by Rev. Gina Johnson
We are continuing in moving through the Advent season, and this is our week of joy. So first, I've been inspired by the beautiful friend, Carol. I'm gonna give you all a couple jokes in case we're not in a joyful mood.
So why did Comet not get to go out with Santa on Christmas Eve? Because he had to stay home and clean the sink.
Where does a snowman keep his money? In the snow bank.
Now that we’ve had a little laugh, I do have a more serious question for you all. What is bringing you joy this season? What is bringing you joy?
Today as we are talking about joy, I just want you all to think about that. You know, where does your joy come from? Because it is very nice to make our joy dependent on our external circumstances because it gets us out of doing the work of turning inward and really understanding who we are and how blessed we are through simply being in the relationship we're in with Christ Jesus.
So please pray with me. Our most gracious and loving God, as we come before you to hear your word, I pray that you would allow me to be a conduit of your message, that everyone would hear the message that your spirit has prepared for them, that we will enjoy your word, that we will savor your word, but most of all, that we will have gratitude for all that you reveal to us in this time set for you. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Our first scripture is going to come from the book of Luke in chapter two, verses eight through 11.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you.
He is the Messiah, the Lord.
So when we hear that scripture passage, we know that this is speaking of the birth of Jesus, and what a great gift of joy the birth of Jesus is. The angels here, they're proclaiming that Jesus is going to bring a great joy that is not temporary.
See, I remember coming to a space in my life of having to say, joy is that internal, eternal, everlasting peace and presence of God in my life, and recognizing that I am always there with God. Happiness is going to be those things that I feel in the moment and don't really hold on to. So despite whatever is going on, I can gladly say, my children bring me joy.
Because even in the most challenging moments, there is still that just internal, eternal connection to them, where it's like, no, that is my little turd child, and I love that child. And how many times is there a thought that that's how God looks upon us, as we presume that we're straying off the path, when really we're just gaining more and more lessons along the perfect path that we're walking on.
What do you have? Do you have joy, or do you have temporary happiness? Because what the angels are proclaiming here is that the eternal joy of God's presence has been given unto you, and they had already received it, but now it's going to come into life even more so, because now a savior has been born.
And he wasn't born to save them in the way that we like to define that, as much as to show us the way to who we are, the way of self-remembrance, the way of fully knowing ourselves through knowing God. When you look at Jesus's teachings, you can hear him explaining to us how we cannot be separate from God.
When you truly know the joy of loving yourself the way God sees you, you will love God and you will love your neighbor, and really the three form a little, you can call it a circle or a triangle, but they form a trinity that cannot be broken, because as you continue to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, as you continue to love your neighbor as yourself, it's just a circle of continuous love, and if you can remember that and stand in the middle of that sphere of love, you will rest in that abiding place of eternal joy.
I wanna change directions for just a moment and look at a verse in James. It's James chapter one, verses two through four.
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. Let perseverance finish its work.
And so here is James, and I know you all have heard this passage time and time again, and I remember at one point in my life just thinking, “James, that might be easy for you, but that's not really easy for me,” and it hasn't necessarily gotten easy as much as I understand the message behind it. You see, every challenge that comes into our life is an opportunity. These trials, these perceived sufferings, we have an opportunity to receive a lesson.
We have an opportunity to become further refined. I was looking at the fourth man in the fire. You all remember that story, the three are in the furnace and God is with them.
What a trial, what a suffering, but they had the presence of God in that furnace with them, then they came out and the king was like, what? First of all, weren’t there only three? And second of all, not even a hair on their heads is singed because God was with them. So we may experience trials and sufferings that affect us physically, mentally, spiritually, financially, in our relationships, so on and so forth, and we can say, well, you know, it gave me a back pain, or it caused me to end up feeling very unhealthy in my stomach or my head or whatever. You know, I see this trial, look at my bank account, or I see this trial, I lost my job.
Well, that is true, the trial is there, and the trial is very real in that moment. But if we can remember that in that fire, in that furnace, the fourth man is with us, and if we're really looking at it in the fullness, the fourth man is the Christ in us, so the fourth man is us. So, no matter what is being thrown at us, we can turn inward and connect to God and recognize that there is a lesson here for us to take from this.
James is saying that when you continue to persevere through these trials, when you continue to keep the faith and keep moving forward, you're going to come into completion. You know, there's another scripture that says, he who has made a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Well, that's just like one of those things where, you know, when you lift up something to God in prayer, you don't lift it up and then sit there on your hands and say, “All right, God, any moment now, let's get this taken care of, I got you.”
