Joy - Week 1

Hey Go Church Family, Pastor Julie here.

So excited to be with you this Christmas season.

I'm here with Laura.

Hi everyone.

I'm so glad that Pastor Julie is with us.

I'm here with Pastor Matt Hatubo.

Hey everybody.

And Gilbert.

Hey everyone.

I'm so glad that this podcast is turning into a grow group.

Exactly.

This is the audio version of our grow groups.

This is the grow group where Pastor Matt and I get banished too because we talk a lot

during other groups.

Exactly.

We're not allowed to go to actual grow groups.

But we're so excited.

That's why we talk a lot.

You know, this is from that deep well in our hearts whereby we want to just express our

joy and that's what we're doing this month.

I think one of the greatest loves that you can cultivate is a love for the Word of God.

If you want to grow spiritually and the way you get to love something is you spend time

doing or being or around it.

If you have no exposure to something, you'll have no relationship with it.

That's true.

That's a person, a sport, an activity and certainly that's true with the Word of God

and with prayer.

People that come to me and say, well, I just don't know how to pray.

Well, how was prayer today?

I didn't do it.

We've located the problem.

Anyway, it's wonderful to be...

I love actually, I love the podcast because it's an opportunity to really dig into the

scriptures and just celebrate the truth of God's Word.

That's right.

And this month we're celebrating, period.

Actually, we're celebrating because it's called Joy.

Our series is called Joy and we take the opportunity that we're nearing Christmas season for us

to talk about joy.

And today what we're going to do is dig into week one out of week three of this December

series and all of our podcasts always lead into what we're going to talk about during

our grow groups this week.

And in case you missed the big Sunday message, you can always listen to our big Sunday messages

right here on podcasts on this channel.

And next time, don't miss it.

You always want to be there.

It's so different being present during a service because there are things that the Holy Spirit

is doing in that moment.

There are things that he's trying to get across to us in that moment.

And he's, how do you say, being present in the place where he's putting light on his

own word is precious.

And it's an experience that we don't want to miss.

We always want to be there when he's trying to tell us certain things.

So with that, I'm going to move straight into our series.

Today we're talking about joy by nature.

So we're going to dig into what joy really is and where joy really is and what joy really

means to us.

So the first question I do want to ask, and I'm hoping we get some really good answers

from our grow group here sitting with me, is what is joy?

Lara, what is joy?

That's a loaded question.

Well, joy is constant happiness, never ending happiness.

It's not relying on circumstances.

And there is joy in many things.

We are talking in joy of Christ now.

And as I said, it's this sense of peace and happiness that is always there and it's constant,

which is something amazing to have.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that, Lara.

You know, joy is who we are.

We have his nature, the nature of God in us, and that means we're partakers of his joy.

So we don't just have joy, but we are joy.

I absolutely love what you shared.

Yeah, I think the power in that question is if someone said, hey, do you know what joy

is?

You'd say, yeah.

Okay, tell me.

So it needs to be something that identifies us.

If I walk into a room and I say to Lara, hey, Bob, how are you?

Lara won't acknowledge that I'm talking to her.

She might wonder what's wrong with me, but because that's not part of her identity.

Joy should be part of our identity.

It's something that marks us and sets us apart.

And it needs to be something more than just an emotional reaction to a set of circumstances.

Rather, it should be a influencing force in the world around us.

Also when you know when Julie shows up in a room, joy just showed up in the room.

Yes, that's exactly right.

That's so good.

Hopefully cookies.

You know what I love about these discussions is that we spent so much time putting those

together and now we're talking and I'm getting new things.

It's not like I'm getting new things by word or by explanation, but in my spirit, I'm just

getting new things.

Talking about joy or talking about these realities really builds us up.

I just want to pick back up on a few points and I want to mention what we already said

two years ago in the message.

There are things that, you know, like Pastor Matt said, it's so difficult to explain and

it's not, you know, it's difficult to put words to what is joy, but maybe we can start

with what joy is not, you know, and I want to point out the difference between these

two words, which is joy and happiness.

And I'm going to use these words as a reference point, not because this is the formal definition

of the words, but just because it helps us think through this process a little better.

