Steven Furtick - What's Controlling Your Joy (Backseat DJs) (01/16/2019)
Pastor Steven shares a funny story about his kids secretly controlling the car stereo from the backseat—like sneaky "backseat DJs"—to show how hidden things in life steal our joy without us noticing. Drawing from James 1:2-4, Hebrews 12:2, Psalm 16, and John 15, he explains that genuine, lasting joy isn't found in perfect circumstances, fleeting feelings, or comparisons, but comes from intentionally choosing priorities centered on God's presence and purpose. You can't force joy directly; your priorities determine your joy, and when they're set on Him, joy becomes deep, enduring, and complete.
The Backseat DJ Story – Kids Taking Over the Stereo
Look, I want to preach about joy today, and I want to get there from a story and then share several Scriptures with you. Can I tell you a story? I just got a new car last year. I drove a Nissan Maxima for ten years before I bought this new car. I loved my Nissan Maxima. My car before this Nissan Maxima was a Nissan Maxima. That's how much I liked my Nissan Maxima. I maximized the Maxima, and it was very good to me.
The only thing I ever remember happening other than the time it cut off in an intersection was that one day I was driving down the road a few years ago, and my stereo system started doing strange things. It started skipping around to different tracks without me telling it to, and the volume kept increasing and decreasing, so then I would put it back on the song I wanted to listen to, and I would turn down the volume or turn up the volume. Depending on it, it would go both ways without me telling it to, without me turning the knob. It happened for about ten, fifteen minutes straight one day that I was driving, and it seemed like my speakers in my car had a mind of their own, so I thought maybe my Maxima got a demon.
Then I looked in the backseat and realized it wasn't a demon. It was my daughter. She had the center console down, and I never rode back there, so I didn't realize that all the years that I've had this car, you can control the volume and skip tracks from back there. She was laughing, and Graham was back there, and he was laughing. They were controlling something from the back that I was trying to deal with in the front, and they thought it was so funny.
I told them, stop that. It's annoying, when I figured out what they were doing. Two or three minutes later, there goes the volume up and down again. There goes track two, track three, track four. Again, it's on shuffle. I turned around and said, I'm telling you all, stop. I don't like it. It was maybe cute the first time for you, but it's really driving me crazy up here. Stop.
The Final Pull-Over – Driver Is the DJ
A few minutes go by, and it starts happening again. I pulled the car over the third time. I pulled the car over the third time on Providence Road. I said, let me explain something to you. I said, y'all are passengers in this Maxima. I'm the driver. That means I'm the DJ. I get to choose what comes on this stereo and how loud it is, because the driver gets to be the DJ.
I want to preach to you for about 37 minutes today about backseat DJs, because I suspect that there are some things in your life that are being controlled from the backseat, that are being controlled at a level that you're not realizing that they're being controlled. I believe that today God is going to use me. Trust me, I've studied. Joy has become more important to me every year that I've been alive.
I feel like in my 20s I just cared about accomplishing things. In my 30s I've been figuring out, what's the point if you don't enjoy it? What's the point in doing something awesome if you are not in a position to appreciate the accomplishment because you constantly need more? I spent my 20s and maybe the beginning of my 30s just trying to get more, more, more. Sometimes that meant more popularity. Sometimes that meant more impact. Sometimes that meant more influence. Sometimes that meant more money, more resources, more friends, more phone numbers, more connections.
But lately I've been asking the Lord for more joy, and it sent me on a scriptural trajectory. I want to bring you into it today. Would it be all right if we talked for a little while today about what's controlling your joy? Amen. I'm excited. Do you feel my enthusiasm?
James 1 – Considering Trials Pure Joy
James, chapter 1, verses 2 through 4. We'll start here. I believe there are some things that are destroying your joy that you were unaware of, and James is going to teach us how to develop joy. It's very different than discovering joy. Discovering joy means it's waiting somewhere, and you have to find it. It's waiting in your next career move. It's waiting in your next relationship. It's waiting somewhere you're not right now.
