Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.
I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast. 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. Look, I want to preach.
About joy today and I want to get there from a story and then share several scriptures with you can't tell your story. I just got a new car last year. I drove a Nissan Maxima for ten years before I bought this new car.
I loved my Nissan Maxima.
My car before this Nissan Maxima was a Nissan Maxima. That's how much I liked my Nissan Maxima. I maximized the Maxima and it was very good to me. Only thing that I ever remember happening, other than the time it cut off in an intersection, was that one day I was driving down the road a few years ago and my stereo system started doing strange things. It started skipping around to different tracks without me telling it too, and the volume kept increasing and decreasing, and so then.
I would put it back on the song. I wanted to listen to.
And I would turn down the volume or turn up the volume, depending on it would go both ways without me telling it too, without me turning the knob, and it happened for about ten to fifteen minutes straight one day that I was driving, and it seemed like my speakers in my car had a mind of their own.
So I thought maybe my Maxima got a demon, and.
Then I looked in the backseat and realized it wasn't a demon.
It was my daughter.
That she had the center console down and I never rode back there, so I didn't realize that all the years that I've had this car, you can control the volume and skip tracks.
From back there.
And she was laughing, and Graham was back there and he was laughing, and they were controlling something from the back that I was trying to deal with in the front, and they thought it was so funny, and I told him stop that it's annoying. When I figured out what they were doing, two or three minutes later, there goes the volume up and down again. There goes track two, track three, track four. Again, it's on shuffle. And I turned around and said, I'm telling y'all stop, I don't
like it. It was maybe cute the first time for you, but it's really driving me crazy up here. Stop and a few minutes go by and it starts happening again. I pulled the car over the third time. I pulled the car over the third time. I'm Providence Road. I said, let me explain something to you. I said, y'all are passengers in this maximum I'm the driver.
That means I'm the DJ.
I get to choose what comes on this stereo and how loud it is because the driver gets.
To be the DJ.
I want to ap preach to you for about thirty seven minutes today about back seat DJs, because I suspect that there are some things in your life that are being controlled from the back seat, that are being controlled at a level that you're not realizing that they're being controlled. And I believe that today God is going to use me and trust me.
I study.
Joy has become more important to me every year that I've been alive. I feel like in my twenties I just cared about accomplishing things. I've been figuring out, what's the point if you don't enjoy it? What's the point in doing something awesome? If you are not in a position to appreciate the accomplishment because you constantly need more. And I spent my twenties and maybe the beginning of my thirties just trying to get more, more, more. Sometimes
that meant more popularity. Sometimes that meant more impact. Sometimes that meant more influence. Sometimes that meant more money, more resources, more friends, more phone numbers, more connections.
But lately I've been asking the Lord.
For more joy, and it sent me on a scriptural trajectory, and.
I want to bring you into it today.
Would it be all right if we talked for a little while today about what's controlling your joy?
Amen? I'm excited. Do you feel my enthusiasm? James?
Chapter one, Verses two through four. We'll start here. I believe they're some things that are destroying your joy that you were unaware of, And James is going.
To teach us how to develop joy. Very different than discovering joy.
Discovering joy means it's waiting somewhere and you got to find it. It's waiting in your next career move, it's waiting in your next relationship.
It's waiting somewhere. You're not right now.
But James is going to show us something that may be familiar to a few of you, but it is very strange if you consider what he's actually saying. And I'm going to just read those verses, just three verses to you, he says, James, Chapter one, verus to consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
That's not where I was looking for joy.
By the way, that's not what I was praying for, hoping for, asking for, believing for.
Anyway, this is what the Bible says.
He said, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds. Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. I'm glad he specified, because the first thing I want to mention to you today, all of these points they kind of followed the theme of DJ.
So the first one is the distinction of joy, the distinction of joy knowing what it really is, understanding the nature of it. And James helps us to do that first bite, helping us to understand that there are trials of many kinds, that's what verse two said. The old King James that Pastor Mickey preached from said, diverse trials because I have learned that we're not all going through the same thing, but we are all going through something.
And how many know that there are as many different kinds of trials as there are different drinks at Starbucks, as there are different colors of paint at home depot. I found out that there are trials that are associated with plenty. There are trials that are associated with poverty. I always understood the first one because everybody understands that
being broke is a battle. But management of resources can, in its own way, test a part of your character that if you're not prepared to have it testing, it can create a lot more problems than financial poverty. In fact, financial riches can create relational poverty if there is not the emotional maturity to help us to steward with understanding what we've been given.