So if I say joy or I say happiness, I'm going to treat them like two different things and

I will treat happiness like happiness is a feeling or an emotion that I have based on

a circumstance.

So by that logic, if someone puts a, you know, I'm going to use Pastor Matt's example, a

nice gelato in front of me, it'll make me happy.

Always ice cream.

It seems to be the food of the podcast.

But happiness is an emotion driven by circumstance, by an external factor.

So something outside starts making my soul happy.

By that same logic, something outside could also take away my happiness and give me sadness.

Like when the ice cream is finished.

Yeah, exactly.

When the ice cream was the wrong flavor, whatever that is, that's a good problem to have, I

guess.

But on the flip side, so joy is neither an emotion nor is it something which is produced

on the outside.

So joy, like we said here, is it's our identity, it's our nature.

You know, it's something that is already in us and it doesn't get changed or doesn't get

determined by what is happening on the outside.

It is also really not an emotion.

I mean, joy will produce emotion.

So joy starts in your spirit and then it impacts your soul.

And then because it impacts your soul, you're going to manifest it in your body, in your

surroundings, in the natural world.

But it is not something that starts on the outside and flows inwards, whereby happiness

and sadness start on the outside and flow inwards.

And I'm going to pick up where we were talking about this, which is joy is a fruit of the

spirit.

So when I say the spirit, I don't mean the Holy Spirit.

I mean our spirit because we are spirit beings.

Before we were born again, the Bible says that our spirits were dead, dead to God.

So it's separated from God, you know, not in unity with God, not experiencing the life

of God.

So everything that was not the life of God was influencing my spirit.

But when I was born again, so when I took that decision and I said, Jesus is Lord, I

believe that he died and he was raised from the dead.

He took my sins on the cross and because I believe in him, I can have full relationship

with God the Father and I am now back in the family.

So this is me receiving the gift that we were talking about last week.

So once I have that, I am now born again.

So my spirit is now in fellowship with God.

The Holy Spirit comes to live in my spirit, so I never lose the presence of God in my

life.

That's a whole other series.

But what does that do?

That starts so that the nature of God is now born in me and I am born into the nature of

God.

So that unity creates the true person that I am and the true person that I am is my spirit.

And the fruit of the spirit are the character traits or the nature of who I really am when

I'm born again.

So I'm going to read Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 and 23.

Galatians 5:22

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

So those are a breakdown of the character traits or the nature that I really am.

So this is who I am on the inside.

So it's not something I have, I don't have, I can lose, I can earn it.

No, this is as surely as I'm sitting here and more surely than that because this body

doesn't last forever, my spirit does.

So this is who I am.

And if you notice, love, joy, peace on and on, that's who I am.

So joy is the nature of God in me.

That's exactly right.

Joy is our nature.

I mean, we can pull out each one of these things and say, okay, this is who I am.

I need to develop in this, meaning I need to start acting like this because it's who

he has made me.

Hebrews chapter 1 verse 9 says that Jesus was anointed by God with the oil of joy.

Hebrews 1:9

The Spirit of God is expressed in joy or in other words, we should not be surprised at,

we should expect expressions of joy to be on us and mark us.

Why?

Because he has anointed us.

One minister says it this way, you cannot get a sad version of the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, that's right.

So joy is something that should mark us.

It is a natural state for a born again child of God.

That's so good.

I just love that it's our nature, joy, peace, love.

It's ours.

It's in me.

Yeah.

You just grow it.

I mean, we start acting like it.

This is actually a bad example.

I should say it's a sad example.

But I saw a news story where a guy in New York spent an enormous amount of money, at

least to me, it seemed like a lot of money, to make a suit where he could look like a

dog.

And then he walks like his wife puts him on a leash and he walks around like a dog.

He's not a dog.

No matter how much money he spent on his suit, he's acting contrary to nature.

Contrary to his identity.

And I could look at that and one person could look at it and say, this is ridiculous.

Another person could look at it and say, this is sad.

And honestly, what we should do is say, ah, this is what it looks like as a born again

believer if I'm walking around just in sadness and not in a state of peace and joy.

Because joy is my nature.

