Choose Joy

Today we’re going to talk about our joyful God, and I want to start by giving you a picture of joy.

I want to show you a video of the Lewis kids — Christian, our worship pastor, And Ashley, our Kids ministry pastor — their kids.

Their second daughter, Presley, has a severe form of autism. She was nonverbal for most of her life. She’s been talking I believe now for the last couple of years.

And she’s obsessed with the color purple.

This is what joy looks like.

Video: Lewis kids purple Christmas tree

If you want to follow the Lewis family on Instagram, they’re lewisempire6. The Lewis kids have a lot to teach us about joy.

I don’t want to give anything away, but Brea and River will be part of our Christmas Eve services. I’m so excited about it. It’s going to be incredible.

I hope you’re extending invitations to our Christmas Eve services. It’s going to be one of our best services yet. You’re not going to want to miss it, and I guarantee you — you will be sitting here thinking, “I wish I would have invited so and so.”

So to spare you from having regrets about who you didn’t invite, I’m giving you fair warning — you have 8 more days to extend invitations.

Well today I want to talk about how joy lives in the very heart of God. And joy is a gift to people who live at the heart of God.

Every once in a while Jesus would give a kind of a mission statement. He would explain why it is that he came to earth and why he taught.

This is from John 15. These are the words of Jesus:

I have told you this

In other words, Jesus says, “The reason I’ve been teaching, my purpose, my mission is.”

so that my joy

The joy that Jesus experiences.

may be in you

That is, in Jesus’ followers.

and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:11)

Jesus wants his followers to have his joy.

Jesus said he came and taught to inebriate people with joy.

The problem with human beings, according to Jesus, is not that we’re too happy for God and God wants us to get into being more serious. It’s that we are not yet happy enough by far, and God wants us to experience his kind of joy.

And so Jesus says, “I have come as the great joy bringer. I have come so that you may be filled with my kind of joy. I experience the fullness of joy, and I want you to experience the fullness of my joy.”

The joy that you’ve seen in the happiest little child is just a fraction of the joy that lives in the heart of God.

Trying to communicate about our joyful God, G.K. Chesterton put it like this:

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not the absence, of life. Because children have a bounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and are still excited. They always say, “Do it again.”

And the grown-up person does it again until he’s 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. — G.K. Chesterton

It’s a beautiful picture he paints — millennia after millennia after millennia of God making daisy after daisy.

They’re not good for anything when you think about it. I mean, you can hold a daisy up under someone’s chin to see if he likes butter, but that’s not really scientific.

Five hundred billion daisies, and the angels ask God, “What are you going to do today?”

God gets that look in his eyes and says, “I think I’m going to make some more,” and he says, “Do it again!”

Now, why does he do this?

Well, Chesterton says, “Because God has an infinite capacity for joy.”

It may be that God has the eternal appetite of infancy for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. — G.K. Chesterton

For we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

Now, what I want to do to help you get a sense of the joyfulness of God is do a kind of exercise in contrast.

I want you to imagine for a moment what the opening of the Bible, what the first paragraphs of Genesis might look like if God were not a joyful God. What would the beginning of Genesis look like if God approached his life and work the way that we tend to approach ours?

So here’s my shot at what the Bible might look like in the opening chapters of Genesis if God were not a joyful God.

In the beginning, it was nine o’clock, so God had to go to work.

He filled out a requisition to separate the light from the darkness.

He considered making stars to beautify the night but thought it sounded like too much work.

So he decided to knock off early and call it a day.

He looked at what he had done, and God said, “It’s good enough.”

On the second day, God separated the waters from the dry land, and he made all the dry land flat and plain and functional so that, behold, the whole earth looked like Iowa.

He thought about making mountains and valleys and glaciers and jungles and forests and waterfalls, but he decided it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

And God looked at what he’d done that day, and God said, “It’s good enough.”

And God made a pigeon to fly in the air and a carp to swim in the waters and a cat to creep upon the dry ground.

