Allow Joy To Reintroduce Himself (Pastor Tauren Wells)

Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.

I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.

And I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith.

Hope it gives your perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message.

So grateful to be here with you all today, apprecing to what feels to me to be family, and get so excited anytime I get to share space with you. And if you're not familiar with who I am, that's okay. I'm just your crazy beige little nephew from Austin, Texas that pulled up on you today.

Just Khaki, just out here.

Praising God, Congratulations the Elevation Rhythm on the release Victory lab.

I was encouraging.

And depending on how you take it, encouraging or discouraging, Chris, because I said, my twelve year old son was riding the car with me the other day. He said, Dad, why does Elevation Rhythm have more bangers in Elevation worship?

My?

How the turns of tabled? But seriously celebrating you and what a testimony of this house always being about the next generation building for the future, not just saying it, but investing time, resources, platform, influence, and it just flows from a generous house, which is the culmination of generous leadership.

And I'm so grateful.

For your pastor, Pastor Stephen Ferdick Holly. I love you guys, So grateful for your kindness, for your friendship, for your support.

Shout out to.

Chunks wherever he's bench pressing something today.

Just so grateful.

Chunks has been the secret weapon of Church of White Stone and Austin. I've called him countless times and he just makes room for us. And I'm so grateful, and ultimately I'm grateful for you all because generosity doesn't just flow to this church.

It flows through this church.

And it flowed right into Austin to White Stone to help us plant our church fifteen months ago.

And I just want to let you know.

That God's doing something with the seed that you've sown. That over the last fifteen months, we've baptized five hundred and seven people. We've seen six hundred and thirty people say yes to Jesus for the very first time. So amazing to be a footnote in God's great story. And I'm just so grateful for the ways that you have partnered with us. We're gonna go quickly to the scripture. Matthew five, verse one. Grab your bibles. If you don't have it, this is elevation. You'll be able to read

Matthew five, verse one.

Now, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountain side and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began.

To teach them.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those.

Who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Today, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I'll be drawing this title Joy to reintroduce himself. Allow Joy to reintroduce himself. Would you pray with me? Jesus, thank you so much for your word. I pray that you would warm our hearts today to receive what it is that you have to speak to us.

God.

I pray that there would be a supernatural impartation of your joy, that it would flow from the pages of these scriptures, from the heart of your presence, into the lives of your people. We ask it in Jesus' name, and the church said, Amen, you can go ahead and take your seat. Allow Joy to reintroduce himself. I want to ask you a question today, Who in human history taught the most important message on joy? Who in human history taught the most important message on joy?

Now?

I know we got a lot of church folk up in here today. I know there are a lot of people who've been following Jesus for a long time in the room and watching online today, and so I don't just want to assume that we're all just drawing the same conclusions about joy and the origins of the message of joy, and who articulated.

The power of joy most perfectly.

Some of you may point to someone like Buddha and say that Buddha taught the most important message on happiness and joy.

Seems like a pretty happy guy.

And he said this phrase that happiness, that there is no path to happiness, happiness is the path.

Not bad.

I can tell I'm already losing the church. Were just mentioning Buddha in this sacred space. What in the world been in Austin And all of a sudden, You're just You're gonna be all right. Maybe some of you would point to a more stoic philosopher like Marcus Aurelius, an emperor.

He said that joy is the product of.

Self discipline, taking life as it comes to you, not a bad swing at joy. Maybe more of you philosophical individuals would say someone like Aristotle gave us the most profound ideas that we have about joy and happiness. He said that happiness depends on ourselves. None of those are really bad swings at the idea. But I had to go to the authority of all authorities. I had to go to the resource huh, of all resources. I had to go to chat GPT. Some of y'all were ready

I know.

Maybe some of you were raised in environments adjacent to the environment I was raised in, where you were taught to believe God doesn't care if you're happy, do what he says. Maybe some of you you don't even realize it, but you have bought into the idea that the more miserable you are, the more you're honoring God. I don't serve him because I want to. I serve him because I have to. I grew up hearing this priest and church. God doesn't care about your happiness. He cares about your holiness.

And it's so funny.

In church people will say stuff all the time that's not in the Bible, and then they'll run out to some print store and put it on a T shirt and sell it out of the trunk of their car as if it was Bible truth. But this idea does not exist in the scriptures. In fact, in order to understand the idea of joy, to understand the heart of God, we don't go to our feelings.

We don't go to church culture, we don't go.

To secular culture. We go to the Word of God, the scriptures. And when I look at the Word, it's so important. How you look at the Word. You don't just look at it, you look around it. And you understanding the Word of God is so important because how you you the word the scriptures determines how you view God, and how you view God determines how you interpret the events.

Of your life.

And so if I'm going to buy into a premise that God only wants mean Christians and God only makes miserable people, then I have gone outside of the very character and nature of God that the Bible teaches. When I look at Scripture, I see verses like in his presence is the fullness of joy? Well, if joy is in his presence, how could he produce what he does not possess? And so he must possess joy.

To produce joy.

I'm coming after this whole God only wants to mean Christians thing, And if you can't in church, I hate to tell you you're the problem. Can't nobody be more saved and more mean looking than a Christian?

Wild But even when you.

Look at God and you see that the angels are gathered around his throne declaring, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, and the earth is filled with his glory, They're beholding His holiness. But they're not just saying Holy, Holy, Holy. The scripture indicates that they're singing Holy, Holy, Holy will.

Singing is a product of joy.

So something that heaven is experiencing in God's presence is provoking a praise from a source of worship. This is so important for you to understand today. It's because some of you have been living your lives believing that God is withholding a certain aspect of his nature from you, that he's keeping a dimension of his character from you. Because we've been convinced that our happiness is dependent on

Life I'm in.

It flows from the character of Jesus being formed in my heart. But you first have to buy into the premise that God is uniquely invested in your happiness. When I looked at Matthew five, I was shooketh when I realized that Matthew five records. What theologians and scholars all agree on is Jesus' inaugural sermon, his very first message that someone wrote down, and the first word.

That Jesus says is blessed. Have you considered.

That that Jesus stepped into time and space, split history in half with his mere existence, and he goes with his disciples, sits down on a hillside on an ordinary day, and the first word that he declares that he knows would be echoed throughout human history is the word blessed.

Wow.

You know, we give a lot of credence to famous last words, famous last words, words that are powerful because they seal a moment or a season. Famous last words like ain't gonna be no rematch, Apollo Creeve Rocky four. Famous last words like don't let it in like this, Tell them I said something, Pancho Villa. Famous last words like I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country Nathan Hale. Famous last words

I'll never let go. Let's go what I have to do. Leo like that, y'all. We all know there was room on the thing. On the floaty thing, there was room.

Rose, you're selfish. They stole Titanic two from us, y'all. I'm not okay. Famous last words, But shouldn't there be something said about famous first words, not because of their finality, but because of their primacy, their priority, the fact that they were spoken first.

Famous first words.

Like four score and seven years ago, Happy Memorial Day, Famous first words. I have a dream that little black boys and little white girls would make little.

Khaki kids praise speaking tongue.

I'm living the dream, Marian, I'm living it.

Martin Luther Game.

A famous first words and a galaxy fuck oh, y'all, Some nerds, y'all. Elevation got a reputation for being so cool Star Wars nerds. Famous first words, last words, first words, last words, first words, last words, first words. The last word of the Old Testament is curse. The first word Jesus says in the first book of Your New Testament and his first sermon.

Is blessed Jesus, the embodiment all of the law prophecies.

Jesus, the one who did not abolish the law but fulfilled it to the finest detail, while ironically crushing the spirit of religion. In one word, reverses every reality that people living through that Old Testament era had experienced.

All they were left with was a curse.

Because of the stringent rules and the traditions.

All that they had was the curse. Even the law.

The Bible says, the letter brings death, but the spirit is life.

And yet the.

Spirit was not given until Acts two, and so these people were living under the reality of the curse until Grace and Truth sat down on a hillside and started to reorient the heart of humanity back to God's original intention and design for humanity. Because the first interaction God ever had with people was not to rebuke them, It was not to correct them.

Although he does.

This in his loving kindness, this was not his original intention.

Genesis one twenty.

Eight records the first action of God toward humanity, and the scripture says, and God blessed them and told them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

And so Jesus.

Turns the heart of a religiously cold people, one who only knew a God from the distance back to the original heart of blessing of God's people. Now, when they heard the word blessed, they did not hear what we hear. It was not come on twenty fourteen hashtag blessed. They did not think card, They did not think house, They did not think stuff. They did not think ocean side, villa. They didn't think any of those things. The word in the original language means happy. This is what got me all.

You mean to tell me that the first word God said.

When he is speaking to people that will reverberate their generations, he chooses the word happy. It made me ask, how important must your happiness be to the heart of God if it's the first thing he points us toward. God wants you to be happy.

Wild.

I had an idea that was floated to me by someone that this church has a great history with. I wasn't gonna out him, but I decided to wage Joy gave me this advice. He said, it'd be a great idea if you do a five year trip with all your kids every five years, take them on something just them.

You and Lorna. When we had two kids.

This was a great idea. We got four of them things. But we started it and now we can't retract it. So I went to my all this sun. He was turning five at the time. I said, hey, bro, your five year trips coming up. Where you want to go? I thought, we live in Texas, y'all. So I thought he want to go to the Alamo, you know, down to the Mexico border.

That would be interesting. No, my boy said, then I want to go to Disney World, the trip of all trips.

Now I had a thing that I was doing for work, so we actually got to make it happen and we went to Disney World. But I realized I immediately sat a very high precedent. And so here comes his little brother lawson. He's five years old. Dad, it's time for my five year trip, and I know where I want to go.

Where we going, boss? Japan?

I said, Japan? What my fault, My fault, little brother, my fault. Anywhere in the continental United States of America.

Where would you like to?

Eh?

What a god in Japan? Do I Tachi bay.

She hey boy, you can't even speak English. What are you doing? We're not going to Japan? Fine, he wipes his last tear. I'll go to Disney World. Spoiled.

We went to disney World, then Navy.

He was three and a half, talking about Disney word, Disney word, Disney word and if history repeats itself, we got a fifth birthday coming up. God, help you see why I wrote a book. Help me help This was Wade.

I blame you. I'm sending you an invoice.

Disney is known as the happiest place on Earth. You don't have to be there more than five minutes to realize what do you mean happy? You got people stomping their feet, throwing fits, rolling on the ground, whining, complaining, and the kids are misbehaving too. You go to Disney World, you either get in a picture with Mickey Mouse or divorce.

It's what it's It's crazy to me, the happiest place on earth.

I found that Disney World isn't just the home of Mickey Mouse and tinker Bell. It's the home of meltdowns, trauma. What are you and counseling here today for it? Well, my dad took up me on five year trips. And it's interesting that we have certain expectations connected to certain locations, certain locations in our lives. And I'm not talking about Disney World. Obviously. Some of you you're graduating, Yeah, let's go congratulations. But if you're honest, you're like, thank God,

Then you go to college.

Once I get this degree, I'm gonna be in the happiest place on Earth.

But once you leave college, guess where you get to go to work?

And you're not gonna make enough money to pay for the college.

The happiest place on earth.

If he would just purpose to me, don't you want me to be happy?

This is not gonna work. I need a ring in three weeks. Happiest place on Earth. And then we keep pushing it off.

Well, once we have a kid, and once we move from this apartment into the house, and once I redesign the kitchen, and once I do this, and then finally, always pushing our happiness up ahead somewhere, robbing ourselves of what God wants to do.

Right here.

I promise you these two words will rob you of more joy in your life than any other. Two words you can put together, and those two words are what's next.

What's next will cripple your life.

What's next will shipwreck your faith. What's next will destroy your sense of contentment and fulfillment. We have to ask a better question if we want to get better answers. The better question is not what's next. The better question is what's here? What's here, what's in these kids, what's in this marriage, what's in this job, what's in this season,

He didn't go to Mount Zion, with.

All of the prestige that it carries in scripture, to deliver a master class on joy.

No, he went to what we believe to be is a mountain.

But when you write a book, you actually have to do research to make sure it's kind of true.

And so I looked it up. It's not a mountain, it's a hill. You got Sinai seven.

Thousand, five hundred feet in elevation, you got Zion two thousand, five hundred feet in elevation. You got this hill that you want to know the name of. Except I'm gonna tell you right now. The Bible doesn't record it. It's not even a footnote in the scripture.

Four hundred feet in elevation. It's a hill. And Jesus doesn't stand.

In declass some great teaching, blest all the poemspir for that's the kingdom of heaven.

No, he just sits down.

