True joy is found only in places this world does not think to look. For the person who follows Christ, there is a source of joy that never runs dry.
To Find Joy You Have to Need Joy
Friday, August 12, 2011
If there’s one thing we need, it’s joy. If there’s one thing we lack, it’s joy. If there’s one’s place to go it’s Jesus. For from Christ and His Spirit we can praise Him, and find faith in Him and the result? Joy.
Swell
Welcome to HT, I’m CM sharing the GS that’s all about Jesus and a program we’re calling “To Find Joy You Have To Need Joy”. What a week we’ve had. If you listen every day, we’ve talked about the plummeting markets of the world. We’ve talked about the riots in London that spread across England. Then there was the Hollywood-like story of the Dougherty gang … in their twenties … two brothers and a sister … on the run from Florida to Georgia, to Tennessee and finally Colorado. A hundred mile an hour chase, shooting at officers with an AK47, an armory of weapons in their trunk. And then the escaping gang came to a crashing halt, thanks to a quick-thinking, off-duty Colorado State Patrol officer. That’s the world, but it’s probably not you’re world. This program is meant for you, if you are in need of joy. If you don’t need joy, come back next week. If you do need joy … and I’m feeling I am in desperate need of joy, don’t leave. By God’s power, we both may find the joy we need in our time together. HAVEN Today and “To Find Joy You Have To Need Joy”. Isaiah 40, verses 1-3
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
SONG – Count It All Joy – Shannon Wexelberg – Better Than Life
From northern Colorado, worship leader Shannon Wexelberg and a collaborative album called Better Than Life on a Friday HAVEN Today called “To Find Joy You Have To Need Joy”. And remember if you don’t need joy, you don’t need to be listening today. I’m not being cute; I’m quite serious. So I’m go to assume, that like me, you need joy. As a ministry, sometimes it gets personal. One of our team members got a call not many days back from her daughter who isn’t a believer in Christ. She called her mom here at work to tell her she was pregnant and was going to have an abortion. Talk about joy being sucked right out of you. Earlier this week, a mom who is on our Facebook site, All About Jesus, found her 22-month old son, just after he shot himself with a nail gun in the heart. That little boy is in critical condition. Talk about joy being sucked out of you. And every day for the past two years, we’ve been getting prayer requests from listeners who just their job. If not the listener, then the husband or wife of the listener. Most people in America live paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment runs out quickly. Jobs are hard to come by, especially when you’re 40 and older. How are we going to eat? How are we going to keep paying the rent or the mortgage. Talk about joy being sucked out of you. Here at HAVEN Today, my pride was riding pretty high the first five months of the year. And, of course, when times are good in a ministry or in a church, all the leaders like to take a lot of credit for what God is doing. Well here at Haven, we lost money in June, we lost a lot of money in July, and we’re hurting in August and cash is running short. It’s not fun having the joy sucked right out of you, is it? I can’t get Isaiah 40 out of mind today. I didn’t sleep much last night, so I prayed for a friend, who is the morning show host of a station we’re on. He has a rare form of cancer for which there is no cure. Once a month he gets a short that delays what’s coming and yet as I prayed for joy my friend, he sent back Isaiah 40:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
Thanks Jeff, I needed that. Thank you Jesus, I needed my friend with cancer to share his joy with me. This morning I was reading the great Psalm 8 … a psalm of praise and joy. And I was reminded of how praise and faith and joy go together. Psalm 8 verse 2
2 Through the praise of children (and I think this means more than young children, it means all of us children of God in our prayers lifted to heaven). Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
I heard the late Hebrew scholar Derek Kidner put it this way: Praise is faith outpoured. Faith that has left behind its difficulties and reservations and is daring to thank the Lord for what we have not yet received. It’s faith outpoured and exuberant. Praise is also is love outpoured. You praise Him. You forget yourself and this is the praise that is so appropriate to the enemy and avenger. You’re daring to believe and confess and speak out your love for God. At the end of Philippians, Paul is still shouting out to us in Philippians 4:4-7:
“4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Faith is praise outpoured, thanking the Living God for already having the answer when our joy is sucked out of us. Sometimes it’s good to couch your praying in this form: Thank you lord that in this problem you have your will to work out and you have the answer that I can’t see. Sometimes rather than in the somber and agitated way we approach Him, you can praise Him as you lay the problem out before Him. Faith unhesitating. He has the answer already and He will work out His will.
This is a potent weapon of God that is a stronghold that He has founded against the enemy and the avenger. The weak things of the earth using the immaterial weapons of praise and of faith. And God always comes through because He loves us. Rejoice in the Lord always. I say it again, rejoice. Don’t be anxious in anything. The Lord is near. Now for those of us who are desperate and need joy, I have three points – since messages seem to always require three points
1. All you need is need
2. All you need is prayer
3. All you need comes from the Lord
First, all you need is need. Isn’t that a great line? I wish I could say I wrote it. But it came from one of the best books on prayer I’ve ever read. The book is simply called Prayer, by a Norwegian author named Hallesby. He was part of the resistance movement against the Nazis in World War II. His joy was sucked out of him more than once. Colleagues were being caught and executed. His country was held for ransom and so he joined the resistance movement. He became a Christian and after the war became a well-known teacher and leader in the student movement Intervarsity. Out of his desperation, he wrote the little book on prayer and he realized that to get a hearing before your heavenly Father, all you need is need. Isn’t he right? Psalm 4:1
Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul was a giant. He wrote more books than any other by divine inspiration. And yet we hear more than once how the joy was sucked right out of him. He was weak, he even had some sort of problem, described as a thorn in his side. Maybe it was his eyes. We don’t really know. But maybe we aren’t told so it can apply to all of us, no matter what we’re going through. He writes weakness:
2Corinthians 12.9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2Corinthians 12.10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
So first, all you need is need. Then second, all you need is prayer. If your joy is gone, if you are in trouble and are crying out for help, where is help to come? It comes through prayer. It’s all through the Psalms.
Psalm 54:2
Hear my prayer, O God; listen to the words of my mouth. Here it is again in
Psalm 61:1
Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. But then David makes it more clear in Psalm 17:6
6 I call on you, my God, for you will answer me; turn your ear to me and hear my prayer.
So all your need is need, first. All you need is prayer, second. Then third and finally, All you need is the Lord. You need His Holy Spirit at work in you and that comes through prayer and that will lead you to joy.
The Spirit leads us because we're completely incapable of leading ourselves. And when we have the joy sucked out of us – for whatever trouble has come our way, we know we can’t help ourselves. It’s a great wakeup call, a great call to pray, a great time to humble ourselves, to open our ears and not only listen, but hear the answer from the Lord.
Isaiah 42.16 "I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them." The English preacher Octavious Winslow put this verse into perspective. We're blind and we don't know the paths. We need the guidance of the Spirit because we can't discern a single step in front of us and even if we could we're incapable of taking that step. What can we see when it comes to truth, or God's mind or his will for us? Absolutely nothing. There's so much weakness and ignorance when even the wisest Christians rely on self-teaching and self-guidance. We absolutely must have wisdom, strength and grace that infinitely transcends our own. And we have it. The Lord says, "I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them." Romans 8: 14, "Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God."
First, all you need is need. Second, all you need is prayer. Third, all you need comes from the Lord.
SONG –
PRAYER
