[Mr. Darris McNeely] Recently, my wife and I had some guests into our home for dinner, and we were out on our back deck and enjoying the evening and everybody's fellowship. And there were a couple that were there that we didn't know too well. They were actually new to the United Church of God, for about a year or more that they had been attending in United. And we were getting acquainted with them and they were just a very happy, excited couple. They were actually here for the ABC sampler that we had, and they were talking about the church and their experience in the church, how glad they were to be in the United Church of God. They had come to us from another group. And they were very excited with their local congregation, their pastor and excited about what they were learning in the week that they were here with the ABC program.

And the wife mentioned this one comment that stuck with Debbie and I. She said, "When we began attending with our congregation," she said, "we experienced such joy, such a joy with the members in the congregation." And from what I understand, they're pretty well there every week. They don't miss. They're excited. It's good to always see that with people. But their read on the congregation that they are a part of was refreshing, encouraging, and it was just great to hear. They counted, they said there's so much joy in our congregation. And I think that they were also adapting that and extending it to the greater United Church of God as they have come to know it, in the brief year or more that they have been a part of the church. I'd like to talk today about that concept of joy.

Joy, we know, is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. And finding joy in ourselves and finding joy in our church, in our life, that's what I'd like to talk about here for a few minutes this afternoon. If you will just turn over to Psalm 30, I'll use this as an anchoring psalm. As you know, there are many scriptures that talk about joy and we're not going to go through, obviously, all of them, but Psalm 30 gives us a good place to begin and to anchor a thought here for this message. And it makes a beautiful comment about joy, Psalm 30, and we'll go right to verse 4.

Psalm 30:4-5 It says, "Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name for His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. "

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. That's the title that I picked for this message today, joy comes in the morning. We all love morning. I'm a morning person. Many of you probably are as well. I get a lot of work, thinking, writing, creativity, stuff done in the morning. But anymore, by the time I get to 2:00 in the afternoon, I'm fizzled out mentally. I mean, I can still go physically, but I have to shift to other parts of my workload, my work list to work on because something just begins to drag.

I've been able to arrange my schedule to teach ABC in the mornings. My classes at ABC in the morning, and I figure, I know where the students are at 2:00 in the afternoon, and anymore, I'm there too, and it's not always listening. And you know, you're snoozing and you're catching up, but morning is a great time. Morning is a great time. Joy comes in the morning, the psalm here says. When you look at what the psalm is saying, "Weeping may endure for a night," the Soncino commentary says that weeping is like a passing traveler that comes right at dark, but then leaves with the first rays of light in the morning, and then joy comes in the morning.

And that's an interesting perspective to look at what things that do happen to us and things that we go through in life. There's a weeping for a moment, but then we have to pass through to joy. We might weep in the darkness of a period of life, but then when the sun rises and a new day and a new opportunity, then there's joy. And that comes to us. Joy, as I said, is a fruit of the Spirit. Let's go ahead and turn over to Galatians 5, and just to look at this, get our perspective on it. I know that you know the...many of you could list the fruits of the Spirit easily here, but to notice something, Galatians 5:22 is the listing of the fruits of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22 "The fruit of Spirit is love, joy, peace."

I won't go any further. That's not needed here today, but look at this, love, joy, and peace. Love is the first one. We know that we understand love. We have a whole chapter in 1 Corinthians about love, don't we? The love chapter. We talk about God's love, human love, sexual love. We know the different aspects of love as it can be expressed out of the Greek language here, but it comes at the first of the list here, but then second is joy. And I think there may be a reason for that. I'll come back to that as we go through this here for a moment.

It's right next to love. And that's very important. And, of course, Paul said, what he said about love is, you know, the greatest of these is love, But joy's important too. And we'll come back perhaps to understanding that. When we look at the fruits of the Spirit, they're rich in understanding, they are rich in what they tell us about the character of God. The fruits of the Spirit, and if we understand that God's very nature is that He is Spirit. And then we look at the fruits of the Spirit, they then give us a definition of God's character, not necessarily His nature, that's a different aspect of the study about God, but the fruits of the Spirit tell us about His character.