No, you lift it up to God not in the way of asking, but in a way of giving gratitude. Consider it pure joy when you are in your trial. You know, even saying to God, “I don't like the way this feels, I don't even understand why this is happening, but that goofy pastor of mine said there's a lesson here. So God, hold me. God, speak to me. God, reveal the lesson that I may consider this time joy.”
I want to tell you a story about when Isabella was, I don't even know, so probably toddler age. The people that I knew at that time, and I was a single mom, were really big in running marathons. There was a lot of marathon running going on.
My sister-in-law, my brother's wife, Stacey, was doing a lot of running. And I remember just thinking, “Gosh, that's so awesome. I used to run when I was younger. So, like, I'm gonna try doing this again.”
I think you may remember when there was like that couch-to-5K plan out there. Maybe some of you don't, but it was this method of how you end up training yourself to run a 5K. And I didn't have that at that time. I came across that later in life. But at that time, I just thought I would piece together this regimen of how I'm gonna get to be able to run a marathon. And so the day started. And, at first I was like, “Well, how much do I actually have to run?”
I lived in this area called Maplewood Bend. It was a little apartment complex. And I tried to do what I could when Isabella was at Head Start or doing other things. But it wasn't too long in all of my ambition and passion that I realized that sometimes when I run, most of the time when I run, I start to get itchy. Like my legs just get itchy. And I'm like, “Well, this isn't helping me whatsoever. This didn't happen when I was younger.”
But I was like, “Nope, I'm gonna stay the course. I'm gonna keep doing this.” Then next thing you know, I started getting shin splints. At least that's what everyone told me they were. And I was like, “Gosh, you know, I really wanted to do this. But now between these shin splints and on certain days, my legs just start getting so itchy. I don't know if I wanna do this anymore.”
And so I changed things. I kept moving towards it, but I let go of, the idea that I'm gonna go run that marathon. Instead I just said, “I'm gonna complete this training and I'm going to do something with it.”
What it led to was a 5K. I don't know if I'd call it running, but I jogged the majority of it. I had a few moments of fast walking, but I jogged the majority of it. And I have to say that when I completed it, regardless of what place I fell in, I felt so good because I persevered despite the itchy legs, despite the shin splints, despite just the fact that I would run down the street, get winded, and be like, “Really? Really?!” I was looking for an excuse. I'm like, “Isabella, are you ill? Because if you're ill, I shouldn't go out running. I should just sit here with you right now.” I was just trying to find something.
But what that taught me, it taught me patience. It taught me discipline. It taught me I needed to rely on something greater than myself just standing there. It taught me that I had to go inward, find that motivation, find the reason why I was doing this. I had to ask is that enough to move me forward?
When we're in a trial, I want you to look at that the same way and say, “Okay, why is this happening? And why am I responding to it this way? Because when I respond to it this way, I'm giving away my joy instead of holding on to my joy that will empower me even further.”
I've mentioned a few times how I don't have the best relationship with my grandfather. And I'll never forget the day that my brother was talking to me and I was in tears because I just don't know how to make him see I'm not living the way I used to live. I'm not the girl that he's locked into that “person-I-was” box. And my brother said, “Kiddo, I don't know why you keep giving away your joy.”
And it just stopped me. I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, “Kiddo, you don't have anything to prove to them. We see you, other people see you. So I'm just gonna tell you this. You know, you're such a believer in Jesus. You should go talk to him instead of talking to me. And maybe he can help you understand why you should stop giving away your joy.” And that was it.
We said our I love you’s and hung up that phone call. My brother has a different relationship with Jesus than me, but it made so much sense. How many times do we give away our joy? How many times do we give away our joy before we're even in a situation that would cause that? How many times are we preparing to do something, thinking about doing something, and we already get turned in knots because we think about all the things that could go wrong, or we think about the last time we engaged in that and what did go wrong. And so instead of even waiting, we start giving away our joy.
You know, it's so funny. Some of us spend more time thinking about things that never happen than we spend time just being present to what is happening, right? A Gina thing I say all the time, if you're too busy thinking about the past and the future, are you really present? And if you're not present, how can you see the joy? It's so important that when life is throwing challenges our way to think back to those times that we were preparing for the marathon or the 5K, or we were preparing to have a house full of 15 to 20 people or we were preparing for those exams or preparing to lead that bell choir.
It's good to think back to those times and the ways that things didn't go the way we planned. But look at in the end, it all worked out. That's one of those important things, just recognize that these are opportunities for growth. Obstacles are opportunities for growth. And if we can enter them with joy in our hearts, joy in our minds, joy in our spirits, we can come out on the other side that way.