I'm appreaching today. If Y come along with you, it's truly.
There's single people trials, there's married people trials. There are trials that are associated with loneliness, and there are trials that are associated with companionship. There are many kinds of trials. There are many different That's what James is saying.
He's making a.
Distinction, that there's different kinds of trials, And some of us are like, well, can I try a different kind of trial?
Like can I trade trials?
Like you're talking about rich people trials, I'd like to try those for a little while you're talking about married people trials. I'd like to try. I think I'd be good at those trials. I think I'd be better prepared for those trials. But we never again, after the year that we had last year, get to associate joy with status or success, because we have now seen it.
No matter how great your name is in the.
Eyes of people, you can still want to take your very own life because joy is not a product of what people say about you. Joy is not a product of how people hold you in esteem or in disregard. And so there's different kinds of trials. Added to that, most of us don't understand the distinction between a temptation and a trial. The language that James uses in this biblical writing, the common Greek of his day, allows for both.
When he says trials of many kinds, he could just as easily be referring to economic hardship or persecution that many of this diaspora of tribes scattered abroad who are believers in Jesus were experiencing, or he could be talking about temptation. And it is important to know the distinction between the kind of trials that you will experience in your life, Otherwise you might spend years blaming the devil for your bad decisions. There are different.
Kinds of trials.
Some of our trials are the result of evil in the world, and that results in all kinds of different warfare.
That we could study for weeks about.
Some of our trials are the results of things that we did contrary to our inner wisdom. There are many different kinds of trials, and if you don't know the difference between a temptation and a trial, you will try to use the wrong tool on the trial. Because when tempted, the Bible teaches resistance.
When you are tempted to.
Step outside of the God given means by which you've been empowered to meet your God given desires, the strategy, the tool, the technique is resistance. When you face a trial, however, not a temptation, but a trial, often the key is not resistance, but acceptance. And this was important for me to see the distinction because a lot of times I'm accepting what I should resist and resisting what I should accept. It is taking me time to learn the difference, is
taking me prayer to learn the difference. It's taking the other's community to learn the difference. I'm having to get into the Word of God to know the difference so that I can approach my trials with wisdom. In fact, that's what James one to five says, and it's connected to this passage, even though I never thought it was. It says, if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault,
and it will be given to you. Now, if you want to flip the flow this year, just to James.
One to five.
Instead of asking everybody around you what you should do, start with the source, Start with the solution. We're talking about your problems with people who.
Are powerless to fix them.
It's making you feel worse, it's making them feel worse, and everybody's frustrated. So I need the wisdom to make the distinction, to know the trial that I'm in. God is this one that you want me to fight or do you want me to do what the Parables said to do one time with the weeds that were growing up alongside the terrace, and leave it alone and let you deal with it.
There's a distinction. There's different kinds of trials.
Some of the stuff that I'm dealing with as a parent right now is just called puberty. You can't cast it out, you can't annoy it, you can't instruct it.
It's a different kind of trial. It's just life.
Some of the stuff I'm dealing with right now is a temptation. Some of it is, actually, I believe, from the pit of hell. Not that the devil is like personally a signed to me, but just some stuff is evil against my purpose. And don't give yourself too much credit, because a lot of us like to think that the devil had nothing better to do than give us, you know, a flat tire, and I think the devil is much
busier than that. I think a lot of it comes down to distinguishing the type of trial that I'm in, which helps me to understand the distinctions between joy and pleasure.
Oh, you know those little church signs that they do. I think we should get one.
By the way, at elevation the church signs where they change the letters and they put up little quotes.
Yeah, I like this. I think we should get one. How many vote we get a church sign.
Let's have our first ever church voted elevation church vote.
We should get a church sign and we could put stuff up there like this. I saw this one. It said no.
Jesus, no Joy, but it was spelt k n ow Jesus.
So the first one was no.
Jesus, you don't have Jesus, you don't have joy k and oh Jesus kN ow Jesus kN ow joy. And I thought it's cute, but it's it's not true.
No Jesus, no Joy. There's a lot of things you can enjoy without Jesus. Christy Kreme tastes.
Good whether you're saved or not.
My taste buds didn't get saved. It's fun to.
Talk bad about people whether you're saved or not.
Only differences. And this is important, is that.
The quality of the joy becomes more important than the quantity of the joy.
You also hear.
Preachers say stuff like this, God doesn't care if you're happy. He just wants to make you holy. And I can't believe how many people will say amen to some business like that that you but never.
Feel about your own kid.
How many parents do we have in the house, and how many of you don't care if your kid is ever happy in life at all. I'm gonna call child Protective Services on y'all.
He ain't no good good father. No, he is a good father, good gift. So I never got that.
And I never really understood the distinction between joy and happiness, because like, there's not a difference in.
The Biblical language.
It's not difference like in English we have like phar real happy, which is like dancing happy, and then in Hebrew they had happy. It's the same word, it's blessed. It's the same word as joy. When James says counted joy, he means consider yourself supremely happy literal translation.
So we need to make the distinction. I guess between generic joy.
And Jesus joy because he said verse two, consider it pure joy. The way my mind works, if there's such a thing as pure joy, there must be another kind of joy.
I kind of cheated that a little bit.
It's more a grammar issue because the literal translation is count it all joy, so he doesn't say pure joy. I got a verse for this, though. Let me do it from a Let me do it from Hebrews chapter twelve. I've always loved this picture of joy because it helps me to make a distinction between.
Joy and pleasure. Okay, pleasure can.
Be associated with joy, but joy is not dependent on pleasure. This is the second thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about the direction of joy. The direction of joy. We're talking about backseat DJs, right, We're talking about how sometimes we find our joy controlled by circumstances and situations. But Jesus gives us a picture that stands contrary to the cultural expectation of joy. And I promise I'll read the scripture in a minute. But I just want to tell you so much and don't know
where to start, where to stop. It's just it's all in me today. There seems to be right now more than there was like when my grandparents.
We're thirty and forty.
There seems to be a pressure for us to always feel pleasure. It's no longer just a desire that we have that we want to feel good. It's almost like the way that social media has constructed our viewing experiences of other people's lives through the filters of their most desirable moments. There is something wrong with me If I am not constantly happy all the time. That's a problem with me because I am not genetically predisposed to be happy.
I'm just not.
I've found that out about myself early in life. I am not like one of you who just finds reasons to smell roses, who just finds reasons to be happy. Some of y'all appreciate the rain, appreciate the sunshine. The rain makes you feel relaxed. The sunshine makes you feel active. You can find the joy in everything. I am not of your species, and frankly you make me sick. But joy is something different, because the pressure to feel pleasure is part of the reason why we feel so miserable.
And now we are living in the midst of a generation that thinks that joy is associated with a feeling in your flesh. And it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It's important that I say it can bring a feeling, but it doesn't start with the feeling. This is where we flip the flow. Can we flip the flow? If anybody flipped the flow. It was Jesus. Here he is up on a cross. Here he is and his reputation is beyond repair. Here he is being spat on and condescended to by the ones that he created.
And the writer of Hebrews, whoever he was, says, we need to fix Hebrews twelve to two our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector or the author and finisher. Either translation is acceptable of our faith. HM for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Now this is where my message really happens. Okay, what have you set before you? That is what your joy is connected to what you have set before you, And I'll break that down the best that I can. Joy is a point
of view. Joy is a way of looking at things.
This helps me.
I don't know about you, but it sets me free from feeling the need to feel a certain way. We got so many people quitting their jobs because they're unhappy and not really understanding that sometimes joy is not the absence of sadness.
Or the presence of the spectacular.
And all we need to look at is that one verse where it says that Jesus, for the joy that was set before him.
I want to use that as a picture for a moment.
He set joy before him, so in order to endure the cross, that's the next part, enduring the cross, scorning as shame. He didn't find joy in the event. He found joy in the guaranteed outcome.
Of the event.
He did not find joy in the feeling of hanging on the cross.
It wasn't like because.
He was the son of God that the nails, you know, transcended the laws of pain and the material laws of the universe. It was just as painful, but because of purpose. You understand, it's very different to go through pain with purpose than pain without purpose. It's the difference between Graham jumping on my.
Back he's only ninety pounds and me not knowing that.
He's gonna jump on my back and me feeling like every disc just slipped like I'm seventy three years old in my lower back. And the difference between me putting ninety pounds on a bar to squat it.
If I do it on purpose, it's a warm up weight.
If I don't expect it, it might take me.
Down to the ground. Same weight. But what I was ready for when Jesus hung on the cross.
He wasn't surprised by the shame. He wasn't surprised by the suffering. He wasn't surprised by the pain. He wasn't surprised by the jeering. He wasn't surprised by their saliva. He wasn't surprised by the blood. Joy is a focus before it's a feeling. If you came to church just to hear that I promise you got your gas money's worth. Joy is a focus before it's a feeling.