Joy Today

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Good morning.

I said good morning a second ago, but my microphone wasn't on, so it wasn't an effective good morning, but happy new year.

Hopefully everyone's 2014's off to a good start.

So far this morning has helped mine to be.

If it is your first time and you'd love some more information about what we are as a church and who we are as a church, just head over to the info desk afterwards and talk to someone and they'll give you all the info you need.

You may have noticed another desk this morning.

I never thought I'd be excited about a desk, but I am.

I noticed some of us walked into the some of you are looking around like another desk?

What?

I noticed some people walked in and just went right by it.

Brian Van Dyne and I were talking about that.

Other people walked in and saw it.

Other people kind of looked at it like, has that been here before?

I I'm not sure.

Am I crazy or whatever?

We're gonna call that the Connect Desk, and we'll talk about that uh with some of our announcements and some other things that we'll be doing soon.

So, for example, uh on January 26th, we're gonna be announcing a brand new approach that that we have for small groups and for relationships.

And every single Sunday, as soon as we're done, there'll be people there at the Connect Desk.

You'll see signs that say groups, and you'll be able to go talk to someone and find out how you can get connected with other people.

There might be teams and signups that we want to talk about, and that's that's all gonna happen at the Connect Desk.

So, for example, this morning, we have a couple signups that you can be part of.

Uh the Red Cross uses our facility as an official shelter in case of an emergency in Cherokee County.

We're like the this is the shelter for a major catastrophe in this part of the county, and a couple times a year they need to do a drill to help make sure that they're ready and that any of us that want to be part of that are ready in case that happens.

And so we've got another drill coming up on January 18th.

It's on a Saturday morning.

It'll be from about 9 to uh to noon.

And so if you want to be part of that and want to help out with that and get some training, so if that ever happens, you can be here.

Head over to the Connect Desk.

You'll see it when you walk out.

You'll see a sign that says Red Cross, and just sign up with Cheryl.

Uh, you can also sign up for a few of our teams there this morning.

Uh, we have a lot of amazing volunteers that make every Sunday happen here at His Hands.

And it's it's always amazing to me how many people it takes to make sure that everyone who walks through the doors gets that love that we talked about and understands that this is a place where you are accepted, where you can be who you are and experience Jesus.

And so we're gonna be talking this month about our Sunday support teams.

We have some amazing people that show up a little early to help with free coffee, or the welcome team maybe to get this whole room ready with setting up for Lord's Supper.

We have people that stay afterwards to help clean up the place.

You may not know that, but once everyone's gone, there's a team of people that stay for an extra half hour or 45 minutes to vacuum and get everything cleaned up.

And Sunday would not happen if it wasn't for those Sunday support teams.

It's our ushers, our safety team, a ton of great people.

And we could really use some help on those teams.

And so we're gonna be talking about them for this month.

But if if you want to sign up for any team this morning, youth, nursery, you name it, that's great.

You can go there and sign up.

But specifically, if you think you can help out a little bit on Sundays with those teams, we would really appreciate it.

And the great thing about those teams is you can help and you don't have to miss the whole service.

So it's a way to do something really important that has a big impact and still get to experience worship together as well.

So that'll be at the Connect Desk.

We'll be saying that a lot, Connect Desk.

Um, I want to let everyone know that youth starts back for high school on Wednesday, January 22nd.

So if you have a high school student or if you are a high school student, January 22nd.

I know all of you guys keep very extensive calendars.

You're very organized in that way.

So just go ahead and put that on your calendars.

January 22nd.

We're gonna be back together.

I I've missed you guys, so I can't wait for that.

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

And if you have a junior high student, we have an incredible junior high group that meets every single morning over in the youth arena as well.

They're over there right now.

Uh, they're having a blast, so know that in case you have a junior high student that's never been.

Only other thing I had to talk about was just a big thank you to everyone that helps us out financially.

Uh, we're gonna have a big year together, and we we do need and appreciate everything that you can do to contribute to that.

And uh we'll never pass a plate or anything like that.

But if you want to, if you want to contribute financially, there's four columns in the back, and you can either go online or or take care of it at those columns.

