Rediscovering Your Joy | Kylen Perry

All right, Porch. How are we doing? Are we doing okay? Great to see you. I'm so glad you're here, genuinely. It always means so much that you would make time out of your very busy schedule to be here at The Porch with us. Not just those of you in the room, but everyone tuning in online. We love that God is not only meeting with young adults here; he is meeting with young adults everywhere. Y'all know that, right?

He is meeting with people your age, your peers, all over not only the nation but the globe. We get to be a part of something so significant that he is doing. There are Porch.Live locations all over the place as well. Can we give it up for them really quick? Let's put our hands together for what God is doing at all of our Porch.Live locations. We love the fact that we get to be a small part of what God is doing wherever it is you are. Special shout-out to Porch.Live Indy, Fresno, and Dayton.

Several years ago, we went on the family cruise of the century. You know, you fall into one of two buckets. You're either cruise people or you're not cruise people. Show of hands. Who are my cruise people in here? I'm still on the fence. I have not decided yet. So this was my attempt to really figure out if I was part of the cruise train.

This was a massive event for my family. We had booked well in advance. We had been saving up. We wanted to make the money work. We made sure everybody's calendars were aligned. At last, we set sail to the British Virgin Islands for a week's worth of rest and relaxation. Don't you think that sounds amazing right now? Anybody want to get out of here and just take a week off of work? Amen.

As is true on any cruise, we made several stops along the way. You pull up to different ports, and that way you can see the sights and meet the people. We knew there were a variety of islands we were going to. One of the islands we were going to be making port at was the island of Saint Martin. I didn't know anything about Saint Martin. I'd done no previous research, but I assumed it was a beach destination, so I knew that somewhere amongst the sand of this island was going to be a chair and an umbrella with my name on it.

But I also knew that my brother-in-law was very excited about Saint Martin. "Why was he excited about this island in specific?" you may be asking yourself. Not because of the vibrant culinary scene that is true of Saint Martin or the diverse cultural backdrop that marks this landscape. Not the fact that this is a dream destination for deep-sea divers. No, none of those reasons were the object of his desire for this island. Instead, the reason he was so excited for Saint Martin was because of a beach known as Maho Beach.

Now, you may not recognize the name Maho Beach, but you will recognize the pictures, because Maho Beach is on every aviation aficionado and TikTok influencer's bucket list. The photos are amazing. If ever you're in the area, you should check it out. It is known as Airport Beach. Maho is one of the only places in the world where you can get your tan on, you can sip a piña colada, and you can put your hand on the belly of a Boeing 747 as it lands right behind you. It is truly one of a kind. There is nothing else like it in the world, at least that I know of.

Now, the day arrived, and the beach was exactly as we expected. It was packed. It was loaded with guests all trying to do the exact same thing we were. They were trying to snap a selfie while getting swept in the jet stream of whatever Airbus was careening overhead. It was hilarious to watch people try to get in a position where they could take a good picture. They were losing their ever-loving minds, the adults most of all.

It was hilarious to watch people in the water, falling out of their floaties, and trying to make it to the beach, because they could see a plane on the horizon, or grown men pulling up different flight information and tracking whatever the big international flights were that were coming in that area, or as these planes were flying overhead, whole adults were raising their fists and cheering at the fact that this plane was so close. "It's right here! Here we go! Let's go!" That was everyone's reaction as this was happening.

It was the most ridiculous experience…grown men transporting back in time to their 10-year-old selves because they found a reason to rejoice as they saw these planes coming in. But do you know what stood out to me most? If you went just 50 yards down the beach, either to the left or to the right, you would encounter a vibe that was very different altogether.

While in the center of the beach, as these planes are flying overhead, everyone is celebrating and losing their minds… "Oh my gosh! That one was huge. Did you see how close it got to us? I almost touched it." "No, you didn't." "But I almost touched it!" Everyone is having the most amazing experience, but 50 yards left or right of it, the vibe is totally different.