James is going to show us something that may be familiar to a few of you, but it is very strange if you consider what he's actually saying. I want to just read those three verses to you. He says, James, chapter 1, verse 2, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds. That's not where I was looking for joy, by the way. It's not what I was praying for, hoping for, asking for, believing for. Anyway, this is what the Bible says.
He said, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
I'm glad he specified, because the first thing I want to mention to you today… All of these points kind of follow the theme of DJ. The first one is the distinction of joy, knowing what it really is, understanding the nature of it. James helps us to do that first by helping us to understand that there are trials of many kinds. That's what verse 2 said.
The old King James that Pastor Mickey preached from said, Diverse trials. I have learned that we're not all going through the same thing, but we are all going through something. How many know that there are as many different kinds of trials as there are different drinks at Starbucks, as there are different colors of paint at Home Depot?
Trials Come in All Shapes – Plenty, Poverty, Single, Married
I found out that there are trials that are associated with plenty. There are trials that are associated with poverty. I always understood the first one, because everybody understands that being broke is a battle, but management of resources can, in its own way, test a part of your character. If you're not prepared to have it tested, it can create a lot more problems than financial poverty.
In fact, financial riches can create relational poverty if there is not the emotional maturity to help us to steward with understanding what we've been given. I'm going to preach today. If y'all want to come along with me. It's true. There are single people trials. There are married people trials. There are trials that are associated with loneliness, and there are trials that are associated with companionship. There are many kinds of trials. That's what James is saying.
He's making a distinction that there are different kinds of trials. Some of us are like, well, can I try a different kind of trial? Can I trade trials? You're talking about rich people trials? I'd like to try those for a little while. You're talking about married people trials? I think I'd be good at those trials. I think I'd be better prepared for those trials.
But we never again, after the year we had last year, get to associate joy with status or success. We have now seen that no matter how great your name is in the eyes of people, you can still want to take your very own life, because joy is not a product of what people say about you. Joy is not a product of how people hold you in esteem or in disregard. There are different kinds of trials.
Temptation vs Trial – Using the Right Tool
Added to that, most of us don't understand the distinction between a temptation and a trial. The language that James uses in this biblical writing, the common Greek of his day, allows for both. When he says trials of many kinds, he could just as easily be referring to economic hardship or persecution that many of this diaspora of tribes scattered abroad who were believers in Jesus were experiencing, or he could be talking about temptation.
It is important to know the distinction between the kind of trials you will experience in your life. Otherwise, you might spend years blaming the Devil for your bad decisions. There are different kinds of trials. Some of our trials are the result of evil in the world, and that results in all kinds of different warfare that we could study for weeks about. Some of our trials are the results of things we did contrary to our inner wisdom.
There are many different kinds of trials. If you don't know the difference between a temptation and a trial, you will try to use the wrong tool on the trial. When tempted, the Bible teaches resistance. When you are tempted to step outside of the God-given means by which you have been empowered to meet your God-given desires, the strategy, the tool, the technique is resistance.
When you face a trial, however, not a temptation but a trial, often the key is not resistance but acceptance. This was important for me to see the distinction because, a lot of times, I'm accepting what I should resist and resisting what I should accept. It's taking me time to learn the difference. It's taking me prayer to learn the difference. It's taking me others' community to learn the difference. I'm having to get into the Word of God to know the difference so I can approach my trials with wisdom.
Asking God for Wisdom to Distinguish Trials
In fact, that's what James 1:5 says, and it's connected to this passage even though I never thought it was. It says, If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
If you want to flip the flow this year, just do James 1:5. Instead of asking everybody around you what you should do, start with the source. Start with the solution. We're talking about your problems with people who are powerless to fix them. It's making you feel worse. It's making them feel worse, and everybody is frustrated.
I need the wisdom to make the distinction, to know the trial I'm in. God, is this one you want me to fight, or do you want me to do what the parable said to do one time with the weeds that were growing up alongside the tares and leave it alone and let you deal with it? There's a distinction. There are different kinds of trials.