We need it, God's using it to do great things, and we appreciate it.

So with that, with that said, let's pray and let's talk about our new year together.

Jesus, thank you so much.

Thank you that uh that it is all about you.

We we are so blessed to just know you and to know that your desire, your heart's desire, is to know us and for us to experience your love.

And then I pray this morning, Lord, that that's what you do for us, that you give us a taste of that love.

And those of us that have known you for years, God, that we would we would acquire a new hunger for that love this year.

Maybe those of us who are either new to a relationship with you or just kind of figuring things out would understand what having you in our lives would mean for us this year and for every year to come.

And so we just pray that, Holy Spirit, you would move and speak to our hearts and just share whatever you want to share.

And we ask this in your name.

Amen.

Well, I started by saying Happy New Year.

It is a new year.

A few days have gone by since the beginning of New Year's, but this is our first morning together for 2014.

And I hope that you are as excited as I am about a new year.

There's always something exciting about a new year, right?

There's a fresh start, there's there's hope, you know, there's things to come.

We start planning for things, we set goals, we join gyms, we go for a month, we do all that every year.

Because it's a new year.

There's renewed hope for all of us.

New years are exciting.

And I don't know what 2013 was like for you.

I hope you enjoyed 2013 greatly.

Some of us maybe are glad that 2013 is over.

I had a great time in 2013, but if I could put like a title on last year, you know, for the future, for history's sake, so I could look back on 2013 and go, what season of life was that for me?

I would call 2013 for me the year of the curveball.

That's what I would call it.

You know, a curveball is something that you don't expect.

Yeah, some of us understand that.

You know, when things do not go according to plan.

And that was 2013 for me in a nutshell.

It didn't matter if it was at home or at work.

If it could go wrong, it went wrong.

And we just sort of had to learn to roll with things.

And I have this large menu of experiences that I could choose from to talk about that.

For example, this last summer, I'm driving with my mom, which is always fun, and with my son, who's three years old, and we're we're driving, we're on our way to take my mom to the airport.

She was gonna go back home to Missouri, where I'm from.

And on the way, I wanted to take her by IKEA.

She loves furniture.

She has never been inside an IKEA.

And for all of us who have been to IKEA, we know that the first time you go there, it's an experience.

It is not what you expect.

There's meatballs, there's that room that looks like the Raiders of the Lost Ark at the end of the first Indian Jones movie.

There's all those things.

And I told my mom, you need to see IKEA.

And plus, Liam, my son, loves IKEA for one simple reason: there's ice cream.

And he knows that no matter how long it takes us to get through, to find that one tiny piece of furniture that I'm gonna put together, you know, for hours and hours on end, he gets a cone of ice cream.

So he was excited.

And on the way to Ikea, we're driving on 75 South, and we start to hear this noise, and our car starts to rattle and rumble really severely, and then just boom, the right passenger tire exploded.

We did not get a flat, the tire exploded, it blew off the back bumper.

I mean, it was crazy.

And God was there, no, no, we didn't get in a wreck or anything like that.

We were able to get on the side of the road.

My mom was panicked, I was just kind of hyper-focused.

I look back and in the backseat, oh man, my son.

Because the tire that exploded, it was right next to him.

And he has these huge tears in his eyes.

And I look back at him and I'm like, oh, this poor boy, his life just flashed before his eyes.

And he's three, so that was a quick flash.

I mean, it was like we're talking a few episodes of Sesame Street, you know, some things like that.

And so I look at him and I'm thinking, okay, he's he's deeply emotionally scarred right now.

What am I gonna do?

So I asked him, I said, Liam, are you okay?

And he just looked at me and he had these huge, huge tears welling up in his eyes.

And I'll never forget what he said to me, because he just looked at me and said, Dad, how are we gonna get to IKEA?

That was that was the extent of his emotional scarring.

And I was so happy.

Megan came by, she picked up, she took my mom to the airport because my mom was gonna make IKEA, but they went there, he got his ice cream, it was a good day.

But that was a curveball, and that was not the only curveball we experienced last year.

We took our college students on a retreat uh the same summer, and uh and we went to this house in Blairsville, it was on a lake, it was beautiful.