While we were all celebrating in this spot, these people were just casually reading through their book, trying to get their tan on, lathering on some sunscreen, not to be bothered at all. They just wanted to be left alone. It was the oddest experience to see these people. They were clueless to the fact that one of mankind's greatest modern achievements, air travel, was literally happening right over us, and they had the best seats in town for it, but they would rather not be bothered. They wanted to finish their drink, conclude their nap, or finish the chapter.

Why do I tell you that? Because in this world, God is regularly sending proverbial 747s over your life nonstop and at all times. There is great reason to rejoice in this life, yet too often, we look like those who are sitting 50 yards to the left or 50 yards to the right, because we are too distracted, too busy, or too clueless to realize that this is the case.

The jet stream of God's gigantic joy is washing people in its wake. It is stirring people into celebration, yet we're just sitting to the side, not paying attention…disinterested, possibly. We've seen this before already. We've been there, done that, and now we're just hoping for something a little bit more sensational or exciting that might capture our attention or entertain us more than this thing has.

Put differently, many in our generation are unhappy. You don't have to look very far to realize that this is true. You don't have to look outside of these walls. In fact, you can look inside of yourself, and you can see that there's probably a good chance you feel somewhat unhappy in life. As I've visited with young adults, many of you included, what I've found is we prescribe to a lifestyle of joylessness, the likes of which none of us want to be true.

If you look at the way we live, we're all aspiring to find deep sensation and satisfaction in life, yet some of you here feel like you don't belong amongst these people. Like, you're falling behind your peers. You're stuck in your job. You want for a different career. You're romantically undesirable. You'll never amount to the dreams you have. You'll never be able to break that addiction. You're overworked, you're underappreciated, and you're unhappy because of it.

This isn't just an "us" problem. Just this year (a different study than the one I referenced last week, but similar in essence), academic researchers Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower reported that young adults tallied the lowest life satisfaction and happiness scores among all adult age groups across six different countries, creating what they're calling a crisis in well-being among the young. Blanchflower himself says this may well be the next great global crisis.

As they report, the rise in unhappiness does not actually originate from COVID, like many people believe. We love to ascribe all of our problems to what happened in 2020. No, this issue actually predates the global pandemic. It goes all the way back to 2013. You may be asking yourself, "What happened in 2013?" The rise of smartphones and social media.

Now, to be clear, we can't assign all of our unhappiness in life or your dissatisfaction personally with technology or the rise of the digital age. That would be unfair, and that's not what tonight's talk is about. But what I find interesting is that the rise in unhappiness originated the minute we started seeking joy through the experience of others rather than finding joy in our own experience.

We have watched other people experience incredible happiness, and we have forgotten how to experience such happiness ourselves. We've lost the art of enjoyment. If that's you, then consider me your fellow beachgoer, waving you back in from the left and the right flanks under the demonstration of God's joy, goodness, greatness, majesty, and all cause worthy of rejoicing in, because God wants you to be delightful.

We're in our second week in a brand-new series all about joy, if you haven't seen the artwork behind me. That's where we've been. It's the second week. We have a few more weeks ahead. What we talked about last week is that if you want to find joy, you have to first know what joy is. Guys, have you ever been sent into Ulta to find something for your girl? Chances are, you struggled a little bit when you were in that space. I know I have struggled in Ulta looking for whatever it is Brooke needs, because I have no idea what she's sending me in there for or what it is I'm looking for. Because I don't know what it is, I do not know where to find it.

If you do not know what joy is, then you will not know where to find joy in this life, which is what's funny. We think we know what it is, but all of us are actually mistaken on the fact. So many think we know, so we're out there doing all manner of different things…coping, strategizing, sensationalizing…because we're trying to fill that empty void, the happiness gap in our lives, yet we don't actually know what to look for to sustainably satisfy us for all time.

So, what is joy? Well, we defined it like this last week: joy is a lasting emotion that is not achieved in life but received from God who felt it first and feels it most. As I've thought back on that definition, a reflection of last week's talk, a sermon in a sentence, if you will, I think it's so true. Joy is a lasting emotion that is not achieved in life but received from God like a gift, who felt it first and feels it most. Meaning, any true and lasting joy we experience has God as its essence.