Some of the stuff I'm dealing with as a parent right now is just called puberty. You can't cast it out. You can't anoint it. You can't instruct it. It's a different kind of trial. It's just life. Some of the stuff I'm dealing with right now is a temptation. Some of it is actually, I believe, from the pit of hell. Not that the devil is personally assigned to me, but just some stuff is evil, against my purpose.
Don't give yourself too much credit, because a lot of us like to think the devil had nothing better to do than give us a flat tire, and I think the devil is much busier than that. I think a lot of it comes down to distinguishing the type of trial I'm in, which helps me to understand the distinctions between joy and pleasure.
Joy vs Pleasure – Quality Over Quantity
You know those little church signs that they do? I think we should get one, by the way, at Elevation. The church signs where they change the letters and they put up little quotes. Yeah, I like those. I think we should get one. How many vote we get at church sign? Let's have our first ever church vote at Elevation. Church vote. We should get a church sign.
We can put stuff up there like this. I saw this one day. It said, No Jesus, No Joy. But it was spelled K-N-O-W, Jesus. The first one was, No Jesus. You don't have Jesus. You don't have joy. K-N-O-W, Jesus. K-N-O-W, joy. I thought, It's cute, but it's not true. No Jesus, No Joy. There are a lot of things you can enjoy without Jesus. Krispy Kreme tastes good whether you're saved or not. My taste buds didn't get saved. It's fun to talk bad about people whether you're saved or not.
The only difference is, and this is important, is that the quality of the joy becomes more important than the quantity of the joy. You also hear preachers say stuff like this. God doesn't care if you're happy. He just wants to make you holy. I can't believe how many people will say amen to some business like that that you would never feel about your own kid.
How many parents do we have in the house? How many of you don't care if your kid is ever happy in life at all? I'm going to call Child Protective Services on y'all. He ain't no good, good father. No, he's a good father, good gift, so I never got that. I never really understood the distinction between joy and happiness.
There's not a difference in the biblical language. It's not different. It's like in English we have pharrell happy, which is like dancing happy, and then in Hebrew they had happy. It's the same word as blessed. It's the same word as joy. When James says count it joy, he means consider yourself supremely happy.
We need to make the distinction, I guess, between generic joy and Jesus' joy. He said, verse 2, consider it pure joy. The way my mind works, if there's such a thing as pure joy, there must be another kind of joy. I kind of cheated that a little bit. It's more a grammar issue, because the literal translation is count it all joy, so he doesn't say pure joy.
I have a verse for this, though. Let me do it from Hebrews chapter 12. I've always loved this picture of joy, because it helps me to make a distinction between joy and pleasure. Pleasure can be associated with joy, but joy is not dependent on pleasure. This is the second thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about the direction of joy.
Jesus' Example – Joy Set Before Him on the Cross
We're talking about backseat DJs. We're talking about how sometimes we find our joy controlled by circumstances and situations, but Jesus gives us a picture that stands contrary to the cultural expectation of joy. I promise I'll read the Scripture in a minute, but I just want to tell you so much. I don't know where to start or where to stop. It's all in me today.
There seems to be right now, more than there was when my grandparents were 30 and 40, there seems to be a pressure for us to always feel pleasure. It's no longer just a desire we have that we want to feel good. It's almost like the way social media has constructed our viewing experiences of other people's lives through the filters of their most desirable moments. There is something wrong with me if I am not constantly happy all the time. That's a problem with me, because I am not genetically predisposed to be happy. I'm just not.
I found that out about myself early in life. I am not like one of you who just finds reasons to smell roses, who just finds reasons to be happy. Some of y'all appreciate the rain, appreciate the sunshine. The rain makes you feel relaxed. The sunshine makes you feel active. You can find the joy in everything. I am not of your species, and frankly, you make me sick, but joy is something different.
Because the pressure to feel pleasure is part of the reason why we feel so miserable. Now we are living in the midst of a generation that thinks joy is associated with a feeling in your flesh, and it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It's important that I say it can bring a feeling, but it doesn't start with the feeling. This is where we flip the flow. Can we flip the flow? If anybody flipped the flow, it was Jesus.