We did some great worship, we hung out with our college students and just really got close together.

We got out on the lake with some canoes.

We brought canoes up there.

My good friend Ben Densmore hooked us up with six canoes.

We rented them and uh and took them on a trailer, three stacks of two, and on the way back from this amazing trip, I get a phone call from one of our college students saying, Justin, did you know that two of your canoes snapped off the top of the trailer and flew off on the road?

And I did not know that.

I had not I had not been made aware of that.

I couldn't see out the back of my car, all I could see were the canoes that were in the middle.

And so I pull over, and sure enough, we go by, and two canoes flew off the trailer, hit the ground, went into the road, no one was hurt, there were no accidents.

The person right behind us it was Katie Patterson.

She's like, I started to see them wobble, and I said, I'm just gonna back up a little bit.

And they came off, and then we had to figure out we were an hour outside of Atlanta.

How do we get these two canoes back home?

You know, the trailer was broken, we couldn't use that.

I was borrowing my mother and father-in-law's expedition, thankfully, and so we were able to get one of them strapped to the top, and the other one was able to fit in the actual vehicle.

It was an entire canoe, full-size canoe.

The nose of the canoe was at our windshield, the back was hanging out the back uh window of the SUV.

It was, I've never been so nervous driving a car in my entire life, ever.

But we got them home, it was fantastic, everything went okay.

But that was a curveball just the end of this year.

I mean, I could choose from a lot more, but my wife and I decided to move.

We're having a baby that's due any day now, and so in fact, if Nathan and the worship team comes up on stage in a few minutes, that means my wife's in labor.

I'm prepared for that.

So if it's a short Sunday, that's why.

Uh but we decided to move.

So we sold our house and we we bought a new house.

We were really excited, but we were able to move in before we closed on that house because it was vacant and the owner was okay with that.

But then the closing of the house got pushed back, and then it got pushed back again, and then it looked like it was gonna get uh get pushed back again, and some other complications happened, and we ended up uh having the contract fall through.

And so we just moved again, okay?

And we're in my my mother and father-in-law's house.

Thank you guys so much.

It's so great to be back home.

Uh and and in two weeks we're gonna be moving again.

So there you go, curveballs, right?

2013 for me was the year of the curveball.

I'm sure you could title it something for yourself, but that's all in the past now.

It is 2014.

And so, what is 2014 gonna be like for all of us?

I don't know about you, but I want to enjoy 2014.

I want to enjoy my year.

That's what I want more than anything.

I want it to be a year that I enjoy.

And I'm guessing I'm not alone.

I'm guessing, given the option of enjoying this year or not, most of us would opt for enjoyment.

You know, that's usually, okay, good.

You know, it's a funny thing because enjoy is a word we use often and we use it on all kinds of things.

And we forget that enjoyment has this crucial part to it that's necessary, and that is joy.

And it's easy for us to confuse joy with happiness, right?

But joy and happiness are two very different things.

Happiness is sort of this circumstantial state you find yourself in where everything is working, everything is going according to plan, and you can just sit back and have some happiness.

You can relax.

By the way, happiness and curveballs are enemies of one another.

So if your year is a year of curveballs, I'm praying that it's not, but if it is, happiness is gonna have a hard time just happening on its own.

Joy is more than that.

Joy goes beyond our circumstances.

Joy is something that transcends our circumstances, and joy is something that we can experience through Jesus in the absolute worst of times and in the worst situations.

And I want 2014 to be a year of joy for myself, selfishly, because I am selfish sometimes.

I want it to be a year of joy for every one of us, for this whole church.

And I believe that that is something that God wants as well.

So this morning we're gonna talk a little bit about joy.

So he said that joy is something that isn't circumstantial.

There's a verse in 2 Corinthians where Paul says, Now I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, what God in his kindness has done through the churches in Macedonia.

They are being tested by many troubles, and they are very poor.

They are also filled with abundant joy, which has overflowed in rich generosity.

The church in Corinth, for the most part, was a pretty well-to-do church.

Corinth was a major, a major economic hub in the world at that time.

So most of the people in Corinth were doing okay.