We know that God is love. We know God is very patient. He's very long-suffering as we go through, but do we think about God in terms of the characteristic of joy? We can and we should here because as we look at the fruits of the Spirit, reflecting the character of God, we are to take on the very character of God as well as a part of this life and the working of the Spirit within us. To the degree that we take on the fruits of the Spirit then, we are really taking on the image of God. We are adapting ourselves very clearly to that.

This word, joy here, when you would look it up in any concordance, it comes from a Greek word, charo. Some say C-H-A-I-R-O. Others might put it as C-H-A-R-O, but charo. And it simply means to rejoice, to be joyful, to have joy as a noun, to be joyful or joyfulness as a verb, to be joyous. One of the definitions, I think I picked this up out of the Thayer's Lexicon, had a very interesting phrase to kind of further explain it. It said that joy is a calm delight, a calm delight. And I thought that I like that one. It comes from a relationship with God, and you know, a calmness, a patience, but a delight.

One of the things, too, probably the most important, I think, to understand about joy is that it does come from God through a relationship with God. If these are fruits of the Spirit, and God is Spirit, then they come from God. We obtain them from a relationship with God and none more so than this matter of joy. In fact, when we think about joy, we typically might think about some...to define it, we might think about being happy, right? A joyful person is usually a happy person, but happiness doesn't necessarily reflect the fullness of the meaning of joy for us to understand.

We can be happy about a lot of things. I'm happy when I get a Father's Day gift, right? You're happy when, you know, your husband says, "We're going out to dinner tonight, honey, and you know, no cooking, and we're heading out." That makes you happy. Somebody gives you a gift, you get a phone call or a letter from somebody. Someone compliments you for your work, your dress, something you've done, you're happy, right? We love to be happy. We don't want to be sad. But happiness is not joy, happiness isn't really the fullness of joy.

Joy is something that comes even when we're not happy. Joy, if it's of God and is a fruit of God's Spirit, is not found in things. You know, I would've really been happy at age 18 with a brand new Corvette, but that wasn't going to be in the family that I grew up in. And the things that we would like to accrue and build and have that makes us happy, to a degree, we think, and then you mature a little bit, you realize, well, things don't always make you happy. Happiness comes from other matters. And joy is not necessarily because of the things we have or necessarily even the things we do, it is because of a relationship with God.

Joy comes from a very deep relationship with God, not things. It comes from the core purpose, the core purpose that God is bringing to pass, that He is working through His creation, which is ultimately to bring many sons to glory. That's God's purpose and plan. And that's where the wellspring of joy that we draw from really does come when we look deeply into this, the fact that God is bringing many sons to glory, that truth, that understanding is at the essential core of joyfulness.

And when we're locked into that, when we're locked into that truth with a laser focus, and we know that, we understand it, and we truly believe it, and it's what drives our lives every day, when we get up out of bed, then we can begin to know joy. Then we can begin to know joy. And being a fruit of the Holy Spirit, it means that we have then a very life essence of God within us through that relationship with Him. It's a means of how we take on that divine nature.

In 2 Peter 1:4, we are told that we are to be partakers of the divine nature. The very nature of God is Spirit. And our life's purpose is to take that on. Joy is a very key ingredient of that character of God that helps us to understand that. Well, I want to go through our three different points here today, to help us to kind of focus on and understand and unpack this meaning of joy in the time that we have. The first point that I want to make is that joy is found in God. Joy is found, first and foremost, and ultimately, in God. It has to be. Turn over to Psalm 16, the 16th Psalm.

Psalm 16:11 "You will show me the path of life. In Your presence," the psalmist was speaking to God, "in Your presence is fullness of joy. At Your right hand, are pleasures evermore."

Joy is found in a relationship with God. God, the Father, and the Word had planned from eternity to share Their divine nature with the human creation. This is what so many of the scriptures tell us. This has been purposed from God from before the foundation of the world, as Ephesians 1 puts it. Christ's work was the centerpiece of this, that all things would be brought together in Christ. It is the centerpiece of that purpose and that plan.

And so when the psalm here says that we are shown the path of life, this is the life we are to live, this is what we have chosen by God's calling to live, it's been our life and it is our life, and as the psalm says, in His presence, is that fullness of that joy and pleasure. But that's in that relationship in knowing that we have that with God, that's where joy begins.