Here he is up on a cross. Here he is mocked and his reputation is beyond repair. Here he is being spat on and condescended to by the ones he created. The writer of Hebrews, whoever he was, says we need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter or the author and finisher of our faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
Now, this is where my message really happens. What have you set before you? That is what your joy is connected to, what you have set before you. I'll break that down the best that I can. Joy is a point of view. Joy is a way of looking at things. This helps me. I don't know about you, but it sets me free from feeling the need to feel a certain way.
We have so many people quitting their jobs because they're unhappy and not really understanding that sometimes joy is not the absence of sadness or the presence of the spectacular. All we need to look at is that one verse where it says that Jesus, for the joy that was set before him.
I want to use that as a picture for a moment. He set joy before him. In order to endure the cross, that's the next part, enduring the cross, scorning his shame, he didn't find joy in the event. He found joy in the guaranteed outcome of the event. He did not find joy in the feeling of hanging on the cross. It wasn't like because he was the Son of God that the nails transcended the laws of pain and the material laws of the universe. It was just as painful, but because of purpose.
You understand it's very different to go through pain with purpose than pain without purpose. It's the difference between Graham jumping on my back, he's only 90 pounds, and me not knowing that he's going to jump on my back, and me feeling like every disc just slipped like I'm 73 years old in my lower back, and the difference between me putting 90 pounds on a bar to squat it. If I do it on purpose, it's a warm-up weight. If I don't expect it, it might take me down to the ground. Same weight. But one I was ready for.
When Jesus hung on the cross, he wasn't surprised by the shame. He wasn't surprised by the suffering. He wasn't surprised by the pain. He wasn't surprised by the jeering. He wasn't surprised by their saliva. He wasn't surprised by the blood. Joy is a focus before it's a feeling.
If you came to church just to hear that, I promise you've got your gas money's worth. Joy is a focus before it's a feeling. And so while we're chasing a feeling called joy, God has given us the ability to choose not our feelings. You ever tried to choose joy? I saw it on Pinterest. I tried it. It sucked. It didn't work. Then I felt guilty because I couldn't find joy, and it made me feel less joy, so now I'm in a joyless pit of joylessness. It's cyclical joylessness and shame.
Joy as a Choice of Focus – Not Feelings
It's the difference between choice and consequence. Joy is a choice. Really? Because some of the trials people go through are actual mental illness, and it's kind of hard for them to just feel happy because they've got a good parking space. No matter how much you tell them to feel happy, be happy, you know? Be happy. Feel happy. Count your blessings.
James doesn't say count your blessings. This isn't a nursery rhyme. It's a Bible Scripture. He said, Count it all joy. He said, Learn how to flip… You might not know this statement, but there's a statement in financial terms. It's an income statement. It has your income on one side and your expenses on another.
James says, If you can learn to put some of the stuff in the income column that you thought was an expense, some of the stuff in the blessing column that you thought was a burden… If you can flip the flow, you actually have more joy than you're aware of, but you're not going to get it by praying for a feeling. You're going to get it by making choices.
Joy is not a choice. In fact, the worst way I can get more joy is to focus on getting more joy. The best way to stop being happy is to ask yourself the question, Am I happy? See, I don't remember my grandparents ever talking about this. If they did, I don't remember it. I never remember my grandmother and my grandfather talking about, Are we really happy? They didn't think like that.
There wasn't feeds and scrolling. There wasn't all this other stuff to make them feel unhappy at a moment's notice. There wasn't an infinite supply of unhappiness in their pocket in the form of a device. They didn't have that, so they focused on something else. What was it? What is it that brings joy if I focus on it? I know what it's not. It's not looking around. How are they doing? What do they think? Where are they going on vacation? Where is she taking? Where is she going? What is she wearing? When did she get us on? What do they think about me? That's not going to do it.
He said, For the joy set before him. So I can't be looking all around and expecting to have joy. I can't be judging my situation according to other people's calling and expect to have joy. I can't be judging my gift compared to other people's talent and expect to have joy. I know it's so cliché because we say it every week, but nothing destroys joy like comparison.