And God thought about making millions of other species of all sizes and all shapes and all colors, but he couldn’t drum up any enthusiasm for any other animals; in fact, he wasn’t too crazy about the cat — besides, it was almost time for the football game.

And God looked at all his hands had done, and God said, “It’s good enough.”

And at the end of the week, God was seriously burned out; so he breathed a big sigh of relief and said, “Thank Me, it’s Friday.”

Now, the good news is, Genesis doesn’t look like that.

The opening chapter of the Book of Genesis pulsates with this refrain: “God spoke, and it was so” and “God saw that it was good.”

Over and over after each day, God speaks, and “it’s so,” and God sees it’s good.

God takes great joy in the work of his hand.

The first day there was light.

The next day God said to the light, “Do it again!” And he says it to the light every day, day after day, for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, “Do it again!”

He never gets tired of it, never loses the joy of it. “For we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

You will not understand about God until you understand this about him — God is the happiest being in all of the universe — not Ryan Reynolds, not Jennifer Garner. It’s God.

Now, God also knows sorrow. Jesus was called “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief,” but the sorrow of God and the anger of God are his temporary response to a fallen world.

The sorrow of God and the anger of God are his temporary response to a fallen world; and they will be banished forever from his heart on that day when the world is finally set right.

But joy is God’s basic character. Joy is God’s eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in all of this universe. God.

And joy is God’s desire for the human race. Joy is God’s desire for you.

There’s a verse in the Book of Luke where Jesus talks about the joy that God experiences when people come to him.

In this chapter he tells a series of stories, and at the end of each one of these little stories, these little vignettes, there’s an explanation of the joy that the Father experiences.

After the first story Jesus puts it like this:

I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven

And by that he means joy that’s experienced by God himself. There will be more joy in heaven…

over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. (Luke 15:7)

Every time someone gets it right, there’s joy in heaven, there’s laughter in heaven.

You were made for joy, and to miss out on joy is to miss out on the reason for your existence.

CS Lewis put it like this: “Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

The apostle Paul put it like this in Philippians 4.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. (Philippians 4:4)

Now, the writers of Scripture put this in the non-optional category. This is a command.

Joylessness is a serious sin.

Joylessness is a serious sin and one that religious people are especially prone to.

There is a being in this universe who wants you to live in sorrow, but that being is not God.

Listen to the words of a writer from several hundred years ago:

The evil one is pleased with sadness and melancholy because he himself is sad and melancholy and will be so for all eternity; hence he desires that everyone should be like himself. — Francis de Sales

The evil one desires people to live in sorrow, but God’s choice for the human race is joy. In fact, it’s a command. It’s non-optional.

Now, there’s a problem in talking about this. The problem is this: Some of you lack joy because you feel guilty a lot, and you may start to feel guilty over not feeling joyful, which is going to make you even less joyful.

What I’m trying to establish today is just that it’s okay to be joyful.

We’ll go beyond that, but to begin with, if I could just get you to understand, it’s okay to pursue joy. It’s more than okay.

So here’s what I’m going to ask you do. I’m going to ask you to say these words out loud.

You may want to say them to another person if you’re here with someone else.
You may want to say them to yourself.

But I’m going to ask you to say them out loud so that you carry this away with you.

I want you to say, “I give you permission to relentlessly pursue joy.”

I give you permission to relentlessly pursue joy.

If you’re here with someone, turn to them and say it, or say it to yourself out loud.

Give permission to pursue joy.

Okay, that’s all I gave you permission to say. It was just that. You don’t need to explain it.

One caveat here: The joy that the writers of Scripture command is in the framework of a Christ-honoring life.

Understand, this is not saying, “Do anything you want that will make you happy.”

The writers of Scripture command us to experience “the joy of the Lord” — that is, joy that’s experienced in a life where Jesus is the Lord of it.

You can become a joyful person. With God’s help it really is possible.