Now over in Hebrews 12, there's an interesting verse that we know, again, quite well, but to think about it as we...to focus just on the concept of joy and as it fits with the purpose that God is bringing to pass, put against that backdrop, it's easier to understand. It gives us another dimension.

Hebrews 12:1-2 It says, "Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin, which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Christ endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him. As we go to the Passover every year, we think about that sacrifice, don't we? We go through those scriptures that show the suffering and the death of Christ. And we think deeply about that as we apply it to us. And it says here, though, that as Christ faced it, He did it for joy, No human happiness, no human feeling, I think, would've given Him, or any of us for that matter, but certainly in looking at what Christ did, the ability to set His face toward that suffering and death and that event that he had to do. But it says for joy, He did this, for the joy that was set before Him.

What was before Him? What was it that He saw that was a picture that He was willing to endure that suffering with joy? It's not the very end result of that suffering and death, which was the forgiveness of sins and the reconciliation of the world to the Father, and the ability to have sins forgiven and a pathway opened then for mankind to life, to eternal life. Christ was involved with that, as I said, from the beginning of...from eternity, there was no beginning to eternity. I don't want to misspeak here.

An eternity that was set. And that has been the very purpose that the Father, the Word, who became Jesus, the Christ have been working toward. And the end result of that is your salvation and mine. It is many sons to glory, and that's the joy that allowed Him to set Himself and endure what He did for the end result. That's the kind of joy that is the fruit of the Spirit that we're talking about here. That's what it means to be having joy within a relationship with God. There's nothing else in that human moment of trial that would've propelled Him to meet and to go through the challenge that was before Him.

Christ came, died, was resurrected that we might have that opportunity to, as we, in a sense, crucify ourselves to Him and through the gift of God's grace and salvation have the opportunity to inherit sonship, to inherit that glory with the Father. This is all wrapped up in the teaching that we have about the nature of God, the purpose of human life, which we know, we studied. Those of you that have been to ABC, you've gone through the class. I teach the doctrines and I teach that doctrine every year, and every year it seems like I need more time to teach it because it just kind of expands, at least, in my thinking, and it should expand in our understanding as well.

So I have to kind of pull myself back and recognize this is just a survey class, Darris, it's just a survey class. Don't try to get it all in, but it is so important to understand in terms of the nature of God and Christ and the purpose of human life. Those two fundamentals are so intertwined because it speaks to the very reason for our being, and that God's vision, that's what allowed Christ to do what He did. And joy comes from what we develop within our hearts through a deep understanding of what God is doing and the purpose that He's working and that He's guiding our lives along that path, that one day, then, we will enter into that.

Those of you that have been through my class, you know that I refer to this as our franchise doctrine. This is the one doctrine that defines us. This is the one doctrine that should define our life. This is a unique teaching. When you look in Matthew 25, I've thought about this statement a few times through the years. Let's turn over to Matthew chapter 25, the "Parable of the Talents." And here, I'm not going to go through all of it, but in Matthew 25, Christ is talking about judgment and the parceling out of the rewards at that time of judgment through the "Parable of the Talents" that begins in verse 14, but at verse 25....or verse 21, I'm sorry.

Matthew 25:21-23 When he comes to one who had five talents, “His Lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, you were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things, enter you into the joy of your Lord.’" And that is repeated in verse 23. "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over many things. I'll make you ruler over many, enter into the joy of your Lord."

What's the joy of God? What is the joy of the Lord that we enter into? Some commentators look at this and speak to the...as this is talking about a concrete reality about God and our cooperating with God's authority, God's rule then is part of the means by which we share into or enter into the joy of the Lord.

But God's joy, if we bring in what we read back in Hebrews 12, God's joy is our sharing of that divine nature now and eternity as full sons of His and that glory that He will give us. That is the joy of God that He has purposed for which He is, and which allowed Christ to endure the suffering with joy. We then enter into that joy. That's the end result of what has been planned from before time began. It's more than a state of being, it's an active, present purpose in which we share foretaste today, as we understand that. And so this is why this teaching is so important.

