Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2: I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Speaker 2: I wanted to thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.
Speaker 2: Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving
Speaker 2: in your life.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message. Look, I want to preach.
Speaker 2: About joy today and I want to get there from
Speaker 2: a story and then share several scriptures with you can't
Speaker 2: tell your story. I just got a new car last year.
Speaker 2: I drove a Nissan Maxima for ten years before I
Speaker 2: bought this new car.
Speaker 1: I loved my Nissan Maxima.
Speaker 2: My car before this Nissan Maxima was a Nissan Maxima.
Speaker 2: That's how much I liked my Nissan Maxima. I maximized
Speaker 2: the Maxima and it was very good to me. Only
Speaker 2: thing that I ever remember happening, other than the time
Speaker 2: it cut off in an intersection, was that one day
Speaker 2: I was driving down the road a few years ago
Speaker 2: and my stereo system started doing strange things. It started
Speaker 2: skipping around to different tracks without me telling it too,
Speaker 2: and the volume kept increasing and decreasing, and so then.
Speaker 1: I would put it back on the song. I wanted
Speaker 1: to listen to.
Speaker 2: And I would turn down the volume or turn up
Speaker 2: the volume, depending on it would go both ways without
Speaker 2: me telling it too, without me turning the knob, and
Speaker 2: it happened for about ten to fifteen minutes straight one
Speaker 2: day that I was driving, and it seemed like my
Speaker 2: speakers in my car had a mind of their own.
Speaker 1: So I thought maybe my Maxima got a demon, and.
Speaker 2: Then I looked in the backseat and realized it wasn't
Speaker 2: a demon.
Speaker 1: It was my daughter.
Speaker 2: That she had the center console down and I never
Speaker 2: rode back there, so I didn't realize that all the
Speaker 2: years that I've had this car, you can control the
Speaker 2: volume and skip tracks.
Speaker 1: From back there.
Speaker 2: And she was laughing, and Graham was back there and
Speaker 2: he was laughing, and they were controlling something from the
Speaker 2: back that I was trying to deal with in the front,
Speaker 2: and they thought it was so funny, and I told
Speaker 2: him stop that it's annoying. When I figured out what
Speaker 2: they were doing, two or three minutes later, there goes
Speaker 2: the volume up and down again. There goes track two,
Speaker 2: track three, track four. Again, it's on shuffle. And I
Speaker 2: turned around and said, I'm telling y'all stop, I don't
Speaker 2: like it. It was maybe cute the first time for you,
Speaker 2: but it's really driving me crazy up here. Stop and
Speaker 2: a few minutes go by and it starts happening again.
Speaker 2: I pulled the car over the third time. I pulled
Speaker 2: the car over the third time. I'm Providence Road. I said,
Speaker 2: let me explain something to you. I said, y'all are
Speaker 2: passengers in this maximum I'm the driver.
Speaker 1: That means I'm the DJ.
Speaker 2: I get to choose what comes on this stereo and
Speaker 2: how loud it is because the driver gets.
Speaker 1: To be the DJ.
Speaker 2: I want to ap preach to you for about thirty
Speaker 2: seven minutes today about back seat DJs, because I suspect
Speaker 2: that there are some things in your life that are
Speaker 2: being controlled from the back seat, that are being controlled
Speaker 2: at a level that you're not realizing that they're being controlled.
Speaker 2: And I believe that today God is going to use
Speaker 2: me and trust me.
Speaker 1: I study.
Speaker 2: Joy has become more important to me every year that
Speaker 2: I've been alive. I feel like in my twenties I
Speaker 2: just cared about accomplishing things. I've been figuring out, what's
Speaker 2: the point if you don't enjoy it? What's the point
Speaker 2: in doing something awesome? If you are not in a
Speaker 2: position to appreciate the accomplishment because you constantly need more.
Speaker 2: And I spent my twenties and maybe the beginning of
Speaker 2: my thirties just trying to get more, more, more. Sometimes
Speaker 2: that meant more popularity. Sometimes that meant more impact. Sometimes
Speaker 2: that meant more influence. Sometimes that meant more money, more resources,
Speaker 2: more friends, more phone numbers, more connections.
Speaker 1: But lately I've been asking the Lord.
Speaker 2: For more joy, and it sent me on a scriptural trajectory, and.
Speaker 1: I want to bring you into it today.
Speaker 2: Would it be all right if we talked for a
Speaker 2: little while today about what's controlling your joy?
Speaker 1: Amen? I'm excited. Do you feel my enthusiasm? James?
Speaker 2: Chapter one, Verses two through four. We'll start here. I
Speaker 2: believe they're some things that are destroying your joy that
Speaker 2: you were unaware of, And James is going.
Speaker 1: To teach us how to develop joy. Very different than
Speaker 1: discovering joy.
Speaker 2: Discovering joy means it's waiting somewhere and you got to
Speaker 2: find it. It's waiting in your next career move, it's
Speaker 2: waiting in your next relationship.
Speaker 1: It's waiting somewhere. You're not right now.
Speaker 2: But James is going to show us something that may
Speaker 2: be familiar to a few of you, but it is
Speaker 2: very strange if you consider what he's actually saying. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to just read those verses, just three verses
Speaker 2: to you, he says, James, Chapter one, verus to consider
Speaker 2: it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face
Speaker 2: trials of many kinds.
Speaker 1: That's not where I was looking for joy.
Speaker 2: By the way, that's not what I was praying for,
Speaker 2: hoping for, asking for, believing for.
Speaker 1: Anyway, this is what the Bible says.
Speaker 2: He said, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,
Speaker 2: whenever you face trials of many kinds. Because you know
Speaker 2: that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, Let perseverance
Speaker 2: finish its work so that you may be mature and complete,
Speaker 2: not lacking anything. I'm glad he specified, because the first
Speaker 2: thing I want to mention to you today, all of
Speaker 2: these points they kind of followed the theme of DJ.
Speaker 2: So the first one is the distinction of joy, the
Speaker 2: distinction of joy knowing what it really is, understanding the
Speaker 2: nature of it. And James helps us to do that
Speaker 2: first bite, helping us to understand that there are trials
Speaker 2: of many kinds, that's what verse two said. The old
Speaker 2: King James that Pastor Mickey preached from said, diverse trials
Speaker 2: because I have learned that we're not all going through
Speaker 2: the same thing, but we are all going through something.
Speaker 2: And how many know that there are as many different
Speaker 2: kinds of trials as there are different drinks at Starbucks,
Speaker 2: as there are different colors of paint at home depot.
Speaker 2: I found out that there are trials that are associated
Speaker 2: with plenty. There are trials that are associated with poverty.
Speaker 2: I always understood the first one because everybody understands that
Speaker 2: being broke is a battle. But management of resources can,
Speaker 2: in its own way, test a part of your character
Speaker 2: that if you're not prepared to have it testing, it
Speaker 2: can create a lot more problems than financial poverty. In fact,
Speaker 2: financial riches can create relational poverty if there is not
Speaker 2: the emotional maturity to help us to steward with understanding
Speaker 2: what we've been given.
Speaker 1: I'm appreaching today. If Y come along with you, it's truly.
Speaker 2: There's single people trials, there's married people trials. There are
Speaker 2: trials that are associated with loneliness, and there are trials
Speaker 2: that are associated with companionship. There are many kinds of trials.
Speaker 2: There are many different That's what James is saying.
Speaker 1: He's making a.
Speaker 2: Distinction, that there's different kinds of trials, And some of
Speaker 2: us are like, well, can I try a different kind
Speaker 2: of trial?
Speaker 1: Like can I trade trials?
Speaker 2: Like you're talking about rich people trials, I'd like to
Speaker 2: try those for a little while you're talking about married
Speaker 2: people trials. I'd like to try. I think I'd be
Speaker 2: good at those trials. I think I'd be better prepared
Speaker 2: for those trials. But we never again, after the year
Speaker 2: that we had last year, get to associate joy with
Speaker 2: status or success, because we have now seen it.
Speaker 1: No matter how great your name is in the.
Speaker 2: Eyes of people, you can still want to take your
Speaker 2: very own life because joy is not a product of
Speaker 2: what people say about you. Joy is not a product
Speaker 2: of how people hold you in esteem or in disregard.
Speaker 2: And so there's different kinds of trials. Added to that,
Speaker 2: most of us don't understand the distinction between a temptation
Speaker 2: and a trial. The language that James uses in this
Speaker 2: biblical writing, the common Greek of his day, allows for both.
Speaker 2: When he says trials of many kinds, he could just
Speaker 2: as easily be referring to economic hardship or persecution that
Speaker 2: many of this diaspora of tribes scattered abroad who are
Speaker 2: believers in Jesus were experiencing, or he could be talking
Speaker 2: about temptation. And it is important to know the distinction
Speaker 2: between the kind of trials that you will experience in
Speaker 2: your life, Otherwise you might spend years blaming the devil
Speaker 2: for your bad decisions. There are different.
Speaker 1: Kinds of trials.
Speaker 2: Some of our trials are the result of evil in
Speaker 2: the world, and that results in all kinds of different warfare.
Speaker 1: That we could study for weeks about.
Speaker 2: Some of our trials are the results of things that
Speaker 2: we did contrary to our inner wisdom. There are many
Speaker 2: different kinds of trials, and if you don't know the
Speaker 2: difference between a temptation and a trial, you will try
Speaker 2: to use the wrong tool on the trial. Because when tempted,
Speaker 2: the Bible teaches resistance.
Speaker 1: When you are tempted to.
Speaker 2: Step outside of the God given means by which you've
Speaker 2: been empowered to meet your God given desires, the strategy,
Speaker 2: the tool, the technique is resistance. When you face a trial, however,
Speaker 2: not a temptation, but a trial, often the key is
Speaker 2: not resistance, but acceptance. And this was important for me
Speaker 2: to see the distinction because a lot of times I'm
Speaker 2: accepting what I should resist and resisting what I should accept.
Speaker 2: It is taking me time to learn the difference, is
Speaker 2: taking me prayer to learn the difference. It's taking the
Speaker 2: other's community to learn the difference. I'm having to get
Speaker 2: into the Word of God to know the difference so
Speaker 2: that I can approach my trials with wisdom. In fact,
Speaker 2: that's what James one to five says, and it's connected
Speaker 2: to this passage, even though I never thought it was.
Speaker 2: It says, if any of you lacks wisdom, you should
Speaker 2: ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault,
Speaker 2: and it will be given to you. Now, if you
Speaker 2: want to flip the flow this year, just to James.
Speaker 1: One to five.
Speaker 2: Instead of asking everybody around you what you should do,
Speaker 2: start with the source, Start with the solution. We're talking
Speaker 2: about your problems with people who.
Speaker 1: Are powerless to fix them.
Speaker 2: It's making you feel worse, it's making them feel worse,
Speaker 2: and everybody's frustrated. So I need the wisdom to make
Speaker 2: the distinction, to know the trial that I'm in. God
Speaker 2: is this one that you want me to fight or
Speaker 2: do you want me to do what the Parables said
Speaker 2: to do one time with the weeds that were growing
Speaker 2: up alongside the terrace, and leave it alone and let
Speaker 2: you deal with it.
Speaker 1: There's a distinction. There's different kinds of trials.
Speaker 2: Some of the stuff that I'm dealing with as a
Speaker 2: parent right now is just called puberty. You can't cast
Speaker 2: it out, you can't annoy it, you can't instruct it.
Speaker 1: It's a different kind of trial. It's just life.
Speaker 2: Some of the stuff I'm dealing with right now is
Speaker 2: a temptation. Some of it is, actually, I believe, from
Speaker 2: the pit of hell. Not that the devil is like
Speaker 2: personally a signed to me, but just some stuff is
Speaker 2: evil against my purpose. And don't give yourself too much credit,
Speaker 2: because a lot of us like to think that the
Speaker 2: devil had nothing better to do than give us, you know,
Speaker 2: a flat tire, and I think the devil is much
Speaker 2: busier than that. I think a lot of it comes
Speaker 2: down to distinguishing the type of trial that I'm in,
Speaker 2: which helps me to understand the distinctions between joy and pleasure.
Speaker 1: Oh, you know those little church signs that they do.
Speaker 1: I think we should get one.
Speaker 2: By the way, at elevation the church signs where they
Speaker 2: change the letters and they put up little quotes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like this. I think we should get one.
Speaker 1: How many vote we get a church sign.
Speaker 2: Let's have our first ever church voted elevation church vote.
Speaker 1: We should get a church sign and we could put
Speaker 1: stuff up there like this. I saw this one. It
Speaker 1: said no.
Speaker 2: Jesus, no Joy, but it was spelt k n ow Jesus.
Speaker 1: So the first one was no.
Speaker 2: Jesus, you don't have Jesus, you don't have joy k
Speaker 2: and oh Jesus kN ow Jesus kN ow joy. And
Speaker 2: I thought it's cute, but it's it's not true.
Speaker 1: No Jesus, no Joy. There's a lot of things you
Speaker 1: can enjoy without Jesus. Christy Kreme tastes.
Speaker 2: Good whether you're saved or not.
Speaker 1: My taste buds didn't get saved. It's fun to.
Speaker 2: Talk bad about people whether you're saved or not.
Speaker 1: Only differences. And this is important, is that.
Speaker 2: The quality of the joy becomes more important than the
Speaker 2: quantity of the joy.
Speaker 1: You also hear.
Speaker 2: Preachers say stuff like this, God doesn't care if you're happy.
Speaker 2: He just wants to make you holy. And I can't
Speaker 2: believe how many people will say amen to some business
Speaker 2: like that that you but never.
Speaker 1: Feel about your own kid.
Speaker 2: How many parents do we have in the house, and
Speaker 2: how many of you don't care if your kid is
Speaker 2: ever happy in life at all. I'm gonna call child
Speaker 2: Protective Services on y'all.
Speaker 1: He ain't no good good father. No, he is a
Speaker 1: good father, good gift. So I never got that.
Speaker 2: And I never really understood the distinction between joy and happiness,
Speaker 2: because like, there's not a difference in.
Speaker 1: The Biblical language.
Speaker 2: It's not difference like in English we have like phar
Speaker 2: real happy, which is like dancing happy, and then in
Speaker 2: Hebrew they had happy. It's the same word, it's blessed.
Speaker 2: It's the same word as joy. When James says counted joy,
Speaker 2: he means consider yourself supremely happy literal translation.
Speaker 1: So we need to make the distinction. I guess between
Speaker 1: generic joy.
Speaker 2: And Jesus joy because he said verse two, consider it
Speaker 2: pure joy. The way my mind works, if there's such
Speaker 2: a thing as pure joy, there must be another kind
Speaker 2: of joy.
Speaker 1: I kind of cheated that a little bit.
Speaker 2: It's more a grammar issue because the literal translation is
Speaker 2: count it all joy, so he doesn't say pure joy.
Speaker 2: I got a verse for this, though. Let me do
Speaker 2: it from a Let me do it from Hebrews chapter twelve.
Speaker 2: I've always loved this picture of joy because it helps
Speaker 2: me to make a distinction between.
Speaker 1: Joy and pleasure. Okay, pleasure can.
Speaker 2: Be associated with joy, but joy is not dependent on pleasure.
Speaker 2: This is the second thing I want to talk about.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about the direction of joy. The
Speaker 2: direction of joy. We're talking about backseat DJs, right, We're
Speaker 2: talking about how sometimes we find our joy controlled by
Speaker 2: circumstances and situations. But Jesus gives us a picture that
Speaker 2: stands contrary to the cultural expectation of joy. And I
Speaker 2: promise I'll read the scripture in a minute. But I
Speaker 2: just want to tell you so much and don't know
Speaker 2: where to start, where to stop. It's just it's all
Speaker 2: in me today. There seems to be right now more
Speaker 2: than there was like when my grandparents.
Speaker 1: We're thirty and forty.
Speaker 2: There seems to be a pressure for us to always
Speaker 2: feel pleasure. It's no longer just a desire that we
Speaker 2: have that we want to feel good. It's almost like
Speaker 2: the way that social media has constructed our viewing experiences
Speaker 2: of other people's lives through the filters of their most
Speaker 2: desirable moments. There is something wrong with me If I
Speaker 2: am not constantly happy all the time. That's a problem
Speaker 2: with me because I am not genetically predisposed to be happy.
Speaker 1: I'm just not.
Speaker 2: I've found that out about myself early in life. I
Speaker 2: am not like one of you who just finds reasons
Speaker 2: to smell roses, who just finds reasons to be happy.
Speaker 2: Some of y'all appreciate the rain, appreciate the sunshine. The
Speaker 2: rain makes you feel relaxed. The sunshine makes you feel active.
Speaker 2: You can find the joy in everything. I am not
Speaker 2: of your species, and frankly you make me sick. But
Speaker 2: joy is something different, because the pressure to feel pleasure
Speaker 2: is part of the reason why we feel so miserable.
Speaker 2: And now we are living in the midst of a
Speaker 2: generation that thinks that joy is associated with a feeling
Speaker 2: in your flesh. And it can be, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be. It's important that I say it can
Speaker 2: bring a feeling, but it doesn't start with the feeling.
Speaker 2: This is where we flip the flow. Can we flip
Speaker 2: the flow? If anybody flipped the flow. It was Jesus.
Speaker 2: Here he is up on a cross. Here he is
Speaker 2: and his reputation is beyond repair. Here he is being
Speaker 2: spat on and condescended to by the ones that he created.
Speaker 2: And the writer of Hebrews, whoever he was, says, we
Speaker 2: need to fix Hebrews twelve to two our eyes on Jesus,
Speaker 2: the pioneer and perfector or the author and finisher. Either
Speaker 2: translation is acceptable of our faith. HM for the joy
Speaker 2: set before him, he endured the cross. Now this is
Speaker 2: where my message really happens. Okay, what have you set
Speaker 2: before you? That is what your joy is connected to
Speaker 2: what you have set before you, And I'll break that
Speaker 2: down the best that I can. Joy is a point
Speaker 2: of view. Joy is a way of looking at things.
Speaker 1: This helps me.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but it sets me free
Speaker 2: from feeling the need to feel a certain way. We
Speaker 2: got so many people quitting their jobs because they're unhappy
Speaker 2: and not really understanding that sometimes joy is not the
Speaker 2: absence of sadness.
Speaker 1: Or the presence of the spectacular.
Speaker 2: And all we need to look at is that one
Speaker 2: verse where it says that Jesus, for the joy that
Speaker 2: was set before him.
Speaker 1: I want to use that as a picture for a moment.
Speaker 2: He set joy before him, so in order to endure
Speaker 2: the cross, that's the next part, enduring the cross, scorning
Speaker 2: as shame. He didn't find joy in the event. He
Speaker 2: found joy in the guaranteed outcome.
Speaker 1: Of the event.
Speaker 2: He did not find joy in the feeling of hanging
Speaker 2: on the cross.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like because.
Speaker 2: He was the son of God that the nails, you know,
Speaker 2: transcended the laws of pain and the material laws of
Speaker 2: the universe. It was just as painful, but because of purpose.
Speaker 2: You understand, it's very different to go through pain with
Speaker 2: purpose than pain without purpose. It's the difference between Graham
Speaker 2: jumping on my.
Speaker 1: Back he's only ninety pounds and me not knowing that.
Speaker 2: He's gonna jump on my back and me feeling like
Speaker 2: every disc just slipped like I'm seventy three years old
Speaker 2: in my lower back. And the difference between me putting
Speaker 2: ninety pounds on a bar to squat it.
Speaker 1: If I do it on purpose, it's a warm up weight.
Speaker 2: If I don't expect it, it might take me.
Speaker 1: Down to the ground. Same weight. But what I was
Speaker 1: ready for when Jesus hung on the cross.
Speaker 2: He wasn't surprised by the shame. He wasn't surprised by
Speaker 2: the suffering. He wasn't surprised by the pain. He wasn't
Speaker 2: surprised by the jeering. He wasn't surprised by their saliva.
Speaker 2: He wasn't surprised by the blood. Joy is a focus
Speaker 2: before it's a feeling. If you came to church just
Speaker 2: to hear that I promise you got your gas money's worth.
Speaker 2: Joy is a focus before it's a feeling.