Another thing to keep in mind in this, when we hear what the message is saying, the message that takes place in the Luke verse, just as much as in the James verse, is you're not going this alone. In the Luke verse, we see that this joy is the gift of Jesus. It's given to everyone, and it is eternal, so it is there forever. So, you are never alone. You always have the presence of the spirit with you, giving you joy, being joyful about you.
You just need to open your eyes and see it. And when we read that verse in James, we also recognize that if God is going to take this to completion, if us being able to persevere is going to make us whole and complete, lacking in nothing, again, we are never without God. So, we are never alone.
Another thing when it comes to being mindful of your joy and how to keep it, how to have that joy, is you need to release your fear and you need to lean into gratitude. One of my mentors is constantly saying that the greatest source of joy doesn't come from external things. It comes from looking in and recognizing, awakening to the truth that our identity is in God. Our identity is in Jesus. The name of the newborn king is Emmanuel, God with us.
And this is another one of those times I ask that question: If you really believe God is with you, how can you ever fear something coming against you in such a way that you won't overcome it? God with us is Emmanuel. When we release the fear, when we release the doubt, when we release our perceptions of lack, we can truly enjoy that divine joy that comes from knowing God with us.
You know the shepherds, they were out in the fields and when the angel showed up, they were scared. But what did they do? They overcame their fear to seek Jesus. Can you trade your fear for joy? Can you trade your doubt for motivation to seek Jesus and the message, the lesson, the way that he has provided for you? And it's not something that he's done exclusively just to demonstrate it. He's demonstrating it with inclusivity so we can all take advantage of it, so we can all be a part of that greater understanding.
Whenever we practice gratitude, it shifts our focus from those things that we lack, from those things that we're frustrated about, from those things that are pulling us away from the truth, which is that we are complete and whole and at one with God. We have to work on living joy in all circumstances.
There was a time not too long ago, actually, maybe it was long ago, who knows? I decided to try to make a bag of beans for the first time. Now, lentils, split peas, that's not a problem. This was black beans. I was following all the instructions to the T, and I'm not a recipe girl. I wasn't raised that way, but I was like, “Thank you, WIC, you are a great provider, but I have 30,000 bags of dry beans, so it's time to make something out of them.” And I was so proud of myself. I was ready. They look good. I mean, the seasonings were giving off this wonderful aroma.
Boy, those were the nastiest black beans ever. I just couldn't even care to eat them beyond the taste. Now, I am an amazing cook. I've been cooking since I was like little, but those black beans, ugh. And I remember I was so mad. I was so upset because cooking dry beans, it takes time, the whole soaking and the this and the that. And afterwards, I just wanted to donate every last bag of those dang dry beans. It was just so interesting.
But the thing was, in that circumstance, again, it's amazing. There are lessons in everything. It helped me to pause and recognize, my preparation was not for nothing. I learned so much about that, and we had a great laugh over it. And I don't even know what we ended up doing for dinner. Maybe pizza, maybe pulled something out. Who knows? But at the end of it, it was like, in all circumstances, you can find joy.
I used to have quite the sailor's mouth, and I've toned it down quite a bit. But that night, man, you name it, F-bombs, S-bombs, A-bombs, whatever kind of bombs you want, I was dropping bombs everywhere. I remember taking the beans and dumping them in the garbage really angry, and just slamming things around into the sink. And it was just so funny, because I came to that place of like, “Am I really doing this over a free bag of black beans when I have great love in my life, my children, our church, our family, everything else?”
That's just my reminder that things don't always go our way, right? And some circumstances are a little bit challenging. But when we open our eyes, our ears, our hearts, our minds, our spirit, we can find the joy in everything.
Jesus doesn't promise that life is gonna be carefree and “Hey, let me teach you all how to escape trials.” No, he just encourages us to have faith the size of a mustard seed. And one thing that I'm realizing lately is that dang, that mustard seed is heavy, because I still don't have faith the size of a mustard seed. But what I do got is I got joy.
That's the one thing, if I can leave you all with this closing message, is the truth of the matter is, whatever we're facing in our own quiet personal spaces, our friends, our family, our church, our workplaces, our schools, don't give away your joy. If we remember where this all started, it came with that news that said to us, do not be afraid, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. So feel that and know that you all are the essence of joy and let's be that not just this holiday season, but all year round.
Please pray with me. Our almighty God, we give you thanks and we give you joy because that's what you give us. God, we are so thankful for the way that you delight in us, that we can recognize that we are your children, we are created in your image. The fingerprints of your love are all over our lives. So with joy and with gratitude and with presence, we say, thank you. We say, I love you, God. We say, I love me, God, and we love each other. So may the joy that Christ has given us fill our hearts, our minds, our souls. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Amen.
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