All About Focus

Well, today is awesome.

Holy cow.

Man.

If you have a Bible, we're going to spend some time in Philippians chapter 4 today.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

It's in the New Testament.

If you want to turn there, you can.

If you want to pull it up on your phone, you can.

Don't feel guilty if you don't have one because we put it up on the screen, so no surprise there.

But Philippians 4, that's where we're going to be.

But before we jump into that, I want to share a few words with you that I probably speak these words with more passion than I speak any other words on a regular basis.

And it's the words, eat your food.

When I was younger, I never imagined me saying those words with the kind of intensity that I say them with on an almost daily basis because I have three children, and uh, and one of them we still force feed, so he doesn't have a choice.

He's only a few months old, and whether he wants it or not, it's coming.

Um, the other two, we try to have dinner as a family.

It's a really important thing for us.

I come in as early as I can so that I can commit to leaving at a certain time every day, and I can have dinner with my family.

And Megan is awesome, and she she gets dinner on the table, and sometimes that means she cooks it, and sometimes that means she texts me and says, I didn't pull anything out, you're gonna have to pick something up.

Which, by the way, it's like this excuse that totally works.

I did, I forgot to thaw the meat.

And I'm like, Well, you can't have a meal without meat.

That's impossible.

No one does that.

Vegetarians aren't real.

And so I'll go pick up some Mexican food on the way home.

And so, but we want to sit together, we want to eat food, and for our children, that's torture.

To sit at a table and be there for 20, 30 minutes.

It's torture.

It's just nonstop them asking if they can get down, if they can be done, if we can do it somewhere else.

And and it's so hard.

And so, you know, it's torture for them.

They decide to make it torture for us.

That's the game plan they have.

And so every night there becomes this battle that forms in our house, and it's it ends up with me just telling my children in various ways to eat their food.

So I'll just say, eat your food, please eat your food.

You have to eat your food.

We're not leaving the table until you eat your food.

Just eat your food.

And it shouldn't be that hard, but it is.

It is.

My daughter Lily, she's very stubborn.

And she has a will, man.

She has a will, and so it's not uncommon for us to have these really tense moments at dinner.

And my go-to strategy with her is if she won't eat, which is normal, she'll push the plate away and be like, no.

And then I'll say, fine, we're gonna sit here until you eat.

And if Megan's done, she'll get up and go downstairs, and Liam, he'll get up and go downstairs, and it'll just be me and Lily at the table.

And I'll let her know.

She's she's two and a half, she gets it, though.

I'll say, We're not leaving, we're not gonna talk.

We're not gonna we we're just gonna sit here until you eat.

And she'll just cross her arms and stare at me.

I mean, have you ever seen a Western?

They're like my favorite types of movies, and in westerns, there's usually this scene, it's like around a poker table where there's no words, there's just tense music playing, and it's just shots of guys eyeballing each other, waiting to see who's gonna draw first.

There's about to be a shootout.

That's what we have at dinner.

And so I'll sit there and just stare at her, and she'll stare back.

And in my brain, I'll hear like the theme song from The Good, Bad, and the Ugly.

I'll hear that, you know, that wanna wanna wow, wah, wah, wah.

Like I hear that in my brain.

And I'm just gonna stare, I'm not gonna crack, I'm gonna win this fight.

The thing that really trips them up at dinner, it's probably true for most kids, even true for a lot of people, is it's just this concept called a vegetable.

And if we put a vegetable in front of them, their reaction is so priceless.

Liam acts like he's never seen one before.

I mean, we put a we put a vegetable on his plate every night, but if we put it down, he always does the same exact thing.

Every night he asks this question Do I have to eat the vegetable?

That's what he asks every night.

He's like, Do I have to eat this piece of broccoli?

Do I have to eat the salad?

What what is this?

If it's zucchini or squash or something that's weird, he's like, shouldn't be weird, but it isn't our house.

He goes, What is what is this?

Do I have to eat this?

And the answer is yes, because it's food.

You have to eat your food.

Eat your food, just please eat your food.

And it's funny because he gets so, he gets so upset.

It's so hard for him, and it's it's all it's all a matter of focus.

It really is, because with with Liam, all he can see is the vegetable.

That's it.

I could put a plate in front of my son with two slices of pizza, a giant piece of chocolate cake, and one green bean.

