Joy In Tribulation

real quick. Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for bringing us back here together, Lord. I'm so thankful that we get to uh come together again in the house of the Lord. And Lord, just be with this rest, this service, be with us in our fellowship afterwards, Lord.

And uh just may your holy spirit come on this place, Lord, in Jesus name. Amen. Good job, guys. Good job.

Right. They were awesome. Um, so I am really glad to see you guys. This is great.

You know, we uh we've had a good week of ministry. Um, we've had a some momentum and um we've been off for a couple weeks because of of bad weather, but um we added about a hundred um subscribers on YouTube in this past week, which is good. We did a ministry yesterday. you guys were part of that.

Probably half the church showed up, so that was fun, you know. Um, and so for new people online, this is our church. It's, uh, started about five months ago. And, uh, it's a small church, but, but there's a lot of love here.

And, and, uh, it is, it is growing. And, um, we've got fellowship afterwards, guys. So, stick around. You know, free lunch afterwards.

It's going to be fun. Um, uh, we haven't done that in a while. So, want to welcome everyone who's new. welcome you guys new and um let's let's have some some fun today.

We're we're a church that believes or this pastor believes that um Jesus is coming soon and um it's our job to get ready for the coming of the king. Okay? And that is um that is my focus. And today we're going to talk about one of those things which is joy.

Joy and in tribulation. Okay. Um, how should we be living when Jesus comes back? How should we be working?

How should we be loving? Okay, people um when he comes again. One characteristic of that is the joy of the Lord. Okay, I mean the king is coming soon.

All right, my savior uh is coming soon. And that should leave an expectant joy in our hearts because this is my Lord who knows my deepest hurts. He knows my my heart. He knows my struggles.

And he's always there for me. And he's coming and and we're going to be able to hang out together. And that is a super neat um thing. And and that should create excitement for us.

And so I want to dive in a little bit into the joy of the Lord. In Philippians 4:4, um Paul writes, "Rejoice in the Lord always." And again, I say, "Rejoice." And if you notice, it's not a question mark at the end.

Okay? It's an exclamation point. He doesn't say it just once, he says it twice. Whenever something is repeated in scripture, it's a real big point.

You're supposed to pay attention to that. Okay? Um rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say rejoice.

It's not a suggestion. It's a command. Okay. We're to be joyful in the Lord.

That's not um happiness, okay, necessarily because happiness is what? Circumstantial, right? It is joy. It's to have joy in tribulation, joy in trials.

Happiness is circumstantial. Joy is a choice. It's not t I'm not talking about faking happiness, okay? They're faking joy.

All right, I'm not talking about that. You know, Brother Johnson and his wife are fighting on their way to church and the kids are in the back and everyone's screaming and and they're yelling and screaming. Then they get out of the car. Hey, brother, how you doing?

You know, that's that's that's fake. Okay, that's not the joy of the Lord. And one of the problems with I think the success gospel that's so prevalent in America today is that it almost makes you feel like you can't say you're struggling something because you know if God's blesses you, if you good. And so then if things are going wrong, you must be doing something wrong.

It's the subtle uh vibe you get. I remember when I first got divorced and and there was just a feeling you got when you walked into church like they were looking down at you, you know. I had this weird no one ever said anything. It's just the way they kind of looked, you know, and it was uh why was I judgmental?

And that's not biblical. Okay, it's not biblical. Paul was probably the greatest Christian of all time, man. He got shipwrecked, got bit by a poisonous snake, guy got thrown in prison.

I mean, if if only good things happen, if you're a Christian, then then you know this what was what were they doing to Paul, you know, and and all these other disciples. So joy is a choice and that first choice is Jesus Christ. Okay? To ask Jesus into your heart, to ask Jesus into the depths of your heart and his atoning death that we were just singing so beautifully about to wash you away, wash those sins away and clean you up.

That's the first choice you need to make. And then just choosing Jesus to focus on Jesus every day and let the Holy Spirit have its way instead of focusing on our wants and needs. Okay. Why we get into trouble so much is we get off base and we start looking at our wants and needs.