The life you've got, some of you, would be so enjoyable if only you didn't do this while you were living it. If only you didn't do this. I mean, it's hurting my neck just to do it to illustrate to you. Imagine what it's doing to your soul. You can't have joy that way. It is destroying your joy. You're praying for more joy, and yet you are destroying the joy God has given you, the joy of your salvation, the joy of your calling, the joy of your assignment.
God, give me more joy. Well, it's a decision not to have joy. That's the worst way to get joy. The decision of what I'm going to focus on. I can't get it like this, and I definitely can't get it like this, looking at what's behind me. I can't look back.
Remember when God called Moses at the burning bush and he said his name? He said, I am, not I was. Remember he said, I am, not I will be. There's something to that. There's something to that. It's echoed by David in Psalm 16. He says, in your presence is the fullness of joy. Presence. Everybody say that word. Presence.
The gift of joy is found in presence, but that doesn't mean in church. That's not what it means to say in God's presence is the fullness of joy, because God would never limit his presence to a building. It doesn't mean when you're doing everything right, then you're going to feel happy, because God is not going to reward you based on behavior. That's not the good news of the gospel. The gospel is for sinners. The gospel is for the weak. The gospel is for the lame. The gospel is for the broken. The gospel is for those who feel ashamed. That's not what it means.
In your presence is fullness of joy. That means joy can only really come to my life when I am focused on what God is doing in this moment. I cannot focus on what God is doing in this moment in my life if I'm consumed with what he's doing in somebody else's or if I'm still in regret and bitterness about what happened three years ago or three months ago or even three minutes ago.
A lot of our lack of joy is really not about possession. It's about position. What I mean is this. He set joy before him. It's not a question of God's presence. His presence is everywhere. It's not a question of God's presence. You don't have to ask him to be with you. He already is. It's not about God's presence. It's about yours. Are you present in this moment? Are you present in this trial? Are you present in this worship service?
Well, if you are, give him praise for a second. We need this lesson, friends, family, brothers, sisters, brethren, sistren, mothers, fathers, sisters, children. We can't go to a concert anymore without trying to capture it, and I can't enjoy it because I'm too busy trying to post it. Kids do something cute. Capture it. Well, you can, but you're also going to kill it. There is no quicker way to kill your kid's cuteness than trying to capture it. I swear demons come out when you start trying to capture stuff to post it.
God knows your heart, and he sends something to your iPhone. I don't know, and it shoots beams into your children, and they start… Can I show you a picture real quick? I don't like to be too indulgent in these sermons and show my family off, but this is just a quick picture of us on vacation before Christmas. Look at that. Here's another picture. I'll show you a couple just so you can see.
I'm going to tell you something you wouldn't see if I put those on Instagram. Go back to the first one again, please. That one looks happy, right? And go to the other one. Can you go to the other one? That one looks sad. Let me tell you something. That's not my sad face. That's my RBF. That's my resting Bible face. That's my really blessed face. That's my focus face. That's when I was getting the sermon Flip the Flow at TGI Fridays in the Miami International Airport in the D-Con course. I'm happy.
The other one put the other one out. I was so mad at Abby. That was the 17th time I tried to take a selfie of us, and I wanted to throw her in the ocean by the time it was over, not in a playful way. See, I'm just trying to get us in this series to start looking beneath the surface at stuff. To stop looking at the surface of stuff and to stop discerning.
I found out that you can miss joy because you're looking all around. You can miss joy because you're looking behind you, but here's the thing. You can also miss joy because you're trying to look too far ahead. It's an equal danger. Some of you, while I was preaching the part about looking around, you're like, no, I'm good, bro. I'm like 53. I don't do that anymore. When I was talking about looking back, you're like, yeah, I already dealt with my stuff back there. It's fine.
Looking Too Far Ahead – Crashing Into the Present
But what you do is you look so far forward, like I was doing the other day, driving that new car I told you about, and I can't get anywhere without a GPS. Would it embarrass you for me if I told you I was going to my mom's house in town and was following the GPS? That's how bad my sense of direction is. It's a true story. And I slammed into the back of another car because I was looking three turns ahead and not looking three feet ahead.