One tiny green bean.

And the very first thing he would say to me wouldn't be like, sweet pizza, it's my favorite.

It wouldn't be like, wow, that's a big piece of chocolate cake.

He would just look at me and go, Do I have to eat that green bean?

That's what he would ask.

Because it's all he can see, it's all he can focus on.

Last Sunday we kicked off a new series based on this question: Are you happy?

A very simple question with an often complicated answer.

And today we're going to continue that conversation by talking about focus.

Because there probably aren't two things in this world as closely related to one another as happiness and focus.

We said last week that we need to understand, first and foremost, that we have permission from God to pursue happiness.

Sometimes with religion, which messes everything up, religion always ruins stuff.

We uh, yeah, I like y'all.

With uh with religion, we we think that happiness and joy is something that we should sacrifice on some altar to please God.

That somehow God is going to be happier if we're in misery.

And that's so far from the truth because God is a God of joy.

And I want to apologize, by the way, if someone has ever given you an image of God that's made God out to be some angry, temperamental person with a short fuse where all you have to do is make one wrong step and now you're on the side of his wrath.

That's not who God is.

Not at all.

The Bible says that God is full of unfailing love for his people, that he is slow to anger, that he is quick to forgive.

You will never meet a person that's as happy and as joyful as Jesus Christ.

That's by the way, why why people loved hanging out with Jesus.

Regular, everyday people with problems and with issues.

They loved being around Jesus because he was always having dinner, he was always at a party, he was always hanging out with regular people.

He was fun.

Jesus enjoyed life, and we should feel freed up to enjoy life as well.

In fact, there is a joy and a happiness available to every single one of us that is so powerful and so strong that no circumstance can stop it.

That's something the Bible describes as the joy of the Lord.

Nehemiah 8:10.

Nehemiah 8:10

It says, Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

And we don't often equate joy or happiness with strength.

But the Bible says that if you have a real joy, a real happiness and passion for living that comes from God, that is strength.

That's something you can lean on, that's something you can stand on.

The joy of the Lord is your strength.

So we are a church, we're a family of people right now saying we're gonna be happy.

Dang it.

We're gonna be happy, we're gonna have joy in our lives.

And we're pursuing that joy in this season as a church.

We are pursuing the joy of the Lord.

Now, the way we pursue it is everything.

We wrapped up last week by saying that because a lot of a lot of selfish, destructive things have been done in the name of being happy.

But if we can get our desire for happiness to line up with God's approach, with God's way, that's where the joy of the Lord comes in.

That's where the power is.

And today, today we need to talk about focus.

Because I think one of the reasons that happiness is so elusive in our world is that very few people understand what happiness actually is.

How can I pursue something that I'm unclear about?

It's hard to be aggressive if you're confused.

See, a lot of times we we think of happiness and we we think about it in these very interesting terms, these very interesting ways.

Like we might say that we need to find happiness.

And when we say that, when we say that we're trying to find happiness, what we're what we're really saying is that we believe happiness is some external thing that's out there.

And we've got to go find it.

And when we believe that, even if it's subconscious, when we believe that, we begin to rely on external things to make us happy.

And so that means we we need a better house or the same house in a better neighborhood.

We need a new car, we need a new job, we need a bigger paycheck, we need a new guy, we need a new girl, we need a new relationship, we need something external to make us happy.

We're trying to find happiness.

But if if we only see happiness as something external, it will never be an internal reality in our lives.

It will never be, because happiness is not something that's out there that we have to go find.

Sometimes we we think about happiness only as a matter of feeling.

It's not about finding happiness, it's about it's about feeling happy.

And there's definitely an emotional aspect to happiness for sure, but when we see happiness only as a feeling, we begin to rely on experiences in life to make us happy.

We need to feel happy, so we need to feel excited, we need to feel enthused, we need to feel in love.

We need to have fun, we need these incredible, fun, exciting experiences to bring about happiness in our lives because we think happiness is a feeling, and if it's a feeling, we need an experience to bring it about.

Well, the problem with that is that if we rely on an experience to make us happy, our happiness will only last as long as that experience.

When my son was two years old, we got to go to Disney World, which was awesome.

We could not afford Disney World, but Megan's dad was working for IBM, he still is, and they had a big conference in Orlando, and so he brought the whole family and he took us to Disney World, and it was awesome.