And we're going to talk about this next week, but you can't be in a place of faithful expectation

or like what you were saying about hope.

The Bible says that the resurrection is our blessed hope.

The Bible calls Jesus our hope.

Christmas is the birth of hope.

You can't have an expectation of hope and be not joyful.

Yeah.

That's right.

It's almost hypocrisy, right?

It is hypocrisy.

Yes.

And it is in the light of God's word, it is as ridiculous as if I walked around on all

fours and started braying like a donkey.

You would rightly say, wow, shoo, hama.

This is silly for you to act like that because you're not that.

I have been made the righteousness of God in Christ and I have this blessed hope.

And one of the natural results of that is that I am full of joy.

So I want to add something and I want to correct some language that I've used in my life and

many of us have used in our lives.

And that is, I'm not doing that to be picky.

I'm doing that to help us think through a point.

By this logic or by this reality, it's not logic, it's a reality, it's truth.

I can't lose joy.

My joy cannot be stolen.

This is not what the Bible says.

The Bible says that I have joy.

Now I could choose to suppress it and never see an outworking of my joy, just like I can

choose to never pursue peace in my life, just like the love of God.

I can choose to never allow that to work out of my nature towards someone else or out of

my nature towards the world in general.

But I still have those, I still am those things, like irrespective.

So joy is not something that we can lose.

Joy is something that we choose to suppress or we choose to release.

It's so powerful to me and I want to go back to what Pastor Matt was saying about the nature

of God.

And I'm going to talk about this real quick.

We see God manifest as God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

I see joy.

If I look at God the Father, for example, in Psalm chapter 2 verse 4, it says that He

Psalms 2:4

sits in the heaven and He laughs, especially when we see His enemies coming against Him

and against His people.

He just laughs.

That's His nature.

He's still full of joy no matter what.

There's no image of God that we can find in the scripture where He is sad or worried.

Yeah, that's right.

Instead, we see that He laughs.

In Psalm 16, it says that in the presence of the Lord is the fullness of joy.

So if I'm not experiencing full joy, it probably has something to do with whose presence I

have been in and whose presence I am not in.

So if I'm in the presence of God, I'm going to find that fullness of joy.

What's fullness of joy?

It says pleasures forevermore, not worries forevermore, not fear forevermore.

You don't know what's going to happen.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah, I do.

I'm not being prideful about it.

I'm just thankful that I'm able to read and God has given me His word so I know His will.

And so I can have a faithful expectation and then exhibit joy.

I can have those expressions of joy.

Yeah.

It's amazing to me that it says that in His presence is fullness of joy.

So the closer you get in terms of the more aware you are of His presence, the more joy

you can experience, the more joy you see, the more of the nature of God that you get

to really take in.

And I love this passage or this verse in Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 17.

Zephaniah 3:17

It says the Lord your God in your midst.

So you're aware that He's there.

The mighty one will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness.

He will quiet you with His love.

He will rejoice over you with singing.

I love that.

He rejoices.

That's who He is.

Yeah, that's right.

That's what He's like.

What's God like?

Joyful.

Joyful.

Yeah.

Joyful.

And what's He joyful about?

You.

He's so joyful about you.

That passage says He makes up songs about you.

Yeah.

If you go back into the Psalms, it says He sings over us songs of our deliverance.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Praise God.

Hallelujah.

This is who He is.

And this just doesn't, you know, no offense to the beautiful cathedrals and stained glass,

but it's hard to really put this in a fresco or a stained glass of God singing and dancing

about you because He is so full of joy about you.

He loves you.

Yeah.

Sometimes I think that comic book graphics would be more appropriate with words for sounds

and just, you know, just a lot of energy there because I think that's the nature of God.

We never see, we never see any facet of the Lord, anxious, worried, sad, heavy.

You know, we never saw that in Jesus.

We never saw a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

I mean, you know, when the Holy Spirit was first poured out on the day of Pentecost,

people thought they were drunk.

Yeah.

People thought they were, these people are incoherently just...

Because expressions of joy are the natural state of believers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

And Ephesians 5 tells you do not be drunk with wine, right?

But instead, be filled with the Spirit.

What happens if you get filled with the Spirit?

You're full of joy.