And it might be destroying your joy, not that you're comparing or not that you're regretting, but maybe you're just trying to get so far out there, you know, like, my retirement is down. You're 24. It'll catch back up. It's a lot of timing. You know, but for those of us who need to plan, he didn't say in your plans is fullness of joy. And you can't even really affect the future from anywhere but the present. And it's all wasted energy.
So, this is my year of presence. I'm trying to figure out what it means to find fullness of joy in God's presence. And in order to find fullness of joy in his presence, I have to bring my presence to my real life, not my presence to some imaginary scenario, but the real life that God has given me right now.
And you know what's great about it? Let's go to Psalm 16 for just a moment, and I promise I'll start closing this. Are you enjoying this teaching today? Is this blessing your life? Touch somebody and say, this is my happy face. Because I was focused. I was happy because I was focused. The other one, I was trying to show something to the world that wasn't real. I was thinking maybe I could get some likes on this, and so I wasn't focused on what was right in front of me.
But Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured. He didn't enjoy the cross. He endured the cross because of joy set before him.
The Core Sermon – Priorities Control Joy
And now I want to give you the whole sermon. Okay? Here's the sermon in a sentence. Hadn't you been preaching for 35 minutes? Yeah, but I hadn't said anything yet. Here's the sermon in a sentence. You cannot choose joy. You can only choose your priorities. Your priorities control your joy.
You can't choose joy any more than you think you can choose joy. It's like trying to choose the weather. What you can choose is your priority, and your priorities will ultimately control your joy.
Psalm 16. Put it on the screen for me. Verse 5, please. The Lord is my chosen portion. See the word chosen? It means I have decided to make God the most important thing in my life. I don't want to leave that too abstract, because what does that mean? Read the Bible first thing every morning? Maybe. But it means more than that. His will is what I want. His ways are higher than my ways.
So the Lord, Yahweh, the great I Am, the ever-present help in time of trouble, he is my chosen portion. I've looked at everything else that this world offers me to enjoy. And yes, I can enjoy things that aren't necessarily spiritual, but I do not need them to survive, and I will not attach my joy to a temporal pleasure anymore. Because I tried that. I tried that.
I cheered for the Clemson Tigers when they were 3-8. When they won the second national championship in the last few years, people were coming up to me saying, congratulations. I was like, for what? I enjoyed the game. I watched the game. I liked it. I enjoyed the 44-16 victory, but I didn't need college boys in spandex to give me a reason to live.
That is not my priority. I can't invest my joy in what people I don't know do with an oblong object made out of pigskin converted into leather with some stitches for four 15-minute increments. It's the wrong priority. I enjoyed it, but my joy is not in it.
Where Joy Comes From Determines When It Runs Out
Last week I told you something very powerful about your heart. I said, when you know where it comes from, you know how it comes out. When you know where it comes from, you know how it comes out. This is what I want to tell you this week. Where it comes from determines when it runs out. It's the source of your joy.
The way you can know that is, what are my priorities? The psalmist said, the Lord is my chosen portion. Here's something Jesus said I've been thinking about all week. I've been meditating on this. He said, Abide in me. My words abide in you. You bear much fruit. Sometimes you're going to get cut on, but you'll never be cut off.
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, there will be a constant flow of joy, like the vine and the branches. You're going to have what you need. The joy is going to flow from a place of your rest and trust in me, not in your own effort and not in just certain things that happen. If they happen, it's fine, but don't confuse the icing with the cake.
Abide in me. My words abide in you. Then he says something in John 15, 11. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. The Lord said a lot of us are settling for partial joy, partial joy. We equate joy with the absence of sadness. Joy is not the absence of sadness. If it was, Jesus couldn't have had it on the cross.
He said, I want my joy to be in you, but you've got to own it. To just say, well, Jesus is my joy, it doesn't really get to the heart of why we could know Jesus and still not know joy, because it's a decision. When I give the wrong things too much priority in my life, then those priorities control my joy.