And for the most part, Paul's letter to the church in Corinth can be summed up by saying, I love you, but stop it.

That's that's the theme of Corinth.

Like, I love you guys, but come on.

It's like we are with parents, with our kids, like, I love you so much, but please, please, stop.

And he references these churches in Macedonia, and these churches are in a very different circumstance than the churches in Corinth.

They're poor.

They don't have anything.

Their circumstances are not good, but yet he says they have abundant joy.

Abundant joy.

I would love this to be a year of abundant joy.

And that's not circumstantial.

In AD 63 or AD 64, around that time, Paul wrote another letter.

It's the letter to the Philippians.

And if you ever read Philippians, it's an it's a very warm, encouraging, positive letter.

It's a letter that even our culture outside of religion quotes pretty often.

There's so many of these incredibly positive things that are said in Philippians.

So for example, in Philippians 4.4, Paul says, always be full of joy in the Lord.

I say it again, rejoice.

Philippians 4.8 is a verse that uh gets talked about a lot.

It inspired Tommy Newberry, who shared with us last summer.

It's a verse that we kind of base the whole 40 days of joy on this past summer.

It's Philippians 4.8.

It says, 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 these things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

So, so the whole book of Philippians, it's filled with these kinds of statements, these positive, warm, awesome, lovely things.

And you get the impression when you read Philippians that Paul must have been in a pretty good mood when he wrote it.

Either that or it's incredibly sarcastic and mean.

But I think he was in a good mood.

I think he meant the things that he wrote.

And it's interesting because his circumstances could not have been worse.

He wrote the entire letter of Philippians while in prison, waiting to be executed.

And yet he's saying things like, Rejoice later on in verse 10.

It says, I rejoiced greatly in the Lord, that at last you renewed your concern for me.

Indeed you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.

I'm not saying this because I'm in need, for I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances.

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

And it just so happens that that him is Jesus.

So Paul said, I have learned the secret of joy.

And it is not my circumstances.

I mean, he said it himself.

I've learned how to be content in any and every situation, and that includes being in prison, waiting to be executed.

That's about as bad of a circumstance as you can encounter.

And yet he has joy.

He's saying, I'm rejoicing greatly.

He didn't even just say, I'm rejoicing.

I'm rejoicing greatly.

And so for all of us this morning, for us to have a year, for 2014 to be a year of abundant joy, it's not about our circumstances.

And yet, most New Year's resolutions, the ones that I have for myself included, tend to be circumstance related.

Trying to create the ideal circumstances for happiness to occur.

You know, if I lose a little bit of weight, if I had a little a little bit more money in my bank account, you know, if this changes a little bit, if that gets a little bit better, New Year's resolutions are great, and happiness is a good thing.

But most of those big goals that we set for ourselves are happiness related.

It's the circumstances.

And Paul is saying, hey, you want joy?

Joy is beyond circumstances.

So this morning, we're just going to share a few small things that we can all do together to experience joy this year.

You know, it's a new year, so we just talked about resolutions.

It's natural for us to be thinking ahead.

When you create a new year's resolution, you're thinking ahead, right?

You're saying, at the end of this year, this is what I hope to accomplish.

At the end of 2014, I'm going to weigh this much.

At the end of 2014, I'm going to have this much in my bank account.

I'm going to be at this point in my job or whatever it is.

We're looking ahead.

We're saying at the end of the year, this is what I want to accomplish.

And that's conventional wisdom.

You know, the conventional wisdom of this world says plan ahead, look ahead, always be a few steps ahead, and that's good.

But God's wisdom is rarely conventional.

It's rarely conventional.

And what we'll find, I believe, is that the best way to enjoy 2014 is to make sure that you enjoy today.

When I was in high school, I got hired at Kohl's.

It was the Coles on Cobb Parkways, you're going toward Ackworth.

There wasn't really much there.

Now there's like a Best Buy and all kinds of shopping centers, but I got hired there and it was before the store actually opened.

And so we were putting the store together, so to speak, and my second or third day there was really new.

They put me in the stock room, and our job was to get all the boxes that were coming in off the trucks out where they were supposed to go in the store so that another batch of boxes could come.