It’s a learned skilled. The writers of Scripture would not command it if it were not so.

But here’s the truth: You must take responsibility for your joy. You must take responsibility for your joy — not your friend, not your boss, not your parent, not your loved ones.

Your joy is your responsibility.

Now, for some of you, the pursuit and acquisition of joy will not be an easy thing.

Some of you are joy-impaired; you are joy-challenged. You will have to fight for joy every day. But it can be done.

With the help of God, you can become a joyful person. You really can, and you need just to reflect on that until you begin to believe it.

Question: When are you going to practice joy? When are you going to practice it — if it is a wonderful thing, and if it’s commanded to us?

The Psalmist put it like this:

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)

When are you going to practice joy?

In this day.

The psalmist doesn’t say, “Tomorrow is God’s day” or “Yesterday was God’s day.” He says, “It’s today.”

He says that, I think, partly because we live in a world with this illusion — this illusion that says:

“I’ll be happy someday when the conditions in my life change and become easier to be happy in.”

I’ll be happy when I get the job I want.
I’ll be happy when I get the relationship I want.
I’ll be happy when I have the money I want… or the house I want… or the kids I want.

The psalmist says, “This is God’s day. This is the day God made. The is the day God has redeemed in Jesus. This is the day.”

If you’re going to be joyful, it must be today.

Now, some of you will be in a place where you need to grieve. You’ve experienced trauma or loss in your life.

So I’ll just say you need to understand this call to joy is not a call to be an artificial person or put on a plastic smile. We’re called to experience the full range of emotions in life.

But on the whole, for most of us, the call to joy is a call to rejoice in this day.

Some of you will have considered another problem: How can I embrace joy with all the pain and suffering in the world?

Is it even right to be joyful in a world of hunger and violence and injustice?

I want to take a moment to talk about that because any deeply thoughtful person must face that question.

Any teaching on joy that doesn’t face this one head-on is bound to be glib and superficial.

But when you study joy, you come to this surprising discovery — that generally it’s the people who are closest to suffering, who have voluntarily, out of love, taken on the suffering of others around them who have the most authentic, indestructible, powerful joy.

People who were close to Mother Theresa said that instead of being defeated by the suffering around her, she would glow with joy. It just radiated out of her.

It’s what, more than anything else, attracted people to want to go to India to work with her.

This authentic kind of joy — rejoicing in the Lord — is the very opposite of selfish, self-centered pleasure pursuits.

The test of authentic joy is that it is always compatible with pain because joy in this world will always be joy in spite of something.

The truth is if you don’t rejoice today, you will not rejoice at all. If you wait until conditions are perfect, you’ll wait until you die.

If you’re going to rejoice, it must be in this day, for “This is the day that the Lord has made.” This is your “Purple Christmas tree day.”

Now, how do we pursue joy? If you’re serious about going after it, how do you do it?

The writers of Scripture suggest some paths to pursue on this journey to joy. So if you’re taking notes, you may want to jot a few of these down.

The first one is this; it’s very simple.

If you want to pursue joy, if you want to become a joyful person:

Hang around joyful people.

Hang around joyful people.

Proverbs 15:

A friendly smile makes you happy, and good news makes you feel strong. (Proverbs 15:30)

Here’s the truth about human beings, and you just need to hear this. There are people in your world who have rejected joy, who have decided to become victims. They don’t want joy, and they don’t want you to be joyful either.

And you need to be as understanding and as patient and as tolerant and as kind to them as you’re able to be with God’s help. But you need to be very careful not to allow them to shape or mold or run your life, and you may even need to limit your exposure to them until your ability to live in joy is stronger.

Let me encourage you to write down a few names. You may want to do it right now if you’re taking notes. Write down the names of a few people who bring you joy, the names of one or two people who, when you see them, something inside you lights up.

Now, it can’t be like Michael B Jordan or Scarlett Johansson. It’s got to be someone you know.

Then make an appointment, make a “joy appointment” to spend some time with that person or those people this week.