On an ordinary day, in an ordinary place, and he uses the topography to illustrate the theology of joy. Because the name of that hill is Aramis, and Aramis means desolate.

And isolated. And so Jesus chooses.

A desolate, isolated place to teach us about joy. If I'm running this show, we're pulling up somewhere, sweet, we going to Disney World.

But Jesus is in this space that looks like nothing and communicates the heart of joy.

Why because a lot of life is not lived on Sinai.

Or Zion.

Most of life has lived in Aramis. You will spend more time in traffic than on vacation. You will spend more time getting crushed by life than crushing it.

And Jesus wanted to show us joy works here, joy lives here.

There was nothing to be seen. Those people seated on that hillside. All they could see was Jesus. And maybe the reason why we cannot experience joy in our lives is because we're constantly looking around Jesus, not Adam. An author and pastor named David Murray gave us.

Seven categories for happiness.

Social happiness, vocational happiness, intellectual happiness, physical happiness like through exercise and things like that, humor happiness, creation happiness for all of you outdoors people, it's so weird to be but why be outside when there's a perfectly air conditioned room somewhere close running water and everything. And the last one is spiritual happiness. Now, because God is so good in his common grace, he allows all people to experience

What a thought.

When I have the spiritual seal of happiness around my soul, I go to work, and although the environment is toxic, it doesn't influence me. I influence it because even though my boss is hard to work with, I'm not working for him.

I'm working unto the Lord, and so.

Every menial task that I perform is done in service of the King, not in an effort to be promoted.

And when I take my eyes.

Off of everyone having to have their eyes on me, and I put my eyes on other people, I am greatly fulfilled than other areas of my life. The joy is amplified when Jesus is the center and the seal. This is what Jesus was communicating through these words. Now, obviously I could literally sit here and talk to you guys for hours about this. That's why I had to write about it, because we cannot even withhold the beatitudes

Isn't that crazy, guys?

This is the first thing Jesus talked about. How important must it be? And yeah, he gets to your holiness and he gets to the ways of your life, but not before he introduces us to these ideas. But this is this.

It hasn't let me go yet, y'all.

When Jesus is speaking through these Blessed are the poor and spirit, Blessed are those who mourn. He's not just giving us good ideas. He's not just showing us ideals to live up to. He's revealing himself. He was the one who became poor in spirit. He had the treasures of glory in his hands, and he traded it in for the dust of the earth. Although he was equal with God, he didn't see his equality with God as

He knows what it's like to be virtually bankrupt.

He knows what it's like to ask God why. Hanging on the cross was the first time he felt a total depravity, our depravity, our sin, and he asked God, why have you forsaken me? If he asked God, why stop beating yourself up? Because you have wow, you get to ask God questions. He was the one who mourned, can you hold the implications that God cried? Why do you have to show up so strong all the time, never a crack in the armor, got all these churchy phrases that don't mean nothing.

How you doing.

Blessed in highly favored, breaking on the inside, How you doing well? He's been better than me that I've been to myself, Praise God.

If I was any better, I'd be dead.

What No, My boy's favorite Bible verse to quote right now? They feel so studious, Dad, I memorized part of the Bible, really, but I didn't know you had a Bible. What did you memorize?

Jesus wept?

But we cannot really understand the weight of the implications that those two words hold.

If Jesus cried, if Jesus felt, you have.

Permission to feel, I love something that your pastor said. The presence of God is not the place that you go to bypass your emotions. The presence of God is the place that you go to process them. You have permission to feel however you feel, and then allow the Gospel into those feelings to transform them. God does not

Your emotions.

And if you don't allow God to heal you there, you won't ever be happy. He was the one crown with meekness. He was the one, Oh my Goodness, who hungered and thirsted after righteousness, so much so that when they tried to quench his thirst on the cross, he refused to drink because the only thing that would satisfy him was your righteousness being fulfilled.

In order to reintroduce you to.

Joy, I have to allow Joy to reintroduce himself.

Because joy is not a thing. It's not a feeling, it's not an emotion, it's a person. You spell joy jay E s U s.

And I know it's the simplest thing in the world. But the hardest thing for us to wrestle down in our spirit is that there's only one doorway into the joy of the Lord, and it's Jesus himself. And I know we like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all.

Right, now tell me something that actually helps me.

We believe that, but we also expect Joy to walk through the door.

With our kids.