And there were a lot of boxes.

And I remember walking into this storeroom.

I'm I'm I'm 16 years old, and I see this sea of boxes.

It's an ocean of boxes.

It looked just like that place in IKEA that you go to at the end, you know, the I call it the Indiana Jones room.

That's that same feeling that I had.

It's just all these boxes.

And the stockroom manager looked at me, and he's this incredibly wise guy.

I don't even remember his name, but I know he's wise because of what he said to me.

And he could tell that I was overwhelmed.

He could tell that I was in way over my head, and he said, Justin, calm down.

I can see that you're panicking.

I'm going to tell you how we're going to do this.

We're going to open one box at a time.

And if we do one box at a time, we will get through it.

And so that's what we did.

We opened one box at a time.

We dealt with that one box, and by the end of the day, we had made this massive, massive dent.

I was amazed.

I never would have thought at the beginning of that day that we would get anywhere near as much done as we did, but it was by going one box at a time.

And it just so happens that that is the way Jesus would have us approach life.

One day at a time.

In Matthew 6.34, Jesus says, So don't worry at all about tomorrow.

For tomorrow will bring its own worries.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

If you go get almost any self-help book at Barnes and Noble on how to be happy, it's going to have some version of what Jesus just said.

It's going to say you need to live in the now, you need to be in the present, you know, carbadeum, things like that.

But this is something Jesus said a few thousand years ago.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

Just focus on today.

And a few moments before that, Jesus was teaching people how to pray.

And so he said, Hey, pray like this in Matthew 6, 9.

He says, Pray like this.

Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

May your kingdom come soon.

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today the food we need.

And forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us, and don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

Even in praying, Jesus has this simple focus on today.

Give us today our daily bread.

Psalm 118, 24.

This is the day the Lord has made.

We will rejoice and be glad in it.

James 4.14 says, How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow?

Your life is like the morning fog.

It's here a little while and then it's gone.

Right when I graduated from college, my very first real job, you know, my first real job, the one that I had a desk and a business card, and it was all this stuff to make you feel like you were important, and then you just get there and you're like, oh, you're okay, I'll make copies.

Whatever.

Um it was at the Dale Carnegie Training Institute.

Dale Carnegie wrote a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It seems like a very manipulative title, but it's an Incredible book.

A lot of us have probably read that book.

I have several times.

It's kind of ironic.

I worked there for several months and I never read that book while I worked there.

And the whole company kind of revolved around the principles in that book and never read it.

It wasn't a few years later when I was here that I read that book.

I was like, oh wow, that would have been helpful for me there.

But it is what it is.

That's the past.

Well, there's this quote that Dale Carnegie has that's really incredible.

He says, one of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living.

We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

There's no roses blooming today in Georgia.

This is metaphorical.

But isn't that so true that we put off living because we're getting ready for what's on the horizon?

There's another quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He says, We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

So the best way to have an amazing 2014, a year that is full of joy, is to make sure that you enjoy today.

I'm sure a lot of us have New Year's resolutions.

But have any of us made a January 5th, 2014 resolution?

And if you haven't, there's time to right now.

And what it would be like if we took that one box at a time approach to life instead of saying, hey, this year, these are all the things I'm going to do.

And every single morning we woke up and said, This is my new day's resolution.

If we had a new day's resolution every single day, we might find that the year just kind of takes care of itself.

And again, I know it's conventional wisdom to plan ahead, and that's good.

But it's not good if it takes us away from today.

If living a few days ahead or a few months ahead or being worried about the future or worried about next year means that you don't get the most out of today, that's not wisdom at all.

But that's something I do all the time.

I'm always trying to be a few steps ahead.

I think it's a good thing, you know, I'm being prepared or I'm being organized.

And if my ego is really big, I'm trying to, I'm just trying to be visionary.

You know, I'm trying to envision something down the road, but I can do that at the detriment of today.

I can miss time with my family.

I can miss time with my wife.

I mean, I do that all the time where I'll be in a terrible mood at home today because I'm so stressed about what I need to get done tomorrow.

And in me getting ready for tomorrow, I just ruined today.

The only problem with that is the only day I'm ever guaranteed is the one that I'm in right now.

So if we want to have a great 2014, it starts today.

An obsession with tomorrow can get in the way of joy in 2014, but so can an obsession with the past.

And it's amazing because it's so easy to either look ahead and live in tomorrow or look behind us and live in the past.

But the past can be just as much of an enemy to understanding and appreciating today as the future can be, and it can be just as detrimental to our joy.

Just as detrimental to our joy.

In Jesus' day, so many people missed him.

So many people missed Jesus.

He was right in front of them.

He was right there for them to know, but they just missed him.

And it's sad because it was the people that should not have missed him.

It was the ones that should have seen him coming a mile away.

See, in the book of Isaiah, chapter 43, it says, Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past.

Isaiah 43 · chapter mention

And the context of that verse is really interesting because it was prophetic.

It was God telling people what he was going to be doing, and it was a hint of Jesus.

And in verse 19, he says, For I am about to do something new.

See, I've already begun.

Do you not see it?

And so Jesus came and he revealed himself, and the people that had memorized every prophecy about the Messiah, the religious people, the Pharisees, the ones that knew it backwards and forwards, they missed it.

They missed it.

And that was in large part because they were living in the past.

They were so focused on how it had always been, on what God had always done, that they completely missed that he was doing something new.

And what a shame.

That's in large part why Jesus didn't really bother to recruit those people as his disciples.

In Matthew 9, he says, who could patch old clothing with new cloth?

For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins.

New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved.

You know, Jesus was doing something big in his day.

He was doing something today, and the only way he could do what God needed him to do was to do it through people who weren't living in the past, who weren't living in yesterday.

He needed people that were living today.

And the great news for all of us is that Jesus is doing something really big and really great today.

And he wants to do it in us and through us, and the only way we can experience that is if we are living today.

Like new wineskins, ready, ready to grow, ready to expand, ready to do whatever it is that Jesus wants to do.

So we have to be in today, but that is hard, right?

I love verses that just tell you something like it should be the easiest thing in the world to do.

Hey, forget the past.

Don't dwell on that.

Oh, okay, thanks.

Great.

Now that you say it that way, it's so easy to forget all the mistakes and failures I've made.

Thank you so much.

I mean, there are a few things that can keep us rooted in the past, right?

Sometimes it's it's good things.

It might be the glory days.

We have this tendency to put a shine on the past that never really existed and to look at an era that's gone by and be like, that was when life was really good.

You know, 50 years ago, that that was it was awesome.

Everything's just gone downhill since then.

And that's not just true of Christianity, that's true of people, right?

So it might be good things, it might be, you know, living in the past, the glory days, the good old days, whatever, but I think usually what it is for most of us personally, the thing that keeps us rooted in the past, it's the mistakes, right?

It's the failures, it's the things we wish we could go back and change.

We just have a tendency to relive those moments.

When I was in college, I went and spent a week with my family in Missouri, and I was visiting them for the Christmas holiday, and my wife and I were there, and late one night we started to watch a movie with my little brother.

It was a movie that my brother had either bought or been given, a movie he loved.

And I'll just be honest, it was not an appropriate movie.

Now, I'm not throwing him under the bus.

He was a high school freshman.

I too had seen this movie.

Very funny movie, but not completely appropriate.

But he decided to watch it, and I decided to watch it with him, and I've asked for forgiveness, so you just gotta let me off the hook, okay?

So we start to watch this movie, my brother's movie, and about 30 minutes later, my mom comes into the room and sits down on the couch to watch it with us.

Now, your perspective on what's appropriate changes greatly when your parents are in the room, right?

And I don't I don't care if you're 15 or if you're 50, most of us have had an experience where we're with our parents and we say, hey, let's let's watch this movie.

I've seen this movie.

This is a great movie, let's watch this together.

And then as soon as you start to watch it, and you're looking at it through the lens of my mom is watching this with me, there's these moments that just pop in your head and you're like, oh no.

I mean, and so maybe you've done this before where you're like, Mom, I'm I did not remember that the language was this bad in this movie.