If you’re serious about pursuing joy, you need to spend regular and large amounts of time around life-enhancing, joy-producing people, and it’s okay to do that. In fact, you need to do that. You need to be around people who will give and teach you joy. You need to be intentional about that.

Alright, the second thing. The first is hang around joyful people. The second thing is:

Practice the discipline of celebration.

Practice the discipline of celebration.

I use this word “discipline” very deliberately because celebration can be as much a spiritual discipline as reading the Bible or praying or confessing or fasting.

For some in this room, there will not be a more helpful discipline in which you can engage than the practice of celebration.

Some of you who are joy-impaired people need to set aside a day a week to be a kind of day of celebration. Fill that day with things that will bring you joy.

Eat foods you love to eat.
Listen to music you love to hear.
Wear clothes that will make you happy.

As you do these things, give thanks to God for his wonderful goodness to you.

You need to do this sort of thing because we live in a world that throws up all kinds of roadblocks to joy.

Let’s do a quick show of hands here. How many of you find that your job ever gets in the way of your joy? Just raise your hand, would you?

Well, quit!

That may not be practical, may not be wise. But you may need to do some creative things to bring joy to your work because people just get in ruts, and they need to break out.

Maybe just take another route to work tomorrow. Take the scenic route. That’ll bring you joy. Take the long way to work; get there at like 11 o’clock in the morning.

If you get any grief, just say, “My pastor told me to do this. It’s a spiritual thing.”

Do something to bring joy to where you work.

Do a favor for someone that you don’t even like at work and make it be a secret.

You may want to get started today. You may want to make this your day of celebration.

When you leave this room, when we’re through with this worship service, let someone else get a donut before you. Give someone an outrageous compliment.

When you get to the parking lot, take a dollar out of your wallet and just leave it on the ground. Just drop it there. Think about how much fun some little kid’s going to have finding this dollar lying there.

Practice the discipline of celebration. Take aside a day a week to just be a day of joy.

Third thing.

Hang around joyful people. Practice the discipline of celebration, and the third thing:

Find the right rhythm of challenge and rest.

Find the right rhythm of challenge and rest.

This is from the writer of Ecclesiastes.

This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. (Ecclesiastes 5:18)

Now, God himself is the one that has modeled this kind of rhythm for us in the very beginning of the Bible.

God works and then God rests and God sees that his work is good.

There is built into God’s work in creation this rhythm between challenge, work, and then rest and reflection and delight.

All creatures are created by God with the need to be challenged. You need to find an appropriate level of challenge in your life.

They did an experiment a number of years ago at Berkeley with amoebas. They put amoebas into an ideal physical setting: a perfect amount of moisture, perfect amount of protein, perfect temperature and so on.

Do you know what happened to the amoebas?

They died.

They all died because life was too perfect, because there was no challenge, because there was nothing for them to do. Entropy set in and they died.

If life is too easy, it’ll kill you.

It sounds strange, I know, but it’s true. If life is too easy, it’s lethal.

On the other hand, some of you take on so much stuff. You get so scheduled, you get so rushed and overwhelmed that it just kills all possibility of joy.

You need margin in your life.

An author by the name of Gilbert Grimm wrote a book called ‘Ambition,’ and he talks about the need to develop what he calls “just-manageable difficulty” in your life.

You need to find the level of just-manageable difficulty; that is, to find a rhythm in your life’s work — whether that’s your job or whatever — find a rhythm where you’re not underchallenged. It’s not so easy that it doesn’t call forth the best in you, but you’re also not overwhelmed.

And the possibility of success for this is not unrealistic.

Find a level where your life’s work will stretch you and call forth your best but where it is realistically doable given your gifts and your temperament. Find the level of “just manageable difficulty.”

Now, for some, this will take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. You’ll have to be creative with it.

But if you want to enter into joy, you must find the right rhythm of challenge and rest.

Okay, final thing.