If you did a little bit better in school, I would feel a little less like a failure. My Joy is connected to your achievement, so go achieve. We expect joy to walk through the door with our spouse, and unless her name is Joy, that's not happening. Miss.

We see our spouse as an access point to joy empty.

The most beautiful thing about this scripture is in the first line, Jesus.

Went and sat down on a hillside.

It tells me, you canna have joy and a posture of rest. We think we gotta work for joy, work for I gotta work for joy, and yeah, you have to participate. But he's seated, and then it says, the crowd gathers.

Him. If we're honest, we need to evaluate our lives.

What are we really gathering around? I know for me, I love to gather around work. Work doesn't feel like work to me. I love to work. It's a problem. I'm in counseling talking to my therapist. Like, brother, you gotta help me. He said, what your prayer life look like? I described it to him. He said, that sounds like work too, He said, have you just thought about delighting in the Lord? I said, that sounds great. How do you do that? He said, well, what if you just

Once a week. I'll just go up and do that.

And he just smirked at me, like, or you could close the door to the room you're sitting and shut off your phone, put your Bible aside because you cannot help but writing some message down, and just close your eyes and be with God for ten minutes. I just laughed. I went into the living room. I said, Lorna, babe, why am I like this? Why when someone says you need to spend time with God do I immediately think zion, Airbnb, three four hours.

God's an aramis God's in the simple.

And when I sat there and I just thought about God, something filled.

My soul, an energy of vitality.

And when I went back and talked to my counselor again, he said, how did it go? I said, it was amazing, it was so easy. He said, how did you see God in that moment? I was like, well, I've got two answers. I've got what I experienced and then how I relabeled what I experienced. What I experienced was like when I'm sitting across the table from one of my boys, just looking into their eyes. Creepy Dad, I know, I just love you. I just love you. I love everything

I said. I felt like God was looking at me like that. And then when I went and.

I thought about it again, I was like, well, there's another version of this story in my mind too. It was like God had his sleep rolled up and he was just pacing back and forth with his hand tucked under his chin in a furrow brow, like he was solving a problem. And when he recognized I was there, he kind of sighed eyed, glanced at me, and said, glad you're finally here, Because.

All that I've known is a God who wanted to use me to accomplish something.

I thought that was the greatest touch of God.

Was to be used by him.

I've realized it's a far greater treasure.

To be loved by him.

And when you receive the love of God, he pours his joy into your heart, and it's produced from His spirit in you. When you filled with the spirit, you get the features of the spirit. The evidence of God and a person is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness of control. But I wonder if what you've been searching the world for has been inside of the universe in you all along, but you got to come through

He'll be back kits his church.

But I want to invite you today to experience the joy of the Lord. Hebrews says of the Son of God, that God poured the oil of joy on him so that he would have more joy than anyone else. This is available to you, but it comes through a relationship with Jesus. Some of you today need to take the first step toward allowing Joy to reintroduce himself by putting your faith.

In Jesus once and for all.

Would you pray with me, Lord, I pray that you would open our hearts to receive your joy, the joy of salvation.

Lord.

We turn our eyes away from everything else in this world, and for just a moment, we want to capture Heaven's gaze.

Lord.

There are so many deep wounds, traumas, difficulties, struggles that we have felt are in opposition to us experiencing your joy. But you actually use the mechanism of mourning to deliver us from the grip of grief. That happiness is not waiting on the other side of something for us, It's happening inside.

I pray that we would.

Allow you in today, come into our lives, come into our hearts, come into our dreams. If you're in this room today and you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ. On the count of three, I want you to raise your hand. I'm gonna lead you in a prayer that will change the trajectory of not only your life, but eternity. If God's pulling on your heart right now to follow him.

On the count of.

Three, I want you to raise your hand. One, two, three, don't hesitate. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Now listen, We're gonna pray a prayer. You have to pray this prayer for yourself, but you don't pray this prayer by yourself. This whole church family's gonna pray with you today.

Would you just say this with me? Jesus, come into my life, make me new.

I realize I'm lost without you. Thank you that you have more grace than I have sin. I believe you are the Son of God, the resurrected King, and you're resurrecting me in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Can you put your hands together for what God is doing in this church, Elevation.

I love you so much. God bless you. We'll see you next time. Thank you for joining us.

Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry.

Is because of you that this ministry is possible.

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