And as we turn our life today, continue to turn away from false things, the false idols of our world and of our life, the things that Paul says are not, they are nothing, we turn from them, whatever that might be in our own modern way, it's not a wooden idol, but we have our other idols in our world today, and as we turn away from those, and our values are then shaped by the values of God, His kingdom, this very purpose, then we embrace the fullness of worship in God, and we experience joy as a fruit of that. And that's why this is so important. This is why it really will shape the life of each one fully committed to this, and then allow joy to be experienced in a way that we never have before.

Let me tell you a story. Recently, Debbie and I took a study tour for two weeks in Turkey. It was along the Footsteps of Paul. And we've been planning this for quite a while. And we left right after the spring Holy Days on this trip. And it turned out to be a very small group of people that we were with. I thought we might be with maybe a busload of people, but there were only about 15 of us. And it turned out to be real nice, as a result, because we got a lot of individual attention from the tour host and it was just an easy group to get along with and to meet. But as we got acquainted on the first day, “where you're from, what do you do, this and that,” and a couple of them began to make the connection, United Church of God, Worldwide Church of God, beliefs, who, and what we were a part of, which is fine.

And so that began to fuel what was a two-week side show of apologetics on my part, because along with...there were probably a half a dozen PhDs in theology on this trip, some who had studied at Fuller Theological Seminary. Those of you that...from Southern California know that Fuller is just a few blocks away from the Ambassador College campus. Others had studied at Baylor, Harvard, Duke, PhDs in theology. They knew their Bible. They knew...their Bible study was every morning in the Septuagint, in the Greek, that was their Bible study, how they read their Bible. But one of them had done his homework. He sat down next to me on the bus and said, "So tell me about "Beyond Today." I hadn't met him, but prior to the trip, he saw my name on the list. He went out on LinkedIn and Google and found out about Darris McNeely. So, "Tell me about 'Beyond Today.'"

And then he said, I want to know about the Worldwide Church of God because he used to listen to the Worldwide Church of God, and he knew the Worldwide Church of God. And another PhD, you know, was like that. The second day out, we were flying all the way from Istanbul down to Hatay, which is in the southeastern part of Turkey, to really begin the tour, and we all got on a plane. Debbie got the window seat. I was in the middle seat. And one of these teachers was right next to me on the aisle seat. And I had met him the night before and he, you know, kind of made the connection.

And so anyway, we were...you know, an hour and a half flight. He pulls out of his briefcase a book called "Simply Trinity." And I'm kind of looking at that and realized this could be a long flight, I'm thinking. And he really didn't even get to open the book to start reading. He said, "You don't believe in the Trinity, do you?" I said, "No, I don't." And so for an hour, you're trapped. You know, at 30,000 feet, you don't go too far. So for an hour and a half, I explained what we believe about the nature of God and Christ, and that I don't believe in the Trinity. And there was no place to go. I didn't have my Bible in front of me. I didn't have my notes in front of me. We just had to talk.

And I explained, and that then ranged into so many other different teachings and things to sanctification and justification. And that was just the beginning of two weeks, because at every meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever, you're sitting together, "Well, what about the Holy Days? Well, what about the..." So I explained the holy days. But you're doing it in snatches of 5 minutes, 10 minutes. The last conversation I had with one of these gentlemen... We all got along fine. I didn't convince them otherwise. They didn't convince me to, you know, keep Sunday or to believe in the Trinity.

On the last day of the tour, we're walking into a museum and this guy who was with me on the plane, he comes up to me, he had one final question. He said, "So what have you and United taken as your most important teaching from the Worldwide Church of God experience?" Okay. I'm about 25 feet from the door of the museum, and I know this is going to be one of those, what you call an elevator pitch or an elevator story. You've got just less than a minute, 45 seconds to answer a question, because once you hit the door, attention's gone, you're off into the museum.

And so I thought the purpose of life, that man can take on the divine nature, become a part of the family of God. That's the core, most important thing we have taken. Now that...you know, Sabbath is important, Holy Days are, don't get me wrong, but what's the most important? That's what I said at that moment. And he said, "I appreciate that." And that was the last question that he asked of me, but we had a lot of other conversations in the intervening period of time. And joy comes from that knowledge, when...from everything...that flows from everything else, flows to everything else, to know it, to believe it, to understand it from the scriptures.