Hang out with joyful people. Practice the discipline of celebration. Find the right rhythm of challenge and rest. And then finally:

Discipline your mind to view life from a biblical perspective.

Discipline your mind — that is, begin to attend to your thoughts — and think about life from a biblical perspective.

Because to a large extent joy flows from a certain kind of thinking.

A certain kind of thinking will lead you into joy, and another kind of thinking will defeat your joy.

This sounds daunting, but in fact, it’s a wonderfully liberating thing to do — to learn to view life from a biblical perspective.

Now, I want to read you kind of a parable about this. It is from an author by the name of Robert Fulghum. It’s about a wedding that he officiated. It’s a kind of a parable. It’ll take a few minutes for me to get through it.

And it’s not very dignified. So I just wanted you to know ahead of time this is not a real dignified kind of thing, and I don’t want to get any emails or complaints about it afterwards, okay? Just give me a free pass to do read this one this morning. Okay?

The central character in this parable is the mother of the bride of a wedding that’s about to take place. Robert Fulgham was officiating this wedding.

“Usually a polite, reasonable, intelligent, and sane being, the Mother was mentally unhinged by the announcement of her daughter’s betrothal. I don’t mean she was unhappy as often is the case; to the contrary, she was overcome with joy and just about succeeded in overcoming everybody else with her joy before the dust settled.

“Nobody knew it, but this lady had been waiting with a script for a production that would have met with Steven Spielberg’s approval — a royal wedding fit for a princess bride.

“The father of the bride began to pray for an elopement. His prayers were not to be answered.

“She had seven months to work, and no detail was left to chance or human error. Everything that could be engraved was engraved. There were teas and showers and dinners.

“The bride and groom I met with only three times. The mother of the bride called me weekly and was in my office as often as the cleaning lady.

“An 18-piece brass and wind ensemble was engaged. The bride’s desires for home furnishings were registered in stores as far east as New York and south as Atlanta.

“Not only were the bridesmaids outfits made to order, but the tuxedos for the groom and his men were bought — not rented, mind you, bought.

“And if all that wasn’t enough, the engagement ring was returned to the jeweler for a larger stone, quietly subsidized by the mother of the bride. When I say the lady came unhinged, I mean unhinged.

“The juggernaut of faith rolled down the road, and the final hour came. Guests in formal attire packed in the church. In the choir loft the orchestra gushed great music. And the mighty mother of the bride coasted down the aisle with the grandeur of an opera diva at a premiere performance.

“Never did the mother of the bride take her seat with more satisfaction. She had done it! She glowed, beamed, smiled and sighed. The music softened, and nine — count ’em, nine — chiffon-draped bridesmaids lock-stepped down the long aisle while the befrocked groom and his men marched stolidly into place.

“And finally — oh, so finally — the ‘Wedding March’ thundered from the orchestra, ‘Here Comes the Bride,’ preceded by four enthusiastic mini-princesses chucking flower petals and two dwarfish ring bearers, one for each ring.

“The congregation rose and turned in anticipation. Ah, the bride! She had been dressed for hours if not days. No adrenaline was left in her body.

“Left alone with her father in the reception hall of the church while the march of the maidens went on and on, she walked along the tables laden with gourmet goodies and absent-mindedly sampled first the little pink and yellow and green mints. Then she picked through the silver bowls of mixed nuts and ate the pecans, followed by a cheeseball, a deuce of olives, a handful of glazed almonds, a little sausage with a frilly toothpick stuck in it, a couple of shrimps blanketed in bacon, and a cracker piled with liver pate. To wash this down, a glass of pink champagne. Her father gave it to her to calm her nerves.

“What you noticed as the bride stood in the doorway was not her dress but her face — white — for what was coming down the aisle was a living grenade with the pin pulled out.

“The bride threw up just as she walked by her mother; and by ‘threw up’ I don’t mean a polite, little lady-like ‘uurp’ into her handkerchief. She puked. There’s no nice word for it. I mean she hosed the front of the altar, hitting two bridesmaids, the groom, a ring bearer, and me.