I'll prove it to you like this. A little crowd participation, and we're going to do better than last week. I need you to speak up. When have you felt happiest in life? When you won a game. Okay. "No bills." All right. When have you felt happiest in life? Think about it. Take a moment to yourself. Think about it. When have you genuinely felt happiest in life? I heard someone say "Holidays." "Holding my newborn niece," the gift of new life. What else? "Dancing." Yeah, the expression of joy itself. "Having a child." "Being out in creation." All right. You're good. We'll try again next week.

You see, here's the thing. If you're serious about it, if you actually look through the halls of your history and consider when you were happiest in life, what you'll arrive at is likely not something material but something meaningful instead, and all meaning has that intrinsic quality of significance, because it is by Jesus and for Jesus, exactly like the apostle Paul said in the book of Colossians.

We remember those happiest moments because they're rooted in something that matters. The good news for us tonight is many of those things, as you honestly assess and consider what that is… It's not just lying in wait behind you. It may, in fact, still be out ahead of you. It's not something you experienced once and only once. It may be something you can experience at some point in the future. It's a joy you can find again. The question, then, is…How do you find it?

Well, that's the goal of tonight. How do we find joy? That's what I want to help you with. We talked about what it is. I want to help you understand how you actually find it. That's tonight, and in the next couple of weeks we'll do a little bit more work on that. Now, similar to last week, we're going to be all over the place scripturally, but we're going to home base in the book of Philippians. So, if you have a Bible, you can turn with me to the book of Philippians.

Why Philippians? Philippians, according to church tradition, is known as the Epistle of Joy. Epistle is another word for letter. It's a letter from Paul. All throughout its pages, you see the words joy, gladness, and rejoicing, more so, in the concentrated span of its few chapters, than anywhere else in the Bible. It is characteristically thematically defined by joy. What's interesting is Paul is in the most joyless of circumstances. He is imprisoned in Rome at the time that he is writing to the church at Philippi.

It makes him a really good authority on the topic of joy, because Paul knows joy does not depend on one state of being but on one state of belief. As John Mark Comer said it, joy depends less on the emotions of the heart and more on the condition of the heart, a condition that Paul is really well acquainted with, a condition he wants us to embody ourselves, and a condition that we're going to see is defined by three things in specific.

So here we go. Philippians, chapter 1. We'll pick it up in verse 3. "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy…" Now, that's a really big statement. In every prayer of Paul's, he's making prayers with joy. So it begs the question, "What's the prayer, Paul? If every prayer you're praying is leading you to be joyful, then what is actually stirring up your joy for these believers?" Well, verse 9 tells us.

"And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."

So, what's Paul saying right here? Well, he's saying a lot. Paul is the master of saying as much as possible in as few words as possible. If we could push through all the verbal flourishing and boil this thing down to its most rudimentary summary statement, Paul is simply praying these believers (as well as you and I) would live with purity and innocence in the world. That's what he's asking God for.

I don't know what you pray to God for whenever you're asking him to do something in your life. Paul is praying for your purity and your innocence. That's what he cares most about. He wants us to be a people who think and look and judge not like the world but like God himself. He actually even doubles down on the idea when you get to the end of his letter. You turn to Philippians, chapter 4, and it says this in verses 8 and 9:

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you."

Paul is looking at the Philippians and saying, "Hey, I want you to be like me in that I am full of joy." Paul is way better at joy than any of us, despite the fact that he has lived through things the likes of which you and I will probably never know. The guy is riddled with a holy happiness that is from heaven on high, and he's looking at the Philippians (and you) and saying, "Hey, I want you to be like me. I want you to have this indomitable joy, this heavenly happiness." The way he advises us to do it is by shifting our perspective.

You see, joy sees through the eyes of innocence. That's the first point tonight: joy sees through the eyes of innocence. Peter Pan was the one who famously said, "Just think happy thoughts and you'll fly." The irony is that old Peter wasn't far off. To be abundantly clear, we're not talking about the idea of the power of positive thinking or the law of attraction, that "If I think something as best for myself, then I will attract that something that is best for myself to me, myself." That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about manifestation, as we've modernly described it. That is actually incongruent with the Bible. It's actually refuted by the Bible. That is not a true concept in the slightest, yet your thoughts do have power, not to change your circumstances but to transcend your circumstances through a perspective of innocence.

You see, we should see the world in such a way that relishes the goodness, the beauty, and the truth of God that are on display, yet our world does not support that idea in the slightest. You don't have to look very far to figure it out. You just turn on the TV. You watch the news, you read the critics, you look through the comments, and you'll realize our world does not delight in the things Paul described in Philippians 4.

Instead, the world delights in that which is untrue, dishonorable, unjust, impure, unlovely, disgraceful, disappointing, and unpraiseworthy. Why does the world delight in these things? Because the world has bought into this crazy idea that you have to lose your innocence to become wise. That's the exact same lie the Serpent was saying in the garden of Eden in Genesis, chapter 3. He looked on the two most innocent people in creation and simply told them, "Wait. Doesn't that fruit look desirable to the eyes, and isn't it also useful to make you wise?"

This was the lie from the very beginning, and it's the lie our world is perpetuating today. "God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened." Yet we've learned that it did not replace their innocence with wisdom. All it did was replace their innocence with guilt. Some of us can relate to that. We've bought whatever the world is selling, and what we feel, instead of wisdom, life, and fullness, is guilty.

We feel ashamed. Our heads hang low. We hope nobody is watching. We delete our browser history, because we don't want to own up to the things we've done in believing the world was telling us the truth. The world overpromises and underdelivers constantly. So, we have to stop listening to the world and start listening to God. Jesus is saying here, by way of his Spirit and the apostle Paul, "Hey, you have to teach yourself to see things differently."

As Jesus would put it himself, we have to teach ourselves to see things the same way little children do, which is interesting. Have you ever wondered to yourself, "Why was Jesus so interested in little kids?" They were the most inconvenient and insignificant of their day. Why was he so welcoming, hospitable, and inviting to these little kids? Because he knows something about them that we need to know ourselves. He talks about it in Matthew 18.

"At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, 'Truly, I say to you, unless you turn…'" That word is often used for repentance. "…unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

You see, Jesus welcomed children because of their humility, that attitude which expects nothing but appreciates everything. Just as a child depends on another for life, so, too, should we depend on God for our life. But it's not just that a child depends on another for life; it's also that children delight with one another in life. We should be similar. We should look just like kids into the world for all reasons to rejoice.

The beauty of children is it doesn't take them much to find reason to have fun, to gain good cause for celebration, to identify a plausible excuse for play. I remember reading a part of Lonnie Johnson's story. Lonnie was a scientist with the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab during the historic Galileo mission. He was working on a new jet pump design at home one day when he accidentally shot a stream of water across his bathroom.

Thinking he might be on to something special, but wanting to test the marketability of his mistake, he eventually built his 7-year-old daughter a prototype jet pump. He gave it to her and told her to take it and show it to her friends and see what they said. What he learned was that he had the most fortuitous accident, because the Super Soaker was born. He was able to design one of the top 20 most widely known and broadly sold toys in American history because he handed it to a kid and asked her to test its marketability, to figure out if it was worthy of rejoicing in.

You see, there's a lot we can learn from little kids. G.K. Chesterton says it like this: "Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

Joy sees the world through the eyes of innocence. But let me be clear: not with a childish faith but a childlike faith. There's a big difference in those two ideas. Paul's instruction is not that we would not be full of knowledge and understanding. He actually says quite the opposite in chapter 1. No, we should be well informed, yet we should receive that information with delight.

It should lead us to engage the world in the way it was meant to be engaged, with the kind of delight that doesn't just rejoice when a sunset catches you off unexpectedly or when a long-lost friend calls you because they want to reconcile or because the opportunity of a lifetime has come for you to travel across the world.

Those are not the only moments when we're meant to engage with joy. Yes, those moments come. They are quite significant, and we should certainly rejoice in them, yet, what we know from children is they don't need significance; they need insignificance to rejoice in. We know that children, as the example here, those who are most characteristically innocent… They find beauty, goodness, truth, and splendor where it's most frequently found: in simplicity.

You don't have to wait until you take that trip to Cabo to find joy, because joy is waiting for you tonight. It isn't rooted in what you experience in life; it is rooted in how you experience life. That's the first point. Paul wants us to develop an instinct for innocence. Paul keeps going in chapter 2. He says this, starting in verse 14:

"Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me."

What is the source of Paul's joy right here? It's the confidence in what they do in life. He started off by saying, "Hey, my joy is rooted in your innocence," but now he continues and says, "My joy is found in your obedience." If I had to guess, that catches some of us off guard and leaves some of us slightly annoyed, because this is so typical of religion. Like, "Of course this is what he would say. He would want us to do this to get that. It's the spiritual vending machine. I drop in X and get out Y."

Listen. That is not the heart of the gospel. Jesus is not interested in a transactional relationship with you. He doesn't want a quid pro quo-type of arrangement. "Hey, I'll give you this if you give me that." That's not his heart in the slightest. God (this is so important) does not command of you because he is trying to make you good; God commands of you because he is inviting you into his goodness. That is huge.

He's not trying to just make you good; he is trying to bring you into his goodness. Every command, every statute, every instruction, and all of the rules… He's saying, "Hey, this is the way to joy. This is the path to life. This is what's going to lead you into the sort of vibrant vitality that you want to be true of your existence."

We don't think about obedience like that. We divorce obedience from goodness. We have to know that joy never graduates from goodness. It never moves on. Nothing in life will be genuinely joyful if it is not genuinely good, which means if you're trying to live the Christian life and do the Christian things and it's not good…it doesn't feel right…you're probably doing it wrong.

Now, that's not an indictment on you to be like, "Hey, man. You've messed up." No. It should just be a red alert, a flag in your mind, a "check engine" on your heart, that "Hey, I should probably do some investigation. I probably should pop the hood and do some inspection. I need to figure out why my obedience isn't leading to my joy. Why doesn't obedience feel good?" Everything God does, everything God speaks, everything God is… All of it is good. We just have to remind ourselves that that's true.

Psalm 119 says it so well. "Blessed [happy] are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes! With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight…" That's joy language. "…as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word." Why? Because God's Word and the commands it gives not only makes you good; it leads you to goodness, and there in goodness is joy actually found.

So many of us have divorced the obedience God asks from the goodness God offers. We know we shouldn't sleep around, yet we fail to realize that God is trying to secure our dignity. He's trying to preserve so special an intimacy between you and your partner one day. "I know I'm not supposed to tell lies." But listen. God isn't just telling you not to tell lies; he's trying to give you a clean conscience. He's trying to let you move through life with a guilt-free existence. He doesn't want you to be fearful of breaking trust in the relationships that matter in your life.

"I know he says I shouldn't serve money." But listen. God doesn't want you to fall prey to the enslavement of materialism. He doesn't want you to live your life keeping up with the Joneses or just making sure you have an approvable appearance. That's not what he wants for you. He's trying to give you something better.

"I know he says I shouldn't worry what people think." Exactly. He wants you to remember what he thinks, because everyone's opinion about you is going to change over the course of time, but his opinion about you is never, ever going to change. He has declared what he thinks of you by way of Christ on the cross. So don't worry about what others think. Worry what he does.

I could go on, but here's the point: so many of us are focusing on what God wants from us as opposed to what God wants for us. We look at obedience as "You're trying to hold out on me, God." He's like, "No. I know better than you. I'm not holding out on you. I'm trying to get you over to this thing instead. It's so much better over here. This is where life, joy, meaning, purpose, and fullness are found." Yet we love to take time and delight in trite, empty pleasantries.

God wants you to be joyful, so he is asking you to do good, because when you do good, you actually feel happy. That's not some mind-blowing realization, yet I don't know that you may have ever put it into words. This is really practical in life. When you do good, you feel happy about it. When you go to the gym, you feel pretty good that you did that.

When you ate healthy, you were like, "You know what? Yeah, man. I can actually do this thing." When you went to sleep early, you were like, "You know what? I am an adult." When you started reading those books… "I'm on the fast track to being a renaissance man." You see the effect of doing good and the joy it brings, the good it offers in your life…in the practical things, but especially in the spiritual things.