Look, I explain our nature of God from the scriptures. And I could, you know, remember enough verses and scriptural references to explain to him why we believe as we do, that we don't believe in a triune God. And at least I think I accomplished one thing that with he and a few of the others, I basically explained to them that I can defend my belief, and I'm not ignorant about the Bible, and I have a belief that is rooted in the scripture.

You know, that was an apologetic moment, which all of us have in different ways. But when I was asked that question, "What's your most important?" I said, "That's it." And that fits into this part about joy, because with that, then we not only have the other body, the full body of truth, but we then are rooted in a joy, in a relationship with God, which is the same that Christ had Himself in enduring the cross, and reflects the joy into which we hope to enter as a gift of salvation that God has given to us. This understanding, I think, is the joy that comes in the morning for us.

The second point that I'd like to talk about joy is that joy is found in trials. Let's turn over to James 1. Joy is found in trials. James 1, let's begin at verse 2.

James 1:2 "My brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials."

Now that's hard, isn't it? How many times do we bring up the banner joy when we're in a pickle? When we've got a problem in front of us, when something has happened, when we get a phone call about some diagnosis or some tragedy that has happened, do we count it joy? It's hard. It really is, but we're told to count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. This is hard.

It's hard for me. It may not be for you, but it's hard for me to have joy when times are tough, when the situation is very, very diff difficult. But that's what he says to do, count it all joy when trials comes. When we have that fruit of the Spirit and it's engendered by the Spirit in us and it's true joy, Godly joy, then we can have the knowledge that God is in control, that God controls life, God controls history, God is involved in your life and in my life. And that joy binds us and helps us to keep life together when it might seem that it's flying apart at various times. It's that knowledge that God's in control.

Joy holds us because we know that we're held by God. Let me repeat that. Joy holds us because we know that we're held by God. And we have to believe that. You know that, I know it too. It's hard when a trial hits, but that's what we have to ultimately come back to, to begin to put together a plan of action, pick ourselves up. Weeping comes at night, remember, but joy comes in the morning, after some time of reflection.

You know, when a problem hits us, when we're in the midst of a trial, joy is not going to take away the fear. Don't mistake that. I'm not spreading a Polyanna-type theory here. Joy will not take away worry. We will still be concerned about our job and what the loss of that job might mean. The bills we have to pay, the house payment, the kids' college, we'll have that concern. We will have a concern about our children. We will still cry when there's a difficult time. We'll weep at night, the Psalm 30 says. We will weep at night.

So joy doesn't take that away. But if we are rooted in a foundation with God and drawing joy from that knowledge that we have with God, we know we walk on a path that is guided by God, and joy comes into view, as we experience a trial, a challenge, a difficulty that comes in life. You know, joy doesn't always come up, or we don't have a gauge we can push up and, you know, 75% joy. You know, well, let's top it off with another 25%. It doesn't work that way. We may not even think about it until we do face a trial, which is what James is getting to. When you come to a trial, that's when joy comes to the fore. That's when we know whether we have it or not, or whether we need to go back and study a little bit more about that.

You know, as parents, bring it down to that level of our thinking and those of us that are parents here, you know, we love our children. You have small children, toddlers, 10-year-old, teenagers, 50-year-old children, we're concerned. At every stage of their life, we're concerned as young parents, middle-aged parents, we're concerned as grandparents. One of the wisest pieces of advice I ever had from one of the wisest members I ever had years ago, he told me, one day, he said, "Darris, you never stop raising your children."

Now, I was raising toddlers at that time, and I didn't quite understand what he meant because I knew I was going to be raising these rascals for another few years before we could get them out the door. But I'm still raising. I'm still involved in their life. You are shaking your head. You understand, don't you? Yeah. You never stop raising your kids. We love them, we're concerned for them, we're concerned about their children, what they're doing as parents raising their children. "Oh, he's making the same mistake I did with him or her." We think.