Why?

Because that is the anointing of joy.

Or Romans, Paul said in Romans that the kingdom of God is what?

Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Yeah.

It's, what is it not?

It's not a bunch of rules and regulations.

It's the righteousness of God, the peace of God, and the joy of who He is.

That's true.

Our nature and our natural state is joy.

Not just at the Christmas season when I'm getting a gift, I really hope I get the gift.

Maybe I'm going to get this gift.

Or not even, you know, Julie loves to wrap presents.

She would wrap the chair I'm sitting in.

She loves to give gifts.

But I think that's because she's picked that up from the Lord because that's what He's

like.

This is not just something that is centered around a holiday.

This is who we are.

And you know, there is a, when we rejoice, we align ourselves with who God is.

And also we start loving what He loves and we start seeing what He's seeing.

And we see that in Luke chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

So you know, in closing today's podcast, I just want to talk a little bit about the illustration

that we're going to carry into our week one girl group discussion.

And that is actually in Luke chapter 15 verses 11 through 32.

Luke 15:11–32

The story of the loving and giving Father.

That's right.

Yeah.

A lot of people know it as the parable of the prodigal son, but there are three people

who we talk about and we see in the story.

But before I do that, I actually want to go through a few passages, sorry, a few, a few

verses before that, and Jesus speaks about two parables and one of them is the, you know,

the shepherd who leaves his 99 sheep to go find that one sheep.

That's such a beautiful image to me.

It's such a beautiful picture of the heart of God and how much He loves each and every

single person, how much He values and knows and wants each and every single person.

And at some point, you know, in verse six in Luke 15 verse six, He says, when He finds

that sheep, He says, rejoice with me for I have found my sheep, which was lost, you know,

and the next parable, there is a parable of a woman who has 10 coins and she lost one

and you know, she's trying to look for that coin.

And again, in verse nine, it says, and when she has found it, she calls her friends and

neighbors together saying, rejoice with me for I have found the piece which I have lost.

There is an action which we take, you know, once we align our hearts with God's heart

about how much He values the lost, how much He values the people who don't know Him yet,

how much He wants each and every single person to come back, then that it draws out that

very nature of God in us, which is rejoice with Him.

And you know, thinking about that, thinking about the rejoicing in salvation, so whether

it's our own salvation or whether it's rejoicing someone else's salvation, I want us to look

at the parable of the loving Father and we're going to take time and read it in our

grow groups, but I do want to ask questions along those lines and I'm sure there are more

questions which will come out of this.

Number one, what do we see about the character of the Father when the Son comes home?

Number two, why does the Father rejoice over His Son coming home?

Number three, what does He expect the other Son to do when they're having a conversation

outside?

See, there's an older Son who never left home and then there's a party that's being thrown

for the Son that comes home and everyone's inside, in the house, happy, rejoicing, celebrating,

but you can't stay in that house and not rejoice.

So the elder Son leaves that house because He doesn't want to rejoice, He just doesn't

want to exercise that and share in His Father's joy, so He finds Himself out of His place,

He finds Himself out of the house, He finds Himself walking away from the Father outside

and the Father in all His love and all His goodness follows Him outside and tells Him,

you know, we're supposed to be joyful, your Son was lost and now He's found, now He's

home.

He was gone and now He's back, so we're supposed to rejoice, we're supposed to celebrate.

And so I just want us to keep talking about joy in the context of salvation, the context

of God's victory in that situation.

That's so big.

Rejoice with me.

I mean, we've finished our time on this podcast, but in the Grow Groups, I'm going to encourage

you dig into this because there's truth there.

And this is an opportunity for us to see Him and know what He's like.

This is who He is.

He's interested in seeing us rejoice with Him about the things that He loves.

What a privilege to be invited into that.

I could talk a lot more about that, but I know we've run out of time.

But I want you to know that we love you and I'm rejoicing.

We're all sitting here rejoicing that you have spent the time with us today.

Thank you for listening.

Go Church Beirut is your place to love, grow, and go.

We want everyone to experience the unconditional love of God.

Grow in His love and go with His love to the rest of the world.

On behalf of the entire Go Church family, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New

Year.