You avoid porn, and that feels like a major win. You did it. You made it all the way through. You actually confessed your sins, and it feels like a weight is lifted off of you. You pray to God, and you can feel your anxiety abate a bit. You choose to slow down, turn off your phone, go for a walk, and take the day as God gives, and you find peace in it. If you will just do good, you will actually just be happy. It's not rocket science.

There's no better example of rediscovering the goodness of obedience than this character I was introduced to over the course of my study through G.K. Chesterton's book Manalive. The name of the character is Innocent Smith. In the story, Innocent Smith is an enigmatic figure who comes to a boarding house occupied by a group of young adults. Though at first Smith strikes the other tenants as odd and childlike with his behavior, they eventually begin to learn, by way of observation, the fundamental truths that guide Innocent Smith's life completely.

They realize he's not just happy, he's not just foolhardy, he's not just a lover of life; it's that Innocent Smith is genuinely happy. He's not putting on a front. He's legitimately this way. What they realize is that, throughout the book, Innocent Smith continues to reengineer ways to observe God's commands and find the goodness therein.

In the story, he would break into his own home so he would learn his goods were worthy of coveting, not someone else's. He would propose and re-propose to his wife, because he wanted to be reminded of the romantic interest she actually was in his life. He hitchhiked across the world, trekked across the globe, because he wanted to be reminded of the value that was found in his home and being there with his family.

You see, Innocent never graduated from goodness. He certainly trained himself to recognize it, and by his example, we should train ourselves similarly. Friends, we have to train our passions, not just follow them. Oof. Right? What if you actually trained your passions and didn't just follow them around?

The modern world wants you to believe that happiness and joy are found outside of Christ's claims, that they are beyond the monotony of morality, that it's in the pursuit of pleasure you'll find fullness of joy, yet we know true joy and gladness are found in directing our passions to loving good things. Obedience is not meant to feel like a grind; it's meant to feel like a gift, that if you would receive it, it would actually lead you to joy. Last one. Chapter 4, verse 4:

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Paul concludes his letter with one final charge to joy, and I think he appropriately ends in so good a spot, because joy is so much more than empty optimism or positive platitudes. Paul is pointing to what many of us need to be reminded of tonight: joy is persistent.

I am not too naïve to know that some of you have heard the way I've talked about joy, celebration, goodness, and gladness, and you have thought, "Yeah, man. That feels like the case for everybody else. That's a possibility for all of my peers in this room, but you don't know my story, what I'm going through currently. You don't know the sadness, sorrow, and suffering that are more synonymous with my life than the attributes of joy you continue to describe."

You're right. I don't. But I think where he ends is so important if that's your situation, because he wants you to know joy is found through innocence, it is found through obedience, but it is also found through persistence. Here's what I would say to you if that's your story, if joy feels like a fantasy too far to find. What you need to know is we're going to spend an entire night talking about joy and suffering and helping you realize how it's actually possible even in your situation.

For the rest of us here, we need to know that joy needs to be frequently cultivated. That's the idea. According to Paul in these few verses, it has to be done with thanksgiving, because joy makes a discipline of celebration. That's the last point: joy makes a discipline of celebration. It's a discipline. Meaning, it has regular rhythm. We should adopt habits of happiness that lead us to a place where we're not just trying to find joy but we're actually training ourselves to find joy. You get the difference in those two things. Right?

Trying is lackadaisical. It's casual. It's semi-indifferent. You care, but not enough to get a plan together. Training for something shows that you actually want it. You're willing to do whatever it takes to get it. "Man, I should drop some weight. I'm going to try to do that." You're probably not going to do that. But if you train to do it, you're going to do it, because you're going to get a plan in place. You're going to get some discipline around your life. You're going to sacrifice what you want now for what you want most.

If you want joy most, then you have to build some discipline into your life. One person said it's not joy that makes us grateful; it's gratitude that makes us joyful. Listen. The science backs all this up. I could give you all the myriad of health benefits that come if you pursue gratitude. You'll just have to take my word for it. It is extensive.