But you know what? As we raise our children, we want to stand between our children and pain. We want to stand between our children and disappointment. We want them, when they go off to school, we want them to excel, right? We don't want them to get bullied. We don't want them to get cut from the first team. We want them to get chosen first or at least in the top five for the basketball team, right? So that they're not disappointed. We want to shelter them from danger. But you know, we can't stand between our children and those realities of life.

The world deceives us into thinking that we can cocoon our children in whatever way we choose to do that and shield them from the world, from harm, from disappointment, from whatever it might be, and we all take our different paths and our approaches, but we can't completely shield ourselves and our children from harm, from life. Pain will come, hurts happen, tragedy occurs.

When we look back even as adults and remember our children before life came rushing at them, sometimes even, we like to turn the clock back. I've had that feeling a few times as an adult, an older adult with children. With my children gone, I'd look back and I like to turn the clock back, but you can't do that. Children will be born with challenges, health problems. And that's when the relationship with God really does kick in. Life's fine when you're a single couple and you don't have children, responsibilities and, you know, a little extra money to go here, do that, but then when that first child comes, then reality comes in. And if that child has some problems, that sometimes happens, then we have an extra challenge, don't we, that we have to deal with and we learn to deal with it.

You see some exceptional situations where the parents deal with that with joy and they accept what is in front of them and they work with it. And it's a challenge 24/7 for years and years and maybe even for all of their life with that child, but they do it with joy. I've seen so many of you and others through the years that deal with that, that challenged child, and they do it with joy, and it comes from God. And that's the reality that we have. Joy comes when you know God will help you frame a life from that point forward, and be with you, and to help you, and to learn what has to be. Joy is the fruit, the one fruit of the Spirit that really does give us endurance, oxygen, if you will, to not get fatigued, to not wear out when the path of that life we're on begins to turn steep. And it's harder, like, trying to run up Mount Adams in the Flying Pig Marathon.

My son tried to do that...or he did it. He ran the Flying Pig a few years ago, Mount Adams nearly killed him because that comes in the first part of the race, and you either make or break at that point. When life begins to steepen for us, joy is what gives us the oxygen to dig in, dig deep, and to keep going. Joy is what helps us in the various trial of accepting our mortality.

My father died when he was 71 years of age, and I'll turn 71 here in a couple of months. Debbie's father died at age 54, a little...much younger. And as she was approaching her 54th birthday, she was a bit unnerved for a period of time. Would she get beyond and live beyond her dad's timing? I've known a number of people who, you know, face those markers and deal with it, and it's a challenge, but joy helps us to accept our mortality as part of God's plan and purpose. It helps us to know that our days are numbered in God's hands, that He really is controlling our life.

The psalm says that we are to ask for the help to number our days. Help us number our days. Well, that means to take joy in each day that we have. As we learn to number our days, to have joy in what we have and to use it then, and to earn those days, to truly earn those days. You know, there's a scene from one of my favorite movies, you've seen it, "Saving Private Ryan." Remember the scene where Private Ryan is...the Tom Hanks character is dying in the streets, in the shellshocked streets, and Private Ryan is right there as he dies. And Private Ryan's brothers have been killed, and all the...most of the members in the platoon now have been killed. And Tom Hanks' character is looking up at Private Ryan, and he tells him, because all these people have died for him, he says, "Earn it."

And then it fades to the Private Ryan as an old man kneeling at the grave of the Tom Hanks character at the American Military Cemetery in Normandy, weeping to his wife and saying, "Have I been a good man? Did I earn my life, the days that I had?" It's a well-done scene in cinema history, but it speaks to this, we are to number our days. And joy helps us to take what we have and live it to the full and to earn it with joy. Our children walk on in life, yours will. I couldn't always be there for mine as they then had to get out on their own and experience, in some cases, some pretty life-changing situations. Yours will too.

But I always knew with my children, Debbie did, we've talked about this, we always knew that God was there and He's still there. Even when they may not be in their perfect alignment with God, we believe that He's there because we ask for God to be there when they were babies, and we brought them in the blessing of children's ceremony, and we asked God to bless them. And we continue to pray for them as you do for yours, and you will, to know that God is there. And that's the undergirding joy of a parent, of a grandparent, going forward with a life, no matter what happens. And that's how joy comes in the morning.