If my priority is recognition, then recognition controls my joy. When people recognize me, I will feel happy about it, if my priority is recognition. If my priority is convenience, then when something is inconvenient, the inconvenience will steal my joy. But it really didn't steal my joy, did it? Because I let it drive.
Whatever is driving the car gets to DJ. The Lord told me in preparing this message that we've got some backseat DJs that have been controlling our joy, our feelings, our finances, our bank accounts, our status, our standing, our situations.
Today, God wants you to tell some of the things in your life that have been controlling your joy from the backseat. You are not my God, you are not my vine, you are not my source, and you don't hold my joy. Joy is something deeper than how I feel about it. Joy is something deeper than the way it feels right now.
I am setting joy before me. I'm resetting my priorities. When I do that, my joy flows not from what it is but from who God is to me. This is the duration of joy. When my joy is running out… Give me my last point. The duration of joy is because it's coming from the wrong place.
Where it comes from determines when it runs out. I wonder, where is your joy today? I had to study this hard because I struggle to enjoy my life. I really love my family. I really love my church. I love what I get to do. It's a blessing and a privilege, but I have to admit to you that sometimes I have been guilty of enduring something God has given me to enjoy.
Every time it happened, it was because of my priorities. Your priorities control your joy. You can try all you want to be happy, happy, happy, and the quick-hit stuff, the quick-fix stuff, it will get you through the next few hours. But where it comes from determines when it runs out.
There is a well that never runs dry. There is a joy. There is a deep, abiding sense of joy that is available to us that we have not been accessing. What we're praying for more of, God is waiting for us to order our lives around.
My joy is too important for me to leave it up to whether or not today goes well or whether or not they speak to me or whether or not it turns out well. It's too important. I can't afford… I'm getting older now. I'm not a 25-year-old anymore. I'm a distinguished 38-year-old full of wisdom, and I can't afford to just give my joy away just any time.
I can't afford to have these backseat DJs just changing the temperature of my life. I can't afford to just let my emotions control my joy.
Closing Prayer – Resetting Priorities for Lasting Joy
I want to pray for people today. Play something more interesting. That's boring. I want to pray for people today who have allowed your joy to be controlled by something other than the priority of God's presence in your life, and you want me to pray for you to experience a vital connection to God in the coming six days until we meet again. Please stand if you want me to pray for you about that.
I've been allowing my joy to be connected to things that can't sustain me. There's so much more I wanted to share with you, but I feel like I was able to present this word to you on a level that if you can just receive that much of it….
So flip it. Instead of going, Lord, I need more joy, like it's going to come raining down in the form of candy pellets…. Instead of praying, God, give me the wisdom to when things come in my life to count it joy, to consider it joy, because I know that the testing of my faith produces Patience. Teach me, God, to set joy before me like Jesus did, like the psalmist did.
He said, The Lord is ever before me. He is at my right hand. I will not be shaken. In your presence is the fullness of joy. Watch this. At your right hand pleasures forevermore. Not the kind that come and go. Not the kind that leave you feeling worse afterwards. Not the kind that leave you sick afterwards. Not the kind that make you feel bad about it, shameful about it afterwards. Perpetual pleasantness in the presence of God.
Father, I thank you for each person who you brought here today. Maybe they've been in that season of mourning. M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, mourning. Thank you that your word says that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes with the mourning. We bless you, because what that means to us today is that in everything that is happening in our life right now, there is an opportunity for joy.
I confess to you before these people, God, that I need this message more than anybody who heard it. I'm preaching this today, God, because sometimes in my life I have set things before me that had no place being my priority. Every time I did, I was disappointed. Every time I did, I got a hit, but it didn't fix anything.
So, this week, would you show us what's truly important? Would you help us to see our lives with the wisdom that only you provide? Help us to understand that joy does not come from better circumstances. Joy does not come from human acclaim. Joy comes from ordered priorities.
We want to seek first your kingdom. We want to know what matters to you, and we thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen.