Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
Speaker 2: I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.
Speaker 1: And 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.
Speaker 3: So grateful to be here with you all today, apprecing
Speaker 3: to what feels to me to be family, and get
Speaker 3: so excited anytime I get to share space with you.
Speaker 3: And if you're not familiar with who I am, that's okay.
Speaker 3: I'm just your crazy beige little nephew from Austin, Texas
Speaker 3: that pulled up on you today.
Speaker 1: Just Khaki, just out here.
Speaker 3: Praising God, Congratulations the Elevation Rhythm on the release Victory lab.
Speaker 1: I was encouraging.
Speaker 3: And depending on how you take it, encouraging or discouraging, Chris,
Speaker 3: because I said, my twelve year old son was riding
Speaker 3: the car with me the other day. He said, Dad,
Speaker 3: why does Elevation Rhythm have more bangers in Elevation worship?
Speaker 2: My?
Speaker 3: How the turns of tabled? But seriously celebrating you and
Speaker 3: what a testimony of this house always being about the
Speaker 3: next generation building for the future, not just saying it,
Speaker 3: but investing time, resources, platform, influence, and it just flows
Speaker 3: from a generous house, which is the culmination of generous leadership.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful.
Speaker 3: For your pastor, Pastor Stephen Ferdick Holly. I love you guys,
Speaker 3: So grateful for your kindness, for your friendship, for your support.
Speaker 1: Shout out to.
Speaker 3: Chunks wherever he's bench pressing something today.
Speaker 1: Just so grateful.
Speaker 3: Chunks has been the secret weapon of Church of White
Speaker 3: Stone and Austin. I've called him countless times and he
Speaker 3: just makes room for us. And I'm so grateful, and
Speaker 3: ultimately I'm grateful for you all because generosity doesn't just
Speaker 3: flow to this church.
Speaker 1: It flows through this church.
Speaker 3: And it flowed right into Austin to White Stone to
Speaker 3: help us plant our church fifteen months ago.
Speaker 1: And I just want to let you know.
Speaker 3: That God's doing something with the seed that you've sown.
Speaker 3: That over the last fifteen months, we've baptized five hundred
Speaker 3: and seven people. We've seen six hundred and thirty people
Speaker 3: say yes to Jesus for the very first time. So
Speaker 3: amazing to be a footnote in God's great story. And
Speaker 3: I'm just so grateful for the ways that you have
Speaker 3: partnered with us. We're gonna go quickly to the scripture.
Speaker 3: Matthew five, verse one. Grab your bibles. If you don't
Speaker 3: have it, this is elevation. You'll be able to read
Speaker 3: it somewhere. It'll be on the screens. Matthew five, verse one.
Speaker 3: When you got it, say I got it, singing church,
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Matthew five, verse one.
Speaker 3: Now, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on
Speaker 3: a mountain side and sat down. His disciples came to him,
Speaker 3: and he began.
Speaker 1: To teach them.
Speaker 3: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
Speaker 3: Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they
Speaker 3: will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will
Speaker 3: inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
Speaker 3: for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful,
Speaker 3: for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure
Speaker 3: in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers,
Speaker 3: for they will be called children of God.
Speaker 1: Blessed are those.
Speaker 3: Who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the
Speaker 3: Kingdom of Heaven. Today, with the help of the Holy Spirit,
Speaker 3: I'll be drawing this title Joy to reintroduce himself. Allow
Speaker 3: Joy to reintroduce himself. Would you pray with me? Jesus,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for your word. I pray that
Speaker 3: you would warm our hearts today to receive what it
Speaker 3: is that you have to speak to us.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 3: I pray that there would be a supernatural impartation of
Speaker 3: your joy, that it would flow from the pages of
Speaker 3: these scriptures, from the heart of your presence, into the
Speaker 3: lives of your people. We ask it in Jesus' name,
Speaker 3: and the church said, Amen, you can go ahead and
Speaker 3: take your seat. Allow Joy to reintroduce himself. I want
Speaker 3: to ask you a question today, Who in human history
Speaker 3: taught the most important message on joy? Who in human
Speaker 3: history taught the most important message on joy?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: I know we got a lot of church folk up
Speaker 3: in here today. I know there are a lot of
Speaker 3: people who've been following Jesus for a long time in
Speaker 3: the room and watching online today, and so I don't
Speaker 3: just want to assume that we're all just drawing the
Speaker 3: same conclusions about joy and the origins of the message
Speaker 3: of joy, and who articulated.
Speaker 1: The power of joy most perfectly.
Speaker 3: Some of you may point to someone like Buddha and
Speaker 3: say that Buddha taught the most important message on happiness
Speaker 3: and joy.
Speaker 1: Seems like a pretty happy guy.
Speaker 3: And he said this phrase that happiness, that there is
Speaker 3: no path to happiness, happiness is the path.
Speaker 1: Not bad.
Speaker 3: I can tell I'm already losing the church. Were just
Speaker 3: mentioning Buddha in this sacred space. What in the world
Speaker 3: been in Austin And all of a sudden, You're just
Speaker 3: You're gonna be all right. Maybe some of you would
Speaker 3: point to a more stoic philosopher like Marcus Aurelius, an emperor.
Speaker 1: He said that joy is the product of.
Speaker 3: Self discipline, taking life as it comes to you, not
Speaker 3: a bad swing at joy. Maybe more of you philosophical
Speaker 3: individuals would say someone like Aristotle gave us the most
Speaker 3: profound ideas that we have about joy and happiness. He
Speaker 3: said that happiness depends on ourselves. None of those are
Speaker 3: really bad swings at the idea. But I had to
Speaker 3: go to the authority of all authorities. I had to
Speaker 3: go to the resource huh, of all resources. I had
Speaker 3: to go to chat GPT. Some of y'all were ready
Speaker 3: to shout oh no, not ai. I just wanted to
Speaker 3: test it see how it was feeling. I don't know
Speaker 3: if chat GPT got safe, sanctified and filled with the
Speaker 3: Holy Ghost or what. But chat GPT preached back to
Speaker 3: your boy, chat GPT said, Jesus Christ preach the most
Speaker 3: important message on short there's the church, all right, I
Speaker 3: got shock. Okay, if chat GPT said it, then now
Speaker 3: chat GPT he only has an eighty to ninety five
Speaker 3: percent accuracy rate, so you got a fact check chat GPT.
Speaker 3: But in this case, I think that it was one
Speaker 3: thousand percent right. Jesus taught the most important message on
Speaker 3: joy in human history. But I wonder if we have
Speaker 3: stopped long enough in our lives to analyze exactly how
Speaker 3: Jesus introduced the message of joy. That's why I chose
Speaker 3: this framework of Matthew five, because Jesus actually resets the
Speaker 3: lens through which we identify happiness and joy in the
Speaker 3: world and in our lives. Now, I'm I want to
Speaker 3: test your religious reflex here. Don't at me, but the
Speaker 3: next phrase that I'm about to say is going to
Speaker 3: trigger you. Are you ready your happiness matters to God.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: Maybe some of you were raised in environments adjacent to
Speaker 3: the environment I was raised in, where you were taught
Speaker 3: to believe God doesn't care if you're happy, do what
Speaker 3: he says. Maybe some of you you don't even realize it,
Speaker 3: but you have bought into the idea that the more
Speaker 3: miserable you are, the more you're honoring God. I don't
Speaker 3: serve him because I want to. I serve him because
Speaker 3: I have to. I grew up hearing this priest and church.
Speaker 3: God doesn't care about your happiness. He cares about your holiness.
Speaker 1: And it's so funny.
Speaker 3: In church people will say stuff all the time that's
Speaker 3: not in the Bible, and then they'll run out to
Speaker 3: some print store and put it on a T shirt
Speaker 3: and sell it out of the trunk of their car
Speaker 3: as if it was Bible truth. But this idea does
Speaker 3: not exist in the scriptures. In fact, in order to
Speaker 3: understand the idea of joy, to understand the heart of God,
Speaker 3: we don't go to our feelings.
Speaker 1: We don't go to church culture, we don't go.
Speaker 3: To secular culture. We go to the Word of God,
Speaker 3: the scriptures. And when I look at the Word, it's
Speaker 3: so important. How you look at the Word. You don't
Speaker 3: just look at it, you look around it. And you
Speaker 3: understanding the Word of God is so important because how
Speaker 3: you you the word the scriptures determines how you view God,
Speaker 3: and how you view God determines how you interpret the events.
Speaker 1: Of your life.
Speaker 3: And so if I'm going to buy into a premise
Speaker 3: that God only wants mean Christians and God only makes
Speaker 3: miserable people, then I have gone outside of the very
Speaker 3: character and nature of God that the Bible teaches. When
Speaker 3: I look at Scripture, I see verses like in his
Speaker 3: presence is the fullness of joy? Well, if joy is
Speaker 3: in his presence, how could he produce what he does
Speaker 3: not possess? And so he must possess joy.
Speaker 1: To produce joy.
Speaker 3: I'm coming after this whole God only wants to mean
Speaker 3: Christians thing, And if you can't in church, I hate
Speaker 3: to tell you you're the problem. Can't nobody be more saved
Speaker 3: and more mean looking than a Christian?
Speaker 1: Wild But even when you.
Speaker 3: Look at God and you see that the angels are
Speaker 3: gathered around his throne declaring, Holy, Holy, Holy is the
Speaker 3: Lord God Almighty, and the earth is filled with his glory,
Speaker 3: They're beholding His holiness. But they're not just saying Holy, Holy, Holy.
Speaker 3: The scripture indicates that they're singing Holy, Holy, Holy will.
Speaker 1: Singing is a product of joy.
Speaker 3: So something that heaven is experiencing in God's presence is
Speaker 3: provoking a praise from a source of worship. This is
Speaker 3: so important for you to understand today. It's because some
Speaker 3: of you have been living your lives believing that God
Speaker 3: is withholding a certain aspect of his nature from you,
Speaker 3: that he's keeping a dimension of his character from you.
Speaker 3: Because we've been convinced that our happiness is dependent on
Speaker 3: something that we go into the world and get. But
Speaker 3: it's not going out into the world that allows us
Speaker 3: to possess happiness and joy. It's going to what Dallas
Speaker 3: Willard called the great beyond within, where the character of
Speaker 3: Christ is being formed in your heart. So my happiness
Speaker 3: doesn't flow from my dreams, doesn't flow from my plans,
Speaker 3: doesn't flow from whatever season of.
Speaker 1: Life I'm in.
Speaker 3: It flows from the character of Jesus being formed in
Speaker 3: my heart. But you first have to buy into the
Speaker 3: premise that God is uniquely invested in your happiness. When
Speaker 3: I looked at Matthew five, I was shooketh when I
Speaker 3: realized that Matthew five records. What theologians and scholars all
Speaker 3: agree on is Jesus' inaugural sermon, his very first message
Speaker 3: that someone wrote down, and the first word.
Speaker 1: That Jesus says is blessed. Have you considered.
Speaker 3: That that Jesus stepped into time and space, split history
Speaker 3: in half with his mere existence, and he goes with
Speaker 3: his disciples, sits down on a hillside on an ordinary day,
Speaker 3: and the first word that he declares that he knows
Speaker 3: would be echoed throughout human history is the word blessed.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, we give a lot of credence to famous
Speaker 3: last words, famous last words, words that are powerful because
Speaker 3: they seal a moment or a season. Famous last words
Speaker 3: like ain't gonna be no rematch, Apollo Creeve Rocky four.
Speaker 3: Famous last words like don't let it in like this,
Speaker 3: Tell them I said something, Pancho Villa. Famous last words
Speaker 3: like I only regret that I have but one life
Speaker 3: to lose for my country Nathan Hale. Famous last words
Speaker 3: like you must do me this honor. Promise me you'll survive,
Speaker 3: that you won't give up no matter what happens, no
Speaker 3: matter how hopeless. Promise me now, Rose, and never let
Speaker 3: go of that promise.
Speaker 1: I'll never let go. Let's go what I have to do.
Speaker 1: Leo like that, y'all. We all know there was room
Speaker 1: on the thing. On the floaty thing, there was room.
Speaker 3: Rose, you're selfish. They stole Titanic two from us, y'all.
Speaker 3: I'm not okay. Famous last words, But shouldn't there be
Speaker 3: something said about famous first words, not because of their finality,
Speaker 3: but because of their primacy, their priority, the fact that
Speaker 3: they were spoken first.
Speaker 1: Famous first words.
Speaker 3: Like four score and seven years ago, Happy Memorial Day,
Speaker 3: Famous first words. I have a dream that little black
Speaker 3: boys and little white girls would make little.
Speaker 1: Khaki kids praise speaking tongue.
Speaker 4: I'm living the dream, Marian, I'm living it.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther Game.
Speaker 3: A famous first words and a galaxy fuck oh, y'all,
Speaker 3: Some nerds, y'all. Elevation got a reputation for being so
Speaker 3: cool Star Wars nerds. Famous first words, last words, first words,
Speaker 3: last words, first words, last words, first words. The last
Speaker 3: word of the Old Testament is curse. The first word
Speaker 3: Jesus says in the first book of Your New Testament
Speaker 3: and his first sermon.
Speaker 1: Is blessed Jesus, the embodiment all of the law prophecies.
Speaker 3: Jesus, the one who did not abolish the law but
Speaker 3: fulfilled it to the finest detail, while ironically crushing the
Speaker 3: spirit of religion. In one word, reverses every reality that
Speaker 3: people living through that Old Testament era had experienced.
Speaker 1: All they were left with was a curse.
Speaker 3: Because of the stringent rules and the traditions.
Speaker 1: All that they had was the curse. Even the law.
Speaker 3: The Bible says, the letter brings death, but the spirit
Speaker 3: is life.
Speaker 1: And yet the.
Speaker 3: Spirit was not given until Acts two, and so these
Speaker 3: people were living under the reality of the curse until
Speaker 3: Grace and Truth sat down on a hillside and started
Speaker 3: to reorient the heart of humanity back to God's original
Speaker 3: intention and design for humanity. Because the first interaction God
Speaker 3: ever had with people was not to rebuke them, It
Speaker 3: was not to correct them.
Speaker 1: Although he does.
Speaker 3: This in his loving kindness, this was not his original intention.
Speaker 1: Genesis one twenty.
Speaker 3: Eight records the first action of God toward humanity, and
Speaker 3: the scripture says, and God blessed them and told them
Speaker 3: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
Speaker 1: And so Jesus.
Speaker 3: Turns the heart of a religiously cold people, one who
Speaker 3: only knew a God from the distance back to the
Speaker 3: original heart of blessing of God's people. Now, when they
Speaker 3: heard the word blessed, they did not hear what we hear.
Speaker 3: It was not come on twenty fourteen hashtag blessed. They
Speaker 3: did not think card, They did not think house, They
Speaker 3: did not think stuff. They did not think ocean side, villa.
Speaker 3: They didn't think any of those things. The word in
Speaker 3: the original language means happy. This is what got me all.
Speaker 3: This is why I wrote a book about this. I
Speaker 3: couldn't get away from it.
Speaker 1: You mean to tell me that the first word God said.
Speaker 3: When he is speaking to people that will reverberate their generations,
Speaker 3: he chooses the word happy. It made me ask, how
Speaker 3: important must your happiness be to the heart of God
Speaker 3: if it's the first thing he points us toward. God
Speaker 3: wants you to be happy.
Speaker 1: Wild.
Speaker 3: I had an idea that was floated to me by
Speaker 3: someone that this church has a great history with. I
Speaker 3: wasn't gonna out him, but I decided to wage Joy
Speaker 3: gave me this advice. He said, it'd be a great
Speaker 3: idea if you do a five year trip with all
Speaker 3: your kids every five years, take them on something just them.
Speaker 1: You and Lorna. When we had two kids.
Speaker 3: This was a great idea. We got four of them things.
Speaker 3: But we started it and now we can't retract it.
Speaker 3: So I went to my all this sun. He was
Speaker 3: turning five at the time. I said, hey, bro, your
Speaker 3: five year trips coming up. Where you want to go?
Speaker 3: I thought, we live in Texas, y'all. So I thought
Speaker 3: he want to go to the Alamo, you know, down
Speaker 3: to the Mexico border.
Speaker 1: That would be interesting. No, my boy said, then I
Speaker 1: want to go to Disney World, the trip of all trips.
Speaker 3: Now I had a thing that I was doing for work,
Speaker 3: so we actually got to make it happen and we
Speaker 3: went to Disney World. But I realized I immediately sat
Speaker 3: a very high precedent. And so here comes his little
Speaker 3: brother lawson. He's five years old. Dad, it's time for
Speaker 3: my five year trip, and I know where I want
Speaker 3: to go.
Speaker 1: Where we going, boss? Japan?
Speaker 3: I said, Japan? What my fault, My fault, little brother,
Speaker 3: my fault. Anywhere in the continental United States of America.
Speaker 1: Where would you like to?
Speaker 3: Eh?
Speaker 1: What a god in Japan? Do I Tachi bay.
Speaker 3: She hey boy, you can't even speak English. What are
Speaker 3: you doing? We're not going to Japan? Fine, he wipes
Speaker 3: his last tear. I'll go to Disney World. Spoiled.
Speaker 1: We went to disney World, then Navy.
Speaker 3: He was three and a half, talking about Disney word,
Speaker 3: Disney word, Disney word and if history repeats itself, we
Speaker 3: got a fifth birthday coming up. God, help you see
Speaker 3: why I wrote a book. Help me help This was Wade.
Speaker 1: I blame you. I'm sending you an invoice.
Speaker 3: Disney is known as the happiest place on Earth. You
Speaker 3: don't have to be there more than five minutes to
Speaker 3: realize what do you mean happy? You got people stomping
Speaker 3: their feet, throwing fits, rolling on the ground, whining, complaining,
Speaker 3: and the kids are misbehaving too. You go to Disney World,
Speaker 3: you either get in a picture with Mickey Mouse or divorce.
Speaker 1: It's what it's It's crazy to me, the happiest place
Speaker 1: on earth.
Speaker 3: I found that Disney World isn't just the home of
Speaker 3: Mickey Mouse and tinker Bell. It's the home of meltdowns, trauma.
Speaker 3: What are you and counseling here today for it? Well,
Speaker 3: my dad took up me on five year trips. And
Speaker 3: it's interesting that we have certain expectations connected to certain locations,
Speaker 3: certain locations in our lives. And I'm not talking about
Speaker 3: Disney World. Obviously. Some of you you're graduating, Yeah, let's
Speaker 3: go congratulations. But if you're honest, you're like, thank God,
Speaker 3: I'm done with high school. Being done with high school
Speaker 3: will be the happiest place on Earth.
Speaker 1: Then you go to college.
Speaker 3: Once I get this degree, I'm gonna be in the
Speaker 3: happiest place on Earth.
Speaker 1: But once you leave college, guess where you get to
Speaker 1: go to work?
Speaker 3: And you're not gonna make enough money to pay for
Speaker 3: the college.
Speaker 1: The happiest place on earth.
Speaker 3: If he would just purpose to me, don't you want
Speaker 3: me to be happy?
Speaker 1: This is not gonna work. I need a ring in
Speaker 1: three weeks. Happiest place on Earth. And then we keep
Speaker 1: pushing it off.
Speaker 3: Well, once we have a kid, and once we move
Speaker 3: from this apartment into the house, and once I redesign
Speaker 3: the kitchen, and once I do this, and then finally,
Speaker 3: always pushing our happiness up ahead somewhere, robbing ourselves of
Speaker 3: what God wants to do.
Speaker 1: Right here.
Speaker 3: I promise you these two words will rob you of
Speaker 3: more joy in your life than any other. Two words
Speaker 3: you can put together, and those two words are what's next.
Speaker 1: What's next will cripple your life.
Speaker 3: What's next will shipwreck your faith. What's next will destroy
Speaker 3: your sense of contentment and fulfillment. We have to ask
Speaker 3: a better question if we want to get better answers.
Speaker 3: The better question is not what's next. The better question
Speaker 3: is what's here? What's here, what's in these kids, what's
Speaker 3: in this marriage, what's in this job, what's in this season,
Speaker 3: what's in this church? I think this is why Jesus
Speaker 3: chose the location from which he delivered his message very intentionally,
Speaker 3: because he didn't go to Mount Sinai to give a
Speaker 3: master class on joy.
Speaker 1: He didn't go to Mount Zion, with.
Speaker 3: All of the prestige that it carries in scripture, to
Speaker 3: deliver a master class on joy.
Speaker 1: No, he went to what we believe to be is
Speaker 1: a mountain.
Speaker 3: But when you write a book, you actually have to
Speaker 3: do research to make sure it's kind of true.
Speaker 1: And so I looked it up. It's not a mountain,
Speaker 1: it's a hill. You got Sinai seven.
Speaker 3: Thousand, five hundred feet in elevation, you got Zion two thousand,
Speaker 3: five hundred feet in elevation. You got this hill that
Speaker 3: you want to know the name of. Except I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you right now. The Bible doesn't record it. It's
Speaker 3: not even a footnote in the scripture.
Speaker 1: Four hundred feet in elevation. It's a hill. And Jesus
Speaker 1: doesn't stand.
Speaker 4: In declass some great teaching, blest all the poemspir for
Speaker 4: that's the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 1: No, he just sits down.
Speaker 3: On an ordinary day, in an ordinary place, and he
Speaker 3: uses the topography to illustrate the theology of joy. Because
Speaker 3: the name of that hill is Aramis, and Aramis means desolate.
Speaker 1: And isolated. And so Jesus chooses.
Speaker 3: A desolate, isolated place to teach us about joy. If
Speaker 3: I'm running this show, we're pulling up somewhere, sweet, we
Speaker 3: going to Disney World.
Speaker 1: But Jesus is in this space that looks like nothing
Speaker 1: and communicates the heart of joy.
Speaker 3: Why because a lot of life is not lived on Sinai.
Speaker 1: Or Zion.
Speaker 3: Most of life has lived in Aramis. You will spend
Speaker 3: more time in traffic than on vacation. You will spend
Speaker 3: more time getting crushed by life than crushing it.
Speaker 1: And Jesus wanted to show us joy works here, joy
Speaker 1: lives here.
Speaker 3: There was nothing to be seen. Those people seated on
Speaker 3: that hillside. All they could see was Jesus. And maybe
Speaker 3: the reason why we cannot experience joy in our lives
Speaker 3: is because we're constantly looking around Jesus, not Adam. An
Speaker 3: author and pastor named David Murray gave us.
Speaker 1: Seven categories for happiness.
Speaker 3: Social happiness, vocational happiness, intellectual happiness, physical happiness like through
Speaker 3: exercise and things like that, humor happiness, creation happiness for
Speaker 3: all of you outdoors people, it's so weird to be
Speaker 3: but why be outside when there's a perfectly air conditioned
Speaker 3: room somewhere close running water and everything. And the last
Speaker 3: one is spiritual happiness. Now, because God is so good
Speaker 3: in his common grace, he allows all people to experience
Speaker 3: six of those seven categories. You can be outside of
Speaker 3: relationship with Jesus and still experience a partial fulfillment that
Speaker 3: friendship brings, that work brings, that things bring into your life.
Speaker 3: But what we do so we try to take all
Speaker 3: six of those categories and use them to fill the
Speaker 3: void that is created when we don't have the seventh
Speaker 3: spiritual happiness. Spiritual happiness is a seal around the human soul.
Speaker 3: If you don't have spiritual happiness, you can swallow the
Speaker 3: world whole and still be empty because your soul is leaking.
Speaker 3: But if you allow the presence of God, the ways
Speaker 3: of God, the will of God to seal your heart,
Speaker 3: it amplifies the joy and happiness you receive from every
Speaker 3: other category. So I get more joy out of my
Speaker 3: friendships because I'm not there to always air my problems
Speaker 3: to them. I'm there to take the way of Jesus
Speaker 3: and listen more than I speak.
Speaker 1: What a thought.
Speaker 3: When I have the spiritual seal of happiness around my soul,
Speaker 3: I go to work, and although the environment is toxic,
Speaker 3: it doesn't influence me. I influence it because even though
Speaker 3: my boss is hard to work with, I'm not working
Speaker 3: for him.
Speaker 1: I'm working unto the Lord, and so.
Speaker 3: Every menial task that I perform is done in service
Speaker 3: of the King, not in an effort to be promoted.
Speaker 1: And when I take my eyes.
Speaker 3: Off of everyone having to have their eyes on me,
Speaker 3: and I put my eyes on other people, I am
Speaker 3: greatly fulfilled than other areas of my life. The joy
Speaker 3: is amplified when Jesus is the center and the seal.
Speaker 3: This is what Jesus was communicating through these words. Now,
Speaker 3: obviously I could literally sit here and talk to you
Speaker 3: guys for hours about this. That's why I had to
Speaker 3: write about it, because we cannot even withhold the beatitudes
Speaker 3: have become like wallpaper in Christian gatherings. We know them,
Speaker 3: but we don't even understand them.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy, guys?
Speaker 3: This is the first thing Jesus talked about. How important
Speaker 3: must it be? And yeah, he gets to your holiness
Speaker 3: and he gets to the ways of your life, but
Speaker 3: not before he introduces us to these ideas. But this
Speaker 3: is this.
Speaker 1: It hasn't let me go yet, y'all.
Speaker 3: When Jesus is speaking through these Blessed are the poor
Speaker 3: and spirit, Blessed are those who mourn. He's not just
Speaker 3: giving us good ideas. He's not just showing us ideals
Speaker 3: to live up to. He's revealing himself. He was the
Speaker 3: one who became poor in spirit. He had the treasures
Speaker 3: of glory in his hands, and he traded it in
Speaker 3: for the dust of the earth. Although he was equal
Speaker 3: with God, he didn't see his equality with God as
Speaker 3: something to be grasped. But he emptied himself, came to
Speaker 3: the lowest form a human, a servant, obedient to death,
Speaker 3: even death on the cross.
Speaker 1: He knows what it's like to be virtually bankrupt.
Speaker 3: He knows what it's like to ask God why. Hanging
Speaker 3: on the cross was the first time he felt a
Speaker 3: total depravity, our depravity, our sin, and he asked God,
Speaker 3: why have you forsaken me? If he asked God, why
Speaker 3: stop beating yourself up? Because you have wow, you get
Speaker 3: to ask God questions. He was the one who mourned,
Speaker 3: can you hold the implications that God cried? Why do
Speaker 3: you have to show up so strong all the time,
Speaker 3: never a crack in the armor, got all these churchy
Speaker 3: phrases that don't mean nothing.
Speaker 1: How you doing.
Speaker 3: Blessed in highly favored, breaking on the inside, How you
Speaker 3: doing well? He's been better than me that I've been
Speaker 3: to myself, Praise God.
Speaker 1: If I was any better, I'd be dead.
Speaker 3: What No, My boy's favorite Bible verse to quote right now?
Speaker 3: They feel so studious, Dad, I memorized part of the Bible, really,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know you had a Bible. What did
Speaker 3: you memorize?
Speaker 1: Jesus wept?
Speaker 3: But we cannot really understand the weight of the implications
Speaker 3: that those two words hold.
Speaker 1: If Jesus cried, if Jesus felt, you have.
Speaker 3: Permission to feel, I love something that your pastor said.
Speaker 3: The presence of God is not the place that you
Speaker 3: go to bypass your emotions. The presence of God is
Speaker 3: the place that you go to process them. You have
Speaker 3: permission to feel however you feel, and then allow the
Speaker 3: Gospel into those feelings to transform them. God does not
Speaker 3: want you burying your feelings. The problem with buried feelings
Speaker 3: is we bury them alive, and then at some point,
Speaker 3: unprocessed pain finds its way into our lives and symptoms
Speaker 3: we feel like we have no control over because we
Speaker 3: never gave ourselves permission to come into a room and feel.
Speaker 3: Do you know that's why you cry in God's presence?
Speaker 3: That it is a physical response to a spiritual transformation
Speaker 3: taking place when you're in worship and listening to music
Speaker 3: the disintegrated part of your brain when you cry, your
Speaker 3: brain is reintegrated. So there is a literal, biological, neurological
Speaker 3: aspect to worship. That's why we say you're not wasting
Speaker 3: time when you're praising God. You're literally allowing him to
Speaker 3: heal your heart, your mind, your will.
Speaker 1: Your emotions.
Speaker 3: And if you don't allow God to heal you there,
Speaker 3: you won't ever be happy. He was the one crown
Speaker 3: with meekness. He was the one, Oh my Goodness, who
Speaker 3: hungered and thirsted after righteousness, so much so that when
Speaker 3: they tried to quench his thirst on the cross, he
Speaker 3: refused to drink because the only thing that would satisfy
Speaker 3: him was your righteousness being fulfilled.
Speaker 1: In order to reintroduce you to.
Speaker 3: Joy, I have to allow Joy to reintroduce himself.
Speaker 1: Because joy is not a thing. It's not a feeling,
Speaker 1: it's not an emotion, it's a person. You spell joy
Speaker 1: jay E s U s.
Speaker 3: And I know it's the simplest thing in the world.
Speaker 3: But the hardest thing for us to wrestle down in
Speaker 3: our spirit is that there's only one doorway into the
Speaker 3: joy of the Lord, and it's Jesus himself. And I
Speaker 3: know we like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all.
Speaker 1: Right, now tell me something that actually helps me.
Speaker 3: We believe that, but we also expect Joy to walk
Speaker 3: through the door.
Speaker 1: With our kids.
Speaker 3: If you did a little bit better in school, I
Speaker 3: would feel a little less like a failure. My Joy
Speaker 3: is connected to your achievement, so go achieve. We expect
Speaker 3: joy to walk through the door with our spouse, and
Speaker 3: unless her name is Joy, that's not happening. Miss.
Speaker 1: We see our spouse as an access point to joy empty.
Speaker 3: The most beautiful thing about this scripture is in the
Speaker 3: first line, Jesus.
Speaker 1: Went and sat down on a hillside.
Speaker 3: It tells me, you canna have joy and a posture
Speaker 3: of rest. We think we gotta work for joy, work
Speaker 3: for I gotta work for joy, and yeah, you have
Speaker 3: to participate. But he's seated, and then it says, the
Speaker 3: crowd gathers.
Speaker 1: Him. If we're honest, we need to evaluate our lives.
Speaker 3: What are we really gathering around? I know for me,
Speaker 3: I love to gather around work. Work doesn't feel like
Speaker 3: work to me. I love to work. It's a problem.
Speaker 3: I'm in counseling talking to my therapist. Like, brother, you
Speaker 3: gotta help me. He said, what your prayer life look like?
Speaker 3: I described it to him. He said, that sounds like
Speaker 3: work too, He said, have you just thought about delighting
Speaker 3: in the Lord? I said, that sounds great. How do
Speaker 3: you do that? He said, well, what if you just
Speaker 3: showed up and just sat down? With the Lord. I said,
Speaker 3: that's perfect. When I was writing my book, I rented
Speaker 3: an airbnb. It's twenty five minutes from my house. I'll
Speaker 3: just go be with the Lord, delight in the Lord
Speaker 3: three to four hours.
Speaker 1: Once a week. I'll just go up and do that.
Speaker 3: And he just smirked at me, like, or you could
Speaker 3: close the door to the room you're sitting and shut
Speaker 3: off your phone, put your Bible aside because you cannot
Speaker 3: help but writing some message down, and just close your
Speaker 3: eyes and be with God for ten minutes. I just laughed.
Speaker 3: I went into the living room. I said, Lorna, babe,
Speaker 3: why am I like this? Why when someone says you
Speaker 3: need to spend time with God do I immediately think zion, Airbnb,
Speaker 3: three four hours.
Speaker 1: God's an aramis God's in the simple.
Speaker 3: And when I sat there and I just thought about God,
Speaker 3: something filled.
Speaker 1: My soul, an energy of vitality.
Speaker 3: And when I went back and talked to my counselor again,
Speaker 3: he said, how did it go? I said, it was amazing,
Speaker 3: it was so easy. He said, how did you see
Speaker 3: God in that moment? I was like, well, I've got
Speaker 3: two answers. I've got what I experienced and then how
Speaker 3: I relabeled what I experienced. What I experienced was like
Speaker 3: when I'm sitting across the table from one of my boys,
Speaker 3: just looking into their eyes. Creepy Dad, I know, I
Speaker 3: just love you. I just love you. I love everything
Speaker 3: about you. I love those freckles on your face. I
Speaker 3: love those curls on your head. I love the dreams
Speaker 3: I see in your eyes. I love that you're my son.
Speaker 1: I said. I felt like God was looking at me
Speaker 1: like that. And then when I went and.
Speaker 3: I thought about it again, I was like, well, there's
Speaker 3: another version of this story in my mind too. It
Speaker 3: was like God had his sleep rolled up and he
Speaker 3: was just pacing back and forth with his hand tucked
Speaker 3: under his chin in a furrow brow, like he was
Speaker 3: solving a problem. And when he recognized I was there,
Speaker 3: he kind of sighed eyed, glanced at me, and said,
Speaker 3: glad you're finally here, Because.
Speaker 1: All that I've known is a God who wanted to
Speaker 1: use me to accomplish something.
Speaker 3: I thought that was the greatest touch of God.
Speaker 1: Was to be used by him.
Speaker 3: I've realized it's a far greater treasure.
Speaker 1: To be loved by him.
Speaker 3: And when you receive the love of God, he pours
Speaker 3: his joy into your heart, and it's produced from His
Speaker 3: spirit in you. When you filled with the spirit, you
Speaker 3: get the features of the spirit. The evidence of God
Speaker 3: and a person is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Speaker 3: meekness of control. But I wonder if what you've been
Speaker 3: searching the world for has been inside of the universe
Speaker 3: in you all along, but you got to come through
Speaker 3: the doorway of Jesus to get to it. If you
Speaker 3: would stand today, thank you for letting me share my
Speaker 3: heart today. I was disappointed Pastor Stephen wasn't here too,
Speaker 3: So we're all in that boat together.
Speaker 1: He'll be back kits his church.
Speaker 3: But I want to invite you today to experience the
Speaker 3: joy of the Lord. Hebrews says of the Son of God,
Speaker 3: that God poured the oil of joy on him so
Speaker 3: that he would have more joy than anyone else. This
Speaker 3: is available to you, but it comes through a relationship
Speaker 3: with Jesus. Some of you today need to take the
Speaker 3: first step toward allowing Joy to reintroduce himself by putting
Speaker 3: your faith.
Speaker 1: In Jesus once and for all.
Speaker 3: Would you pray with me, Lord, I pray that you
Speaker 3: would open our hearts to receive your joy, the joy
Speaker 3: of salvation.
Speaker 1: Lord.
Speaker 3: We turn our eyes away from everything else in this world,
Speaker 3: and for just a moment, we want to capture Heaven's gaze.
Speaker 1: Lord.
Speaker 3: There are so many deep wounds, traumas, difficulties, struggles that
Speaker 3: we have felt are in opposition to us experiencing your joy.
Speaker 3: But you actually use the mechanism of mourning to deliver
Speaker 3: us from the grip of grief. That happiness is not
Speaker 3: waiting on the other side of something for us, It's
Speaker 3: happening inside.
Speaker 1: I pray that we would.
Speaker 3: Allow you in today, come into our lives, come into
Speaker 3: our hearts, come into our dreams. If you're in this
Speaker 3: room today and you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: On the count of three, I want you to raise
Speaker 3: your hand. I'm gonna lead you in a prayer that
Speaker 3: will change the trajectory of not only your life, but eternity.
Speaker 3: If God's pulling on your heart right now to follow him.
Speaker 1: On the count of.
Speaker 3: Three, I want you to raise your hand. One, two, three,
Speaker 3: don't hesitate. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Now listen, We're gonna pray
Speaker 3: a prayer. You have to pray this prayer for yourself,
Speaker 3: but you don't pray this prayer by yourself. This whole
Speaker 3: church family's gonna pray with you today.
Speaker 1: Would you just say this with me? Jesus, come into
Speaker 1: my life, make me new.
Speaker 3: I realize I'm lost without you. Thank you that you
Speaker 3: have more grace than I have sin. I believe you
Speaker 3: are the Son of God, the resurrected King, and you're
Speaker 3: resurrecting me in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 3: Can you put your hands together for what God is
Speaker 3: doing in this church, Elevation.
Speaker 1: I love you so much. God bless you. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
Speaker 2: this ministry.
Speaker 1: Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
Speaker 2: You can click the link in the description to give
Speaker 2: now or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more
Speaker 2: information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
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Speaker 2: Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God bless you.