much like this: you have temporary happiness on top of enduring problems.

Now, enduring problems is that you don't have peace with God, and that will put you in a situation where every single day of your life moves you one step closer to eternal separation from God, which is a terrible situation.

And the thing is, your heart is aware of this.

Ecclesiastes 3 says God has put eternity in every heart, so deep in your heart you carry an awareness that you will not cease to exist after death, you will live on somehow, but your heart is worried about what's gonna happen.

So the only way you try to treat that situation is to just dab on more temporary happiness, to try to quench that little voice on the inside saying there is a temporary problem here.

But let me tell you, you can bring on as much temporary happiness to the equation as you want to, but temporary happiness will never change enduring problems.

Temporary happiness will never change enduring problems.

However, if you do have peace with God, if Jesus is your Lord and the kingdom of God has moved inside your heart, this is your situation.

You might have temporary problems, but you will also have enduring joy.

And listen, church, I'm not saying that temporary problems are easy.

I'm not playing down temporary problems because life can be tough, and life can be rough.

And for some of you in this building right now, it might be.

Maybe you're going through a divorce, maybe you're in a medical condition that is serious, maybe you're facing bankruptcy, maybe you're you're uh tormented by depression.

Life can be tough.

I'm not saying that the temporary problems are not hard to deal with.

What I am saying is that the enduring joy inside your heart will constantly remind you that even though you might be going through hell right now, you're not going to hell, you're going to heaven, you're going to an eternity.

Well, there will be no more tears, and there will be no more suffering, and even the worst day of your life brought you one step closer to the day where you will see him face to face.

Praise God.

So even though we have temporary problems, we have enduring joy, and enduring joy will always change temporary problems.

And this was the fact that shook the Roman Empire to its core because they couldn't understand that even though the Romans persecuted the early church, they persecuted them, they tortured them, they killed them, still they had joy.

Why?

We took away all their temporary happiness, yeah, but you can't steal our enduring joy because it's based on something that is eternal.

Now, the big question for us, for you and me, is how do we stir this enduring joy?

How can we make it just not be an inner spiritual reality that is buried so deep inside of us that we never ever feel it and experience it?

That's a great question.

I'm glad you asked it because I was just coming to that.

We we stir our enduring joy by the choices that we make.

You see, everything about the kingdom of God is based on your free will, your ability to choose.

Deuteronomy chapter 29 says, I have now placed life and death before you that you may choose life so that you and your descendants will live.

Deuteronomy 29 · chapter mention

Even though God knows what is best for you, he will never override, you say that, override, huh?

Okay, he will never override your free will.

First Timothy says that God wants everyone to be saved, but we know that everybody will not be saved.

Why?

Because even though God wants something, and even though God knows what is best, he's still gonna leave it to our choices to say yes and to no or no, even when it comes to releasing that enduring joy that is placed inside our hearts.

And I want to give you three keys to do to doing that, three choices that we can make and should make that will release that enduring joy into our lives and our lifestyles.

And I want to take you with me to uh the epistle of Philippians that epistle is called or referred to as the letter of joy, which is special because Paul wrote it in jail, which kind of proves the point of temporary problems versus enduring joy, right?

He writes a letter of joy when he's himself incarcerated and his freedom has been taken away from him.

And in the first chapter of Philippians, he gives us three these three keys to releasing that enduring joy that is already a reality in your heart if Jesus is your Lord.

Key number one, choice number one, choose gratitude.

Choose gratitude.

That's a choice we make every single day.

He writes in the third verse of Philippians 1.

I thank my God every time I remember you.

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.

Did you notice that?

I thank my God every time, in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.

Since Paul was praying with joy and gratitude all the times, there must have been times where there was something to be thankful for, where there was a reason for temporary happiness, and also times when they were not.

But Paul chooses to thank God anyway.

Paul chooses God anyway, regardless of the circumstance.

Now, anyone can be grateful when things are going our way, right?

Everyone can be grateful when we experience temporary happiness, but it takes a woman of God or a man of God to stay in the attitude of gratitude, even when you don't see a lot to be grateful about, and choosing that will release joy into your life.

Let me tell you about my grandma.

My grandfather was a reverend and he went to be with the Lord at the age of 70.

But my grandma lived on, she became 95 years old, she lived a long life, and right about six months before she passed or went to be with the Lord, she had a stroke that left her unable to walk and unable to talk.

But somehow, by the grace of God, even though she could not say anything, she could still just say one thing.

She could say thank you.

She could say thank you up until her dying day.

And she lived in the same town time as I, so I could come and visit her.

She didn't want to go to hospice or hospital, so they allowed her to stay in her house, and they would send nurses and people who cared for her repeatedly throughout the day.

And that also meant meant that I could come and visit her all the time.

And I'll never ever forget the last time I saw her before she went into glory.

I remember coming to her house and I remember opening the door really quietly because I didn't know if she was awake or asleep.

And um and as I step in, I hear her little voice from inside her bedroom, and I hear her say, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And I thought, oh, somebody's here.

So I walked into the bedroom and walked straight into the presence of God.

And there was my little grandmother, my little tiny grandmother, lying in the bed on her back, arms raised to heaven, eyes closed, just going, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Completely unaware that I was in the room.

She was there praising and honoring the Lord for 95 years of faithfulness.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

All of a sudden, I must have made some kind of noise because she opened her eyes and she saw I was there.

She said, Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And I walked up to her bed and I sat down and I took a little hand in mine and she looked at me and she said, Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And I said, Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And we didn't have to say anything more than that, but I made up my mind that day that if Jesus tarries and I get to live a long life, that's exactly how I want to go.

That's how I want to go.

Because so many people come to the end of their life, the end of the line, and they're full of bitterness and disappointment and anger and full of blaming all kinds of other people for how their life turned out.

But you know what?

My grandma lived a tough life.

She lived through both world wars, she had a lot of challenges throughout her life, but because she repeatedly chose gratitude, she ended up in this beautiful place right before she went into glory, just lying there saying thank you, thank you, thank you.

She didn't end up there by chance, but by a series of choices that you and I can make every single day.

Amen.

So let's choose gratitude, and as we do, joy will be released in our lives.

The second advice we get from Philippians 1: choose what is important and what is not.

Choose what is important and what is not.

Paul writes in the 10th verse of Philippians 1 this is my prayer that you may be able to discern what is best.

Discern what is best.

The Greek word translated best is called diaphoronta, which literally means most important or what carries most weight.

And we need this so much in this day and time because have you noticed that everything that comes your way, everything that meets you in life, wants to proclaim to you that it's the most important thing in the world, right.

Everything claims to be super important, yet not all things are super important.

Stress comes from not knowing the difference.

Stress comes from treating everything that happens to you as equally important.

But joy, my friend, joy comes from knowing the difference between what is eternally important and what is just temporary.

And this is what we have to define for ourselves.

Because if you don't define for yourself what is important to your life and what is not, then you're gonna treat everything equally important even though it's not.

So I have a list of priorities for my life, and I'm not saying you should copy my list, I'm just saying you'll be you'll be happier if you did.

But let me just walk you through the one, two, and three on this list, okay?

Not the rest of it, but one, two, and three.

Number one on my list is my relationship with Jesus.

That's the number one thing.

Jesus spoke to Martha and he said, There's only one thing that is necessary, and Mary has chosen that.

She has chosen to sit down by my feet.

And if you have a clear awareness that the most important thing in my life is my relationship with Christ, then when you're tempted to do something or say something or act in a way that might damage that relationship, you are less likely to give in to that temptation because you've chosen what is important and what is not so important.

Secondly, on my list is that beautiful girl sitting right there on first row.

She's called Maria, and we've been married for 37 years.

Second, on my priorities is Maria, our marriage, our family.

And because I place those clearly on number two of the list of important things, that also means that I will never sacrifice my family on the altar of ministry.

I will never use ministry as an excuse to neglect my marriage or to be an absent father.

Because this is more important to me.

Number three is my church and my position and my place in my church because my church is not an organization, it represents my part of building the kingdom of God.

And that's why I put my church right up there at number three.

And then for four, five, six, seven, I got all kinds of passions and interests and hobbies and stuff, but I want to have it clearly defined for my life and my existence, what is important and what is not.

And if you do, let's say that somebody writes something negative about you or your church on Facebook.

That might never happen, I'm just saying it might.

Then you can just take that situation and you can run it through your important list.

They say, okay, looking good on social media, looking good on social media, looking good on social media, looking good on social media.

No, it's not on the list.

So I will not let that steal my joy today.

I will not let that steal my joy.

Because from the perspective of eternity, this is not important, it's temporary, and I don't have time for this.

The third thing, the third choice that we should make and that we need to make, as um suggested by Paul in Philippians 1, comes from verse 9.

He says, and this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, that your love may abound more and more.

And this is such a stark contrast from the ways of the world.

Because if you ask the world, how can can I obtain as much happiness and joy as possible, the world will tell you, focus on yourself, focus on your dreams, focus on your ambitions, make sure to put yourself in the center of the equation.

Whereas the Bible has a completely different perspective.

When you focus on someone else, giving to someone else, ministering to someone else, serving someone else, loving someone else, look at what happens to your own joy.

You will experience something that is way deeper and way more beautiful than a temporary rush of happiness.

You will experience what life is all about.

Letting love abound to someone else will always stir your joy.

We need to realize though that this does not happen automatically, because Paul writes, This is my prayer that your love may abound.

If this happened all the time automatically, just because Jesus is our Lord, then He didn't he wouldn't have to pray, would He?

But he prays for this church.

I pray that this would happen.

Again, it's our choice to focus on ourselves or to let love abound.

And I'm gonna pray for us all in just a few minutes.

But before that, obviously being me, I can't leave you without a story from history, can I?

And I want to connect to this whole element of letting love abound and the joy that comes as a result.

I want to rewind with you to a very dark chapter of modern-day history, to World War II.

Now, World War II started in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.

And right at that early stage of the war, the Nazis showed what was their diabolical ambition regarding the Jewish people.

Even though the concentration camps, the death camps, were not yet built, they started to prepare for them right away.

So what they did in in Polish cities, for example, the city of Warsaw, was that they made a Jewish ghetto.

And the Jewish ghetto was the only place in the city where Jews were allowed.

And the Jews were not allowed to leave this part of the city.

Basically, what they created was a waiting room for death.

They were basically on death row inside the ghetto while they were building the death camps that were bringing the Holocaust into reality.

And a lot of Polish citizens, a lot of Warsaw citizens understood this.

They saw what was going on, but they chose not to intervene.

But then there was a few, among them a young girl in her 20s called Irina Sandler, who chose to let love abound.

Irina, again, only in her 20s, not a Jew herself, so she had really everything to lose and nothing to gain from helping the Jewish people, but again, she was a Christian, and she thought to herself, I just can't stand here and watch this happen.

She was a nurse.

So what she did was Irina volunteered to go into the Jewish ghetto and help out with health care.

And the Nazis allowed her to do so.

And every time she met a Jewish family, she would gather the adults, like the mother and the father, and the uh grandfather and the grandmother, and uh she would tell them the horrible truth.

This you're on your way to execution, and there's nothing I can do to help you.

I'm so sorry.

But what I can do or try to do is I'll try to help your children because they're small enough to maybe be smuggled out of the ghetto.

And all these Jewish families had this is unthinkable.

I mean, they they took heartbreaking goodbyes to their own children and handed them over, trusting this young nurse that they didn't know to give their children a chance of survival.

And Irina got to work with every creativity she could muster.

She found out ways to smuggle Jewish children out of the ghetto without the Nazis noticing.

When there was a death in the ghetto and a body was placed in a body bag, Irina would place a Jewish child in the body bag alongside the dead body to be carried out of the ghetto with it.

When there was a person who was in need of uh uh emergency care and would be carried out of the ghetto on a stretcher, Irina would strap a Jewish child underneath the stretcher to be carried out of the ghetto and into safety outside.

She even bribed carpenters and plumbers to put Jewish babies in their toolboxes as they left the ghetto at the end of the day to bring them out of this captivity and into freedom.

And at the end of the day, every single day, Irina made sure that these children were placed in foster care families, in churches and convents, and she wrote down their names and their details on small notes of paper, including the details of their parents and families, so that when the war was over, if they would have survived, they could be reunited.

And then every night that she was done writing all the papers of all the children she'd saved that day, she dug that little glass jar down under a pear tree in her garden to keep it away from the Nazis.

At the end of the war, that little glass jar had 2,500 notes in it, representing 2,500 Jewish children that were saved from destruction by one Christian nurse in her 20s and her choice to let love abound.

Right before the war came to an end, the Nazis found out about her mission and they arrested her.

And they realized she will have the documentation and we want it so we can track down these kids and bring them back to the death camps.

They tortured her to give up this information, but she never ever did.

Eventually they sentenced her to execution, but her friends bribed the execution patrol to use blanks when they shot her.

So Irina was actually saved.

And not only did the 2,500 Jewish children survive the Holocaust, Irina survived as well.

And she lived to old age, and this was her at the age of 92.

And friends, this space is my main point.

Because that's how I want to look if I if I get to live to 92.

You can't see one single picture of old-age Irina Sandler without joy radiating from her face.

And again, that didn't happen by chance or accident.

I do believe the key was that she chose love to abound, and that that abounding love in her life, that perspective of helping, ministering, and serving someone else, stirred that eternal joy, that enduring joy, that everlasting joy that God wants to stir in our hearts as well right now.

Would you stand with me in the presence of the Lord?

And wherever you are in life, however much or little of temporary happiness you might experience right now, I just want you to open your heart and allow the Spirit to touch you and to stir that enduring joy that the Bible says is your strength.

Would you place your hand on your heart and allow me to pray for you?

Just close your eyes and stand in the presence of the Lord right now.

Father, we thank you so much today because we can acknowledge that the kingdom of God, that is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, is within us, it's within our hearts.

We don't have to achieve joy.

But we right now come to the well of that joy to drink.

Father, we choose gratitude in this season.

We choose what is important and what is not.

We choose to let love abound, and as we do, Father, I pray that you will stir that enduring joy, that eternal joy that is not based on temporary circumstances, good or bad, but is based on the fact that Christ Jesus is risen from the dead.

We are the children of God and we are on our way to heaven.

We thank you for this, Lord.

We give you glory for this, Lord, and we pray that that enduring joy will prevail in our lives every single day.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.