I am so sorry, or or dad, I'm I'm really that scene I completely forgot about it.

There must have been a commercial break when I watched it the first time.

I don't know.

I think I saw some edited version of that.

I am so sorry.

So my mom comes in the room and sits down to watch this movie, and she's very sensitive about things like that.

And it's funny because I remember this so clearly.

My brother's on the other side of the room on a couch, and I'm sitting in this other seat, and he just looks at me.

Right?

And I'm his big brother, and we're very close.

So he didn't have to say a word, but he looks at me and he just goes, like, like, help me.

I mean, it was it was him going, Justin, bro, just I need you, save me, save me, please.

And so I thought for a second about what to do, and I decided to stand up, and I said, Well, guys, I'm I'm tired.

I think I'm going to bed.

And I did.

And Megan came with me, and we just left him.

We just completely left him.

And you know what?

I I really did it just to do that.

That was it was intentional.

I had gotten grounded when I was in high school for watching stuff I shouldn't have watched.

So this was his turn.

This was his movie, okay?

It was it was his chance to experience this.

So, man, about 10 minutes later, he comes storming upstairs and he's furious.

And he's like, What?

You jerk! You left me.

Mom is furious.

It got to this one scene because I knew when he looked at me that one of the worst scenes in the movie was about to come.

I mean, like one of the absolute worst scenes, and that just happens to be when she's in there, and he knew that too.

That's part of why he was looking at me like he was.

And so he's just saying, You left me, and she's furious.

What am I gonna do?

And so I said, Well, calm down.

She can't be that mad.

And he's like, Oh no, no, no, she is.

She is angry.

And so Megan chimes in and says, Aaron, here, just stay here.

I'll go downstairs, I'll talk to your mom, I'll kind of gauge just how angry she is.

So he's like, Okay, okay, please.

So Megan goes downstairs and she comes up a few minutes later, and Aaron's like, How is she?

And Megan goes, Not good.

She says, uh, she's just watching the same part over and over again.

And shaking her head in disgust and then rewinding it and replaying the same part.

And as Megan said this, I mean, my brother's blood drained from his face, right?

He looks like he was about to die.

Now, in reality, that was not what was happening.

My mom had moved on, and she and Megan were just talking, but my my amazing, beautiful wife just had this idea of how to mess with my brother.

And I I love her for that.

I love her for that.

And we let we let Aaron simmer for a while, and eventually we let him in.

No, no, she's not that mad.

But man, the thought of my mom replaying the worst part of that movie over and over again terrified him.

Now, that's a that's a funny story, but how often have all of us replayed the worst parts of our story and our minds?

How many times do we look back on our past and replay those worst moments over and over again, shaking our head in disgust at ourselves?

I know I do that all the time.

And that's what our sin has this tendency to do, right?

It keeps us grounded in yesterday and we just relive it and we relive it over and over again.

And that focus on the past ruins our capacity for joy.

It just ruins it.

And the saddest part about it is we don't have to do that.

It's completely unnecessary.

You know, the Bible is full of amazing men and women who had the opportunity to replace some pretty terrible parts of their past if they wanted to.

And King David is the classic example.

A great man, a great leader.

I mean, someone that had such a special relationship with God that the Bible said he was a man after God's own heart.

When we sing worship songs, some of the most deep and meaningful expressions of worship, the words that just communicate what our heart feels, I mean, we're just pulling those from Psalms.

You know, in almost 4,000 years, we still haven't figured out a way for the most part to better express to God who He is and how much we love Him and how much He loves us than what David put down on paper so many years ago.

That's how close he was with God.

And yet, he had some of the most horrific sins you could imagine.

He had an affair with a married woman, she got pregnant, he panicked, he had the husband killed, he had it covered up, and yes, he experienced some major consequences for that, but ultimately he experienced forgiveness.

And so in Romans, it talks about that forgiveness.

And in Romans 4, 6 through 8, it says, David also spoke of this when he described the happiness of those who are declared righteous without working for it.

Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight.

Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.

So we want to experience joy today.

It's a big reminder that yesterday is over.

And it's already been dealt with.

And Jesus has forgiven us, and we don't have to live in yesterday anymore.

Every single morning that we wake up, it's a new day.

It's a new chance to wonder at God.

It's a new chance to experience his love for us.

And then to take that love that he gives us, because it's not just about us being selfish and receiving love.

It's amazing how in church culture there's this belief that love is the easy part.

And we talk about love a lot here at his hands because it's not the easy part.

You know, there's this belief that, hey, yeah, love, we get love, we got it, love people, love God.

Yeah, yeah, that's easy.

Okay, when are we gonna focus on the hard thing?

Let's get to the rules, right?

But what's easier?

Keeping 10 rules or loving someone with the intensity that Jesus asked us to?

I'm not even that good at keeping rules.

And it is hard to love people like that.

It's hard to love people like that that I love naturally.

So love is not the easy part.

In fact, it's the part that we've got to keep coaching each other on and encouraging each other with and reminding each other about, because that's what we're striving for.

That kind of love in our lives.

And every single day that we wake up and breathe, that love exists for us so that we can experience it and then take it and give it away.

Lamentations 3, 22 through 23 says, the faithful love of the Lord never ends, his mercies never cease.

Great is his faithfulness, his mercies begin afresh each morning.

His love, his mercy is fresh every single day.

So if we want to experience joy in 2014, we can't be living in 2013.

And we can't be living in 2015 either.

We've got to be living today.

So, worship team, if you guys will come back up and get ready to finish this out this morning.

I'm gonna stop talking so we actually have some today left to enjoy.

You will only ever get one crack at January 5th, 2014.

This is it.

This is your chance.

You know, so make it a good one.

And I actually love that the weather isn't great this morning.

Winter finally decided to show up.

That's how it is in Georgia.

I actually was feeling really cold the other night.

We were we were moving out of our house again, and uh and it was really cold.

And I I looked online at the weather, it was 28 degrees, and I was like, oh, okay.

But every every once in a while when I have that happen and I'm complaining about the weather here, I just I just look at the weather uh places I used to live, because I've moved around a lot, and so I used to live in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, which is about halfway up Wisconsin, and I checked the weather there and it was negative eight.

So I was like, we're good.

We're good.

It is beautiful.

The actual description of the weather that day was bitterly cold.

I was like, wow, they have a I'm glad we don't live in a place that has that.

But this is the only day we get, and it's not a day that we're just gonna be happy because the circumstances are so great, right?

It's not like, hey, the weather's beautiful, the sun is shining, so just go out and have a picnic and enjoy your day.

I think that's good.

I think it's a good reminder that joy is something we decide on.

And even more importantly, joy is something we only get through our connection with our daddy, through our connection with God, and through Jesus.

Jesus lived life with great joy.

Even when he was on his way to the cross, he's stopping at friends' houses and he's eating.

His last night on earth, he decides to have dinner with his friends.

In any circumstance, no matter what he was facing, Jesus chose joy.

Joy is beyond our circumstances, it's beyond happiness, and it's for all of us today.

So the opportunity that we have is to not worry about tomorrow.

Don't get ahead of yourself, don't worry about what's coming up on the horizon, and don't focus on yesterday.

Live in today and make January 5th, 2014, a day of abundant joy.

Let's pray.

And Jesus, thank you so much for today.

God, I I'm not particularly proud of a few of my most recent days and just how I've handled myself being really stressed out and uh, you know, my back hurting from moving all these boxes and all that kind of stuff.

And I just know personally, sometimes I make the mistake of just reliving yesterday.

Or I'm so busy thinking about what's got to be done tomorrow that I put everyone I love and everyone I care about off today.

And I pray for all of us, Jesus, that that does not happen.

I pray that you give us the ability to express gratitude and practice gratitude for the people in our lives so that we experience joy through gratitude.

I pray that, Jesus, you give us the ability to reflect on who we are and our identity through you, that we are the sons and the daughters of the God of this universe.

Jesus, as a family, as a church family, I pray that we take a moment as we walk out the doors this morning to say, I love you to as many of us as we can.

We're so looking forward to a new year together.

And I pray that we just start it right today.

And Jesus, I ask all this in your name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, happy new year.