The third point is that joy is a confident feeling when we see God working in the lives of others. Point three, joy is a confident feeling when we see God working in the lives of others, particularly, our brethren, each other. Do you really see God's hand in your friends' lives in the church, the people that you know, and take joy from that? Think about that. You know, as I said, at the beginning, joy comes after love, right? Love, joy, peace, joy is number two.

And thinking about this, about what joy is, I wonder if joy coming after love is telling us that joy is really the activating agent for love. We can study about love, we can talk love, but as we know, sometimes walking love, being love is pretty hard, isn't it? I wonder if joy's the agent that activates it and kind of causes love to, in a sense, come to its full fruit in our life.

As we think about ourselves and our church, think about that in that context, it is easy to criticize the church. We're in a time in America, where America is being criticized. We're going through a kind of a self-loathing and America's history is being rewritten, its founding, and why, etc., and history is being rewritten. We're going through a period of time where the view of what America's origins, its history, and what it is in the world is being reoriented in the history books, in the political discussions. And it's changing things. And I see sometimes that wash over into the church when we are too quick to criticize the church, the church was wrong here, the church did that, or... And we say, you know, we've had our problems. Okay, yes, we have. But we need to take three or four steps back, not just one, and ask ourselves a few questions and look at this in terms of this matter of joy, as we think about ourselves.

You know, in the Book of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul writes a very hard letter criticizing the church at Corinth. And you know what that is, the problems that are there. It's a really hard letter. Do you know something? The word joy is not found in 1 Corinthians as a noun. I think it's twice as a verb, but it's largely missing from the Book of 1 Corinthians.

When you come to 2 Corinthians where Paul writes a letter with a different tone and he commends them for the changes they've made for how they reacted to his correction in the first letter, you look at 2 Corinthians, joy is mentioned five times. He uses the word joy to describe them and his relationship five times. It's something to think about. There was a time to correct, there was a time to address certain hard issues, but then there was also a time to experience and to reflect and to express joy, which he does. So there's a difference in those two letters, just in the way joy is there. But we complain and we can grumble about things, and we've all done our share of that, I'm number one, but that's not always right.

True joy will drive us to prayer and placing all of the things that we might want to grumble or criticize about, placing those things before God and before Christ, the head of the church. And that's what we should do after the therapeutic session, if it's that at all. Hopefully, you know, in our lives, we can get to the point where we do less of the complaining and more of the praying.

Remember the church is the body of Christ for which He died, and for which He endured the cross with joy. The church, it is His body. All things are being brought together that are in heaven and earth in Him, and it is His body and He's the head of that body. And He endured with joy the suffering for the sake of the church, which is composed of members, but it is members who are to be taking on the nature of God. You know, when we look at the history, it's people who make mistakes and sometimes big mistakes. Yeah.

But Christ loves the church and gave Himself for it. Ephesians 5 says that He might present it to Himself without spot or wrinkle. And it's His job to smooth out the wrinkles and to take out the spots, and He'll do that. And maybe we need to experience a bit more joy when it comes to one another and how we look at one another and focus on a confident understanding that God's working in your friend's life, someone that you may not know, or understand, or even like. And that God's working with he or she and you and me in His own time and way, and we can appreciate that. And if we can put that up further up front, then it can soften some of the hard feelings that we might harbor, and that will come out in our words and sometimes even our deeds.

And this is what we need to think about. It's the people who make mistakes, but we need to love the church and we need to love the truth that God is doing. Look at Philippians 4. I mentioned that in 2 Corinthians, Paul uses joy four times there to commend the wayward church that he had hardly corrected in the first letter, but in Philippians 4:1, Paul says this, now granted it's to the Philippian church, which from all accounts in scripture, he had a, really, a positive relationship with them, but it does reflect what he had and what we should strive for. I'm in Colossians. Let me get to Philippians.

Philippians 4:1 "Therefore, my beloved and longed for brethren, my joy and crown. So stand fast in the Lord, beloved."

Paul said to the Philippians that they were his joy. "My joy, you are my joy." You know, there's nothing greater for a pastor, for a teacher to finally, you know, come to a point where to realize joy from a congregation, from a class of students, from a group of people that you're working with because things are working well. They're understanding, they all passed the test. The job gets done, a good job is done. And we take joy from that.

Paul's saying here to the Philippians, "You're my joy and my crown." He looked at them as the first fruits of God, the work of God, and he drew joy from that because he saw God working with them. So we have to ask ourselves, can we see God working with each other? And see past at times, yeah, some of the problems and some of the difficulties of personalities or definite actions that have happened that were wrong, and take it to God, and ask God to help us to look upon one another, as Paul does here, as my joy, and to take joy in one another and to place it there.

Joy brings us to our knees in talking to God and working things out with Him. We didn't read that far in James, but in the first chapter, you know, James says, "If you lack wisdom, ask of God." Well, if we lack joy, we could also...we can also ask of God for that and place things before Him that only He can deal with and take care of, we'd make a mess of it, and go on with our life because joy will help us know with certainty that God has complete control and complete sovereignty. And it can help us have a positive view of the church as a whole.

Yeah, there's individuals still, I get that, but we have ways of working...you know, we can work around that. We can grow, we can, with God's help and God's joy and the love of God, that joy activating that love, can we not come to where we might understand why that person is so difficult, obnoxious, hard to work with, someone you don't want to sit down at the same table with?

Have you ever sat at a table 13? Debbie and I went to a wedding two weeks ago, down in Georgia with some friends, lots of people. I told the mother of the groom a few weeks before we went, I said, "Look, we're coming to your son's wedding and we're looking forward to it, but will you please not sit us at a table 13?" Anybody know what a table 13 is? There's a movie called "Table 13." Look it up or watch it if you want to. "Table 13," the plot of the..."Table 13" was the table at a wedding where all the leftovers were placed. It wasn't the head table. It wasn't even the second table or the third. It was a table back in the corner where people who kind of had to be invited were placed, and the bride and groom really didn't know them, or didn't want to know them, but knew them, and it was an obligatory situation.

And the story then revolves around these people at table 13 and their stories as to how they get to know one another and work out, and you begin to find their stories. It's an interesting premise. So, fortunately, we didn't sit at a table 13 at this wedding. And I never want to sit at a table 13 at any wedding I go to, but it worked out.

But, you know, you ever walked into a banquet, lunchroom, whatever it might be, you know, a picnic, whatever, and maybe sometimes you get seated at a table with people you don't know and then, forbid, people you don't like, or there's one seat there, and it's at a table of people, "Oh, I don't get along with them. I don't like them." But if you turn and go the other way, you're really going to be making a statement. And you don't want to do that. You shouldn't want to do that. If you do that shame on you, but you go ahead and you sit down. I've sat at a few tables like that. I'll be honest, I typically try to arrange my tables to get people that I want to sit with there or get early. But sometimes you don't.

And there have been times when I've found that when you start to talk with people and you take time to ask questions and just be patient and recognize that they're members, they're real people, you begin to get their story. You begin to know them. And, you know, you may begin to understand them. And that can go a long way toward spreading oil on the friction that happens among us with our brethren within the church. And so we have to give each other the benefit of the doubt. We need to find the story that each of us has and find joy even in a table of strangers and seek to help, to turn them to become a table of friends.

And that's a real challenge at times because that gets down to some very interpersonal relationships that we find out a few things about ourselves at that time. But when we can see God working in each other, then we can take joy in one another, and it helps to increase the love of God that we are to have with one another. And that's how joy comes in the morning when it comes to each other.

Let's go back to Psalm 30 which we began with. Psalm 30, again, I didn't read the last phrase of verse 6.

Psalm 30:5-6 "Weeping may endure for a night," verse 5, "but joy comes in the morning." But in verse 6, "Now in my prosperity, I said, I shall never be moved."

Joy gives us a positive level of prosperity. Joy gives us a bank account from which to draw on when times get tough, or to build better relationships with one another and the brethren within the church, and certainly to build a better relationship with God. In that prosperity, we can then say, "I shall never be moved." If we have that joy, that can be what we say to God and have a confidence with joy as the fruit of God's Spirit.