And we hyped Disney World up for a long time.

Liam was two, he didn't know what Disney World was, so we told him all about it for weeks and weeks and weeks.

We're building this up.

We should have done the opposite.

We should have been like, ah, it's just, you know, it's just a thing.

And then he would have gone there and been like, wow, this is so much better than what I anticipated, but we hyped it up.

And one of the things we forgot to mention in our hype, which I really wish we would have looking back, was the disconnect that exists between how long you wait in a line for a ride at Disney and how long that ride actually lasts.

Because those are two very different numbers.

And so we got there, and it was just one big line.

It was a line to get on the bus, and then waiting in the bus, and then a line to get into Disney World, and then what seemed like one giant line of people just to get to the parts of Disney World where you can ride things.

And then we saw the very first ride, and we waited in line forever to ride it.

It was called the Astro Orbiter.

It's in the Tomorrowland part of Disney.

It's this little rocket ship that's me and Liam four years ago.

He was so excited when we got in that ship.

That's the beginning of the ride.

We didn't take a picture of the end.

Okay.

So we get in that.

He's waited forever.

We probably sat in that line alone for 30 minutes, 40 minutes.

And so we start to go, and and this thing goes really high up in the air, and we're spinning around, and we're up there, and it's going up and down, and he is laughing, he's loving it, he's having the time of his life, and then about 45 seconds later, it starts to slow down.

We start going down.

And Liam, in his mind, he thought he was controlling the ship, so he had this little fake steering wheel and he just starts shaking it.

Like, come on, like, come on, keep going.

What's wrong with you?

And then it ends.

And he was he was distraught.

He looked at me and he's like, Dad, I don't want to be off.

I want to write it again.

I want to ride it again.

And I looked at him and I said, Liam, if you want to write it again, we have to get back in that line.

And he looked at the line and thought about it for a second.

His little brain was processing weighing the pros and cons.

And then he just cried.

And I can't blame him because I wanted to cry too.

The idea of getting back in that line, I wanted to cry as well.

The truth is, all rides come to an end.

And if we're gonna rely on some ride, some experience, to be the source of our happiness and joy, we will never experience lasting joy.

See, happiness is not just something we find out there, it's way more than something we simply feel.

If we would see happiness primarily as a matter of focus, that that would change things.

Because there's only one thing that you have control over all day long, and that is your focus.

You don't have control over what happens to you today.

You have very little control over your circumstances.

Sometimes we have more control than we really do.

We think that we have more control.

We we wish we had more control, but we find out that we have less than we maybe hoped or thought.

But what we always have control over is the way we focus on our circumstances.

We can't control what happens, but we can absolutely control how we we focus on what happens.

And I'll be the first to admit that very often I choose to not exercise my ability to control my focus.

And that's never good for me, it never works out well.

Because see, it's human nature, it's human nature to focus on the negative.

That is absolutely human nature.

All you gotta do is watch the news.

Go to a website that's about news, and you'll find out that apparently the bad things that happen in the world get way more clicks than the good.

So much so that if you watch too much news, you'll think that only bad things ever happen in the world.

And people will say, Oh, I don't believe in God because look at all the bad things happening.

And someone might say, Well, what about all the good?

But we don't focus on the good, we we miss it, we don't see it.

Sometimes you'll hear statements made like, oh, that's just a feel-good story, which even shows our propensity for the negative because the term feel-good story has a negative connotation, right?

It's some fluff piece that someone came up with just to balance out the real news.

And when we say real news, we mean the bad things happening in the world.

Studies show that we are more than twice as likely to talk about a negative experience that we have somewhere, a restaurant, some business, church, than we are to talk about a positive experience.

So we go somewhere and we have an amazing time, an amazing experience, and we're like, that was great, but then we forget about it 20 minutes later.

But if we had to wait too long for our food, and one of our friends three months later says, I was thinking about trying out this restaurant, we'll be like, Oh, do not go there.

You would not believe what I had to go through to eat a sandwich at that place, right?

Because we we focus on the negative.

Even look at our bodies physiologically.

Like, I might say to someone, I'm in a lot of pain today.

And what I probably mean when I say I'm in a lot of pain is that a very small part of my body is in pain.

Like, my foot hurts.

But I don't say my foot hurts, I say I hurt.

Because I'm so focused on the one part of me that's wrong that I miss all the parts of me that are working pretty well.

Because we focus on the negative, and that's human nature.

When my son gets fixated on that green bean, he's just doing what people do.

When he looks past the good, when he looks past all the other stuff that he loves and he focuses on the one thing that he hates, he's just doing what people do naturally.

And the biggest lie that our culture tells us is that we are slaves to what comes naturally.

We have to realize that we live in a world that tries to sell us this idea of powerlessness and slavery, this world that tells us that if we naturally desire something, we can't help it.

We live in a world that tells us we can't help ourselves.

You can't you can't help the way you feel, you can't help who you're attracted to, you can't help anything.

If you feel a certain way, you just have to go with that because you have no control.

And God has never told us that.

God has a much higher opinion of us than that.

And he looks at us and he says, I have given you the ability to choose, I have given you a power that you can exercise.

So focusing on all the negative around you might be natural, but you are not obligated to do so.

Point in case, Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

It's that section I talked about a long time ago when we first got started.

The apostle Paul wrote this, and if you if you don't know much about Paul, I'll give you the quick backstory.

Paul was a man who did not believe in Jesus.

He never met Jesus when Jesus was alive before he was risen.

But after Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to Paul while Paul was riding on a donkey, and he appeared in such a brilliant flash of light that it blinded Paul.

And all of a sudden, Paul knew that Jesus was real, and he gave his life to Jesus, and he became a missionary, and he became a pastor, and he went around and he started churches in all these different places, and he wrote the biggest chunk of the New Testament that we have in terms of the number of books that have been written.

So Paul has added so much to our experience as Christians, as followers of Jesus.

And writing to this church in a place called Philippi, he said this always be full of joy in the Lord.

I say it again, rejoice.

Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do.

Remember, the Lord is coming soon.

Don't worry about anything, instead, pray about everything.

Tell God what you need and thank him for all he's done, and then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing: fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable.

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me, everything you heard from me and saw me doing.

Then the God of peace will be with you.

And we read this, and yeah, you can clap for that.

That's a joyful, beautiful statement.

And you might think to yourself, man, Paul must have been having a heck of a day when he wrote this.

I mean, he must have woken up in the morning and the weather was beautiful, and he walks outside, and there's birds, and he looks on the ground, and there's some money laying there, and he picks it up, and he's just, you know, whistling, and he's got that Brady Bunch song about sunshine calling your name in his head, and he's just walking around.

And he's just happy, like everything's going well for Paul, and he's having such a good day that at the end of his day, he's like, Man, I'm gonna write about joy.

I've had such an amazing day, such an amazing experience that I'm gonna go and I'm gonna write about joy.

But that's not what happened.

Because Paul's day.

What's your name?

I like you.

I like you.

We'll keep you.

My mom does the same exact thing.

She says, I love it.

So Paul's not having a good day.

See, Paul wrote this in prison.

And it's interesting because even that term prison is kind of misleading.

Number one, he was in prison waiting to be executed, so he's on death row.

Number two, what prison was 2,000 years ago is very different than what prison is today.

Prison is not good today, it's not an enjoyable experience, it's not a vacation.

But the conditions of prison 2,000 years ago, before there was ever an idea about prison reform or rights for prisoners, prison was something completely different.

In fact, the word dungeon would be a much more accurate term in terms of what we picture in our minds.

Paul happened to be in prison in a very well-known prison at that time.

It was called the Mamertine prison.

We actually have a picture, you can visit it today.

This is a picture of the Mamertine prison.

I want you to keep in mind a few things.

Number one, the light you see, that's all from the flash on the camera and that little light that's in the corner, because Mamertine is deep under the ground.

In fact, to be put in a Mamertine prison, you are lowered through a hole no bigger than a manhole.

That was the entrance to the prison.

It was deep under the ground in Rome.

Number two, if you look at that and you go, wow, it's pretty spacious.

I mean, it might be dark, but you've got some room to move around.

No, no, it wasn't like every prisoner got their own cell.

You were shoved in there with whoever else was in there.

Standing room only, pitch black dark.

This prison was was known for its especially hard conditions because it was built in 640 BC.

And it was originally built in Rome not to be a prison at all, but rather a cistern for storing spring water.

But it had long since found another use when Paul was put in prison there.

It wasn't a cistern anymore.

In fact, it had been it had been adjoined to the main sewage line in Rome.

And so it was normal in Mamertine for the prisoners to be standing knee deep in raw sewage.

And there are historical accounts of of men dying from asphyxiation because the odor was so intense in Mamertine that they couldn't breathe.

They hyperventilated, they died.

In fact, you can go visit mamertine today and it still smells.

Hasn't been used in centuries, centuries and centuries and centuries.

It still smells.

There are other historical accounts of times where they would execute the prisoners simply by opening up the sewage line all the way and closing the doors and allowing the sewage to completely fill the cells, and men would drown in sewage.

That's where Paul is when he writes what we just read.

In fact, knowing what we know now, let's read this again.

Because it takes on a whole different meaning.

Always be full of joy in the Lord.

I say it again.

Rejoice.

Let everyone see that you're considerate in all you do.

Remember, the Lord is coming soon.

Don't worry about anything.

Instead, pray about everything.

Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done.

Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing.

Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable.

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me, everything you heard from me and saw me doing, then the God of peace will be with you.

How in the world could Paul have written that in a place like Mamertine?

I mean, how in the world could could a human being have that kind of joy?

The kind of joy that you would have to have in your heart to articulate what joy and happiness is the way he did.

How could he possibly have that kind of joy in a place like Mamertine, surrounded by sewage?

And the answer is it's focus.

And it's focus on one specific thing, but it's focus.

Look at what he says in verse 8.

We've already read it twice, why not three times?

Now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing.

Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable.

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

I love the way the message version puts it.

Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious.

The best, not the worst, the beautiful, not the ugly, things to praise, not things to curse.

Paul says that the way we live with that kind of joy is focus.

To fix our thoughts, to focus on what is good.

Because here's the truth we are all standing in sewage of some kind.

I mean, let's be honest, we are.

One of my favorite things about this church is we don't have to pretend like life is easy.

We don't have to pretend like everything's going well here.

This is not a place to act happy, by the way, and Paul's not telling us to act happy.

He's not saying, hey, put a smile on.

He's not even telling us to do that whole comparison thing where we say, hey, think about your life.

It's not as bad as it could be, because when you're standing knee-deep in sewage or waiting to be executed in Mamertine prison, it's about as bad as it can be.

Okay?

And so he's not saying act happy, he's saying be happy.

In fact, he says always be happy.

And how in the world.

How in the world could he be that way?

Because so often, so often it takes something very small, very inconsequential, to put a big dent in my joy.

If I'm being honest.

So many days it takes something so tiny to steal my happiness.

And I look at Paul and I look at what he's dealing with, and I realize that that's a kind of joy that is almost foreign to the world that we live in.

But it's ours.

It's ours.

Because see, here's what Paul was focused on.

He was focused on Jesus.

He was focused on Jesus Christ.

Every word he described, every good thing, every every single descriptive term he used, things that are reputable and honorable and lovely and admirable and pure and lovely and beautiful.

You can put all those in front of the name of Jesus and they all apply.

See, I believe very much that Paul was a person who, when he first met Jesus, he couldn't see.

But from that moment on, the only thing he could see was Jesus.

That he couldn't, he couldn't get his mind off of Jesus, he couldn't take his eyes off of Jesus.

You know, Paul was friends with the disciples, the men who had known Jesus before Jesus died and was risen again.

And I just imagine that with his love and passion for Jesus, that Paul must have asked them over and over again to tell him that story about that time Jesus did that one thing.

That he probably sat at the table with those guys and just beamed as they told the stories of Jesus as they saw it.

And I imagine him sitting at a table with Peter.

And Paul's saying, Hey Peter, tell me that story about the time you walked on water with Jesus again.

And Peter's saying, Oh man, it was crazy.

I was in a boat, and and then Jesus comes walking, he walked on water.

Michael Phelps would lose every single time if he had to go against Jesus.

Jesus would just like be like, What you're doing looks way harder than what I'm doing.

Gold medal.

Like, well, he's got an unusual.

It's an unorthodox approach running on the water, but it works.

So Peter's telling him that story, and he's like, I got on the water.

He asked me to come out of the boat, and I got on the water, and it was amazing.

I was standing on the water, but there was this huge storm, and it was windy, and there was lightning, and there were waves, and it was noisy, and all of a sudden my eyes went off of Jesus and they went to the storm and the waves, and I sank.

And please, we've got to understand, I'm not trying to over-spiritualize things.

I just think we live in a world that under-spiritualizes everything.

The second we take our eyes off of Jesus, we sink.

We do.

And so I think Paul heard Peter talk about that story, and I think Paul said, note to self, keep your eyes on Jesus.

So here's Paul in Mamertine prison, waiting to die, standing in sewage.

And his eyes are on Jesus.

And you know why his eyes could be on Jesus?

Because Jesus was there.

This is like what Adam talked about.

We talked about prison.

You know why so many people find Jesus in prison?

Because Jesus is in prison.

Because Jesus is there, because no matter what you're going through, he's there.

No matter what sewage you're standing in today, he's there.

Jesus doesn't look at you and say, I'm sorry, I don't like the smell, and walk away.

Jesus is right there.

And so I struggle to keep my eyes on Jesus like everybody else.

On Wednesday night, I was a huge jerk to my family.

Um I don't know why.

I got home, I was having dinner with my kids.

Oh my gosh, that's why.

I just realized that's what that's where it all started.

So no, I can't blame it on that.

I uh I was having dinner with my family, and I think what first is so simple.

What first hit me was that I hadn't paid the bills yet.

That's my thing to do.

I hadn't paid the bills.

So I'm supposed to do our finances and pay our bills, and all of a sudden I realize, oh my gosh, I haven't paid bills yet, and it's they're about to be late, and I wasn't planning on spending my whole night doing finances and paying the bills, now I gotta do that.

You know how it's interesting when you get mad at yourself about something, how you start to project what you're mad about to on other people, right?

And so all of a sudden I'm I'm frustrated by the things that I'm supposed to do that that haven't gotten done, and all of a sudden I start criticizing my family about all the things they're supposed to do that haven't gotten done.

And all I can see in the house are are these things that that someone was supposed to do and they're behind on it, and forget the fact that I'm behind on all my stuff.

I haven't mowed the lawn ever.

Like, to me, mowing the lawn is every once in a while I go, oh, I should call that guy who mows our lawn.

His name's Isaac King, he's awesome, he goes to church here.

You should talk to Isaac if you need your lawn mowed.

But but that I'll say, I mowed the lawn today.

I did it.

I called Isaac, he mowed it, but I got it done.

But even though all I have to do is call Isaac, I'm still like two weeks behind on that.

Like I and I I think I was so frustrated with myself, focusing on my own negative, that I started projecting that on everyone else, and all of a sudden, for like an hour, I'm just this jerk at home.

And I'm being rude and I'm being short, and and I'm I'm just communicating to my family without saying any words.

Don't talk to me.

And then and then all that's what Megan said.

And and then all of a sudden, you know, Megan, Megan tried to hold me accountable, and so she talked to me.

I love this church so much.

So Megan comes to confront me about it, which she should have done, and she's not afraid of me or anything, and so she kind of she kind of put me in my place, and instead of receiving it with humility, I just kind of shot it back out, and then she turns around and walks away, and right behind her, unbeknownst to me, is Liam, who's just hearing all of it.

And he looks at me and he's like, What's wrong with mom?

Like he I had a moment I could have taken advantage of it.

I could have been like, Well, I don't know.

You know.

But I I just I looked at him, I said, Ah, Dad, Daddy was was really rude to mom.

I I was really, I was a jerk, and I'm really sorry.

I love your mom, I'm gonna go apologize.

And he looked at me and he said, You better.

Like it was really awesome.

And so, but what blows me away is I I'm I mean, it's funny now, but Wednesday night it was not funny.

I wasted my Wednesday night.

I wasted it.

And it was not because bad things happened to me, it's because my mind was fixated on the few small things that were going wrong.

I was in a sea of blessings focused on a few small things going wrong, and and it ruined my Wednesday.

And when I am miserable, it is never because life is miserable, it's because my focus is miserable.

And so I'm not used to this.

I'm like, me too.

Whatever you focus on is what grows.

And it's interesting, happiness and joy is not a matter of what you find or what you feel, but what you focus on will determine what you find and what you feel so much of the time.

And in our pursuit for happiness, as we wrap up and worship team, you guys can come back up.

As we wrap up today in our pursuit for joy, because we're pursuing it.

We're gonna have it.

I want you to believe that in your life, that we're going to have joy.

You might be here today and it might seem impossible to you to have real joy because you might be standing in some sewage, but I want you to understand that we are going to have joy in our lives.

That is our pursuit.

And we can't have it unless we get the focus issue solved.

We can't.

We need to be people who focus on the good.

No matter how hard it is, no matter how much time it takes, no matter how much we have to try, we have to focus on the good.

Because here's what we need to understand more than anything.

When God looks at us, guess what he focuses on?

It's the good.

See, we have this worry sometimes that when God looks at us, he must just see all the flaws, he must see all the junk, that he sees the sewage.

But he doesn't.

He's dealt with that stuff.

In fact, the Bible says this.

Psalm 103.12, as far as sunrise is from sunset, which is pretty far, he has separated us from our sins.

2 Corinthians 5, 20 and 21 says, Become friends with God.

He's already a friend with you.

How you ask, in Christ.

God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

What this says is that when you accept Jesus into your life, God has dealt with your sewage.

He's over it, he's past it.

You may not be past it, but he is.

You may not be done dealing with the consequences of it based on decisions that you've made, but he is long past dwelling on it, focusing on it.

He's not fixated on your flaws, he loves you.

In fact, it says that not only did Jesus take your sin on the cross and pay the penalty for it, but Jesus gave you his righteousness.

So when God looks at you, he's focused on the righteousness of Jesus.

That's what it means, by the way, to accept Jesus.

And if you're here this morning and you've never accepted him, we're not gonna make you raise your hand while everyone pretends to close their eyes.

Because that's totally what happens, you know it.

It is.

Because the pastor's not closing his eyes, how can he see all the hands going up?

Anyway, so we're not gonna make you do that.

It's a matter of your heart.

And if you want a joy unlike anything you've experienced, and if you want the peace that comes from understanding that there's no God in heaven mad at you, that there's a God in heaven in love with you, there's a God in heaven that is fixated on every good thing about you that you can't even see.

All you have to do is know Jesus.

All you have to do is say in your heart, Jesus, I want you.

And and I will encourage you, like like Erica shared, don't wait.

If you accept Jesus this morning, run out of here.

Well, you know, walk briskly.

Safety, and sign up to be baptized.

Just say, hey, I've made the decision to follow Jesus in my life.

I want to just cap it with baptism right away.

And we'll celebrate that with you.

But God is focused on your good.

That means in God's eyes, you're good.

You're good.

So let's be people this week and try to be like our God.

Let's be people who, when we feel ourselves getting sucked into that negative focus, when we feel ourselves starting to count all the things going wrong around us, let's be people that just stop and say, Where's my focus?

Because you may not be in Mamertine, but you might feel like it.

But that's where Jesus is.

He's there, he's with you.

So fix your your eyes, your heart, your mind, fix every part of you on Jesus.

And let that peace come over you.

Let that joy fill your heart.

I love you guys.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, thank you so much for this morning.

This has been a really good morning.

Everybody seems like they're in a good mood, Jesus.

And uh Tammy especially seems like she's in a good mood.

And I like that.

No, honestly, Jesus, I I really am grateful to be part of a church where people are not afraid to shout your name.

Where people are not afraid to make sure everyone around them understands.

That it's not church that has saved us.

It's not, it's not church that has freed us, it's not religion that has made us who we are.

It is one person, it is Jesus, it is you.

All we want is you, Jesus.

All we need is you.

So fill us this week, Lord.

Remind us as we're going through our days, we're sitting in traffic angry, or when we're frustrated with the kids because they're not doing what they're supposed to do.

Just remind us that we're not in Mamertine prison, but even if we were, you're there.

Remind us over and over again that you're not put off by our mess.

You're not put off by the sewage that we're standing in.

But Lord, you love us and you embrace us and you hold us in your hand.

And in your hand we are safe.

And in your hand we are strong.

And in your hand we have joy, Lord.

So we want to be children in the hands of our Father, full of joy, full of life, full of a passion for living, Lord, that only you can bring.

And we ask this in your name of Jesus.

Amen.