“I am quite sure of the details. We have it all on video — three cameras worth. The mother of the bride had thought of everything.

“Having disgorged her hors d’oeuvres, champagne and the last of her dignity, the bride went limp in her father’s arms while the groom sat down on the floor where he had been standing too stunned to function. And the mother of the bride fainted, slumping over in rag doll disarray.

“We had a fire drill then and there at the front of the church that only the Marx Brothers could have topped.

“Groomsmen rushed heroically. Mini-princess flower girls squalled, bridesmaids sobbed and people with weak stomachs headed for the exits.

“All the while unaware, the orchestra played on. The bride had not only come; she was gone into some other state of consciousness.

“Only two people were seen smiling. One was the mother of the groom, and the other was the father of the bride.

“What did we do? Well, we went back to real life. Guests were invited to adjourn to the reception hall, though they did not eat or drink as much as they might have in different circumstances.

“The bride was consoled, cleaned up and fitted out with a bridesmaid dress and hugged and kissed a lot by the revived groom. She’ll always love him for that,” Fulgum writes. “When he said ‘for better or for worse,’ he meant it.

“The cast was reassembled where we left, and a single flute played a quiet air. The words were spoken, and the deed was done.

“Everybody cried as people are supposed to at weddings, mostly because the groom held the bride in his arms through the whole ceremony; and no groom ever kissed a bride more tenderly than he.

“If one can hope for a wedding that’d be memorable, then theirs was a raging success. Nobody who was there will ever forget it. But that’s not the end of the story. The best part is still to come.

“On the tenth anniversary of this disastrous affair, a party was held. Three TVs were mustered, a feast was laid, and best friends invited. Remember there were three video cameras at the scene of the accident, so all three films were shown at once.

“The event was hilarious, especially with the running commentary and the stop action stuff that is a little gross when seen one frame at a time.

“The part that got cheers and toasts was when the camera focused on the grin of the father of the bride as he contemplates his wife as she’s being revived.

“The reason I say this is the best part is not because of the party, but because of who organized it — of course, the infamous mother of the bride.

“The mother of the bride is still at it, but she’s a lot looser these days. She not only forgave her husband and everybody else for their part in the debacle, she forgave herself. And nobody laughed harder at the film than she.

“There’s a word for what she has: grace. That’s why the same grinning man has been married to her for 40 years and why her daughter loves her still. It is this absolute refusal to allow anything — and I mean anything — to stop the celebration.”

Now, why could they rejoice when everything went so horribly, horribly wrong?

Because in spite of all the mess, the groom still got the bride. And after everything is said and done at a wedding, that’s all that really matters.

Whatever else gets messed up, as long as the groom gets the bride, then what needs to happen happens.

How is it possible for human beings to become joy-filled people in a pain-filled world?

Look at the promise that comes almost at the very end of the Bible in the last book, the Book of Revelation.

Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb (That is Christ. The marriage of the lamb…) has come, and his bride has made herself ready. (Revelation 19:7)

The joy that’s in store for God and his people is so great that the only picture that can do it justice is the joy between a lover and his beloved, a groom and his bride.

And then we will see the wedding that the greatest weddings on this earth have only been a dim foreshadowing of, for then Jesus will be together with his followers, with you, if you are one, for all eternity.

The writers of Scripture say the joy will be so great the only picture adequate to begin to convey it is the most joyful human picture of two people so intensely in love that they couldn’t stand to be apart.

Joy is possible, even in a desperately pain-filled world because the end of the story is the groom gets the bride, and then will God dance with his people and then will joy reign unblemished and uninterrupted.

Isaiah writes, in an attempt to express the inexpressible:

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12)

John writes in Revelation 21:

Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. (Revelation 21:3-4)

And joy will never end. Every day will be a purple Christmas tree day.

Let’s pray as the team comes to lead us in a closing song.