So, let me just get to the how. How do we actually do this? How do we adopt a discipline of gratitude in our lives? I'll just give you a few examples, but we could go well beyond this. All of these examples are straight from the Scripture. You can meet with friends. Proverbs 27:9 tells us that friendship has the power to refresh our souls. Look at your friend and say, "Man, you have the power to refresh my soul."

That's what's available sitting right next to you. Have you ever thought about them like that? Probably not, but that's what's available. You can be refreshed through good friendship. Maybe you need to go for a hike. Jesus went on hikes regularly. That's Luke 6:12. Maybe you need to host a meal at home. The early disciples broke bread in their homes, and the Scripture tells us it was with glad and sincere hearts. Maybe you need to invite people over to your home and break bread together.

Maybe you need to celebrate good news. At the dedication of the wall in Nehemiah 12:43, it says the sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away by the nations that surrounded. Is the celebratory nature of your life one where people are actually hearing it, they're taking notice? That's what was happening according to the goodness of God in the people of Israel's life according to Nehemiah.

Maybe it's dancing. Someone said that. David was so thrilled the ark had come back to Israel that he danced with all his might before the Lord. I have never danced with all my might. That would be a sight to behold and one which you will not, yet we should do it. We should be willing to un-dignify ourselves in the spirit of rejoicing at God and who he is. He's so good we should.

Laughter. It's one of the best witnesses to God's goodness that you can give. Psalm 126:2 says, "Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, 'The Lord has done great things for them.'" Your laughter could be the best witness you give to people around you.

Christian, are you listening to me? The joy you express could cause people to wonder, "What do they know that I don't? Why are they so happy and I'm not? Why is it that when the whole bottom falls out and hell and high water come, they don't give ground at all? They're always indomitably joyful." Your laughter has the power to do that.

Maybe it's storytelling, sitting around and recounting the goodness of God. All throughout the Gospels, Jesus told parables and stories, that he might engage the minds of people and transform their hearts as they leaned in further to listen. Maybe it's taking sabbath, just a regular, repeated, rhythmic break in your schedule where you don't work, you only play, and you remember that God loves you.

There are so many ways to regularly and rhythmically celebrate what God has done and cultivate a heart of joy for Jesus. The issue is not that we lack the ways to do this; it's that we lack the will to do this. The irony of this all is that joy is so worthy of wanting. Don't you want it? Then why don't we get serious about seeking it? Joy is not only worthy of wanting; it's desirable even to the point of discipline. So, let's master ourselves that we might attain that which is most meaningful.

Jesus has come to give you joy. If you're here and have lost the art of enjoyment, he has come to give it back to you. Before you can ever lose something, you have to receive something. Jesus has come to give you joy. We know from the Scriptures that he came seeing through the eyes of innocence. He wasn't blind to our sin, he wasn't asleep to our shame, but remembered how sweet it would be if we had a life with God and all the goodness he has to give.

Jesus never graduated from goodness. Instead, he sacrificed his own goodness for our sake. He gave himself up on the cross, enduring all the cost of our godlessness, and giving back to us, instead, all of his godliness. Jesus has given us reason to celebrate, because though he died and laid dead three days, he rose forth from the grave. That's a reason to rejoice, and it's not a simple one. It's so significant, for in Christ's resurrection hangs all the hope of humanity if they would only place their faith in him. Do you want joy? Joy wants you. Joy came for you. Receive him tonight. Let me pray for us.

God, thank you for this evening. Thank you for the people here, the work you're doing. I pray, God, they would all know you are individually working in their lives across a full spectrum of spirituality. Maybe they don't know you, God. They should know that you're working in their life. It is not happenstance that they're here tonight. They're here because you govern all things and you have decided for them to be here. Maybe they're the firmest in belief, yet they even can experience deeper delight.

Would we all know, God, that you want to work in our lives, move through our stories, and lead us into life eternal. We may have sorrow today. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Joy will come forever and always. There will be a day when our sorrow, our sadness, and our suffering end, but all eternity will be bliss because it will be with you. We love you. In Christ's name, amen.