We should choose to love him, obey him. Okay? The joy of the Lord, if we do that, will grow and it will manifest and the Holy Spirit will manifest in us and it will spill out on others. Joy, true joy is not based on circumstance.

Okay? It should be exhibited by one who walks with Christ. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit and it and it it builds in us. It should be prevalent all the time.

Some lots of Christians are not living in joy because they have an identity problem. Okay. Um we say we're a sinner saved by grace and we think that's an identity. But we were a sinner saved by grace.

Okay. Jesus came washed us clean. We are now a new creation in Christ. And we have to walk in that creation.

And we can't walk trying to to straddle who we were with who we now are. Okay? We have to embrace and walk in the newness of life. John 3:3 um we're to be born again in the Holy Spirit.

Okay? That's a new spiritual birth. We're new. Okay?

Uh Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, all things have been made new. Okay?

We're a new creation. We're no longer that person that we were. And we get into trouble when we fall back into our own patterns, okay? Those old things because we are not keeping the eye on Jesus.

We were kind of talking about that out there. Okay? I say all the time to my kids, my kids are here all the time say, "I'm just a boy." Okay?

And it's from Finding Nemo if you've ever seen the the movie. But I really feel like I'm just God's little boy. Okay. I I know he's up there sometimes looking at some of the things I do and he's like that boy, you know, just like he he loves us, okay?

We're to we're to embrace that sunship, that daughtership, okay? We are children of the king now. If we've asked Jesus into our heart, we're a new creation. Okay?

That's your true identity. And we're free. We're free in that. There's freedom in that.

Um, back in the Bible days, they had slaves and they had masters and and some masters were good. And sometimes a slave would earn his freedom, but he choose to go back and to stay a slave to that master. It was called a bondslave. Okay?

They'd put an all through the year and the person would choose to be a bondslave. And Paul called himself a bond slave to Jesus Christ. Okay, that means you're free. And you from that freedom, you feel so good.

You just want to serve the master from that point on. Okay, that was so what was the focus of Paul? Non-stop. Jesus.

It was all about Jesus. You choose to serve him from love, not from legalism. Okay? From love.

And remember what he saved you from. Okay? remember who we were. And you might say, "But Brian, you know what?

If I slip up." Well, that's where repentance comes in. Okay, we're going to go to Nehemiah real quick and look at something that's kind of neat. Nehemiah chapter 8, Old Testament.

Now, I want to share the context. The Nehemiah and Ezra, the scribes, they've they've broken out the law and the Jewish people have read the law. Okay. And they're weeping and crying.

They're repenting. They're they're they're torn up that they fallen so far from where they where God wants them to be. And Ezra and Nehemiah, they saw that as a good thing. Okay?

And in verse 10, uh Nehemiah 8:10, they say, "Then he said to them, go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to the Lord. Do not sorrow for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Repentance was the context by which it became the joy of the Lord. Okay?

Repentance is a key element of joy. If you remember what he saved you from, if you remember what a wretch you were, okay, that should generate joy. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Okay, we get bogged down because we we forget we get distracted from the fact that we are loved by a savior.

Okay, the devil wants us focused on the cares of the world, the stress, the bills, cell phones. Um you can check your cell phone how much time wherever mine is um you spend on it. The average if you're spending more than a half hour an hour, you're probably spending too much time about the world. Okay, what's Trump doing?

And and these types of things. That's the devil trying to distract us from focusing on Jesus. Okay, and we have to fight that by carving out some time with God. Okay, it's absolutely critical.

We've got to spend wake up in the morning and spend some time with Jesus. Pray. Be thankful for your salvation. These are the the consistent things.

Read some time in here. As you spend time in this book and in prayer, the Holy Spirit will grow in your life and the sins will fall away and you'll go into your day with joy. I have a question that I want you to think about as you go into this week. Look at your week as you're going through it and say, "How much time do I spend thinking about things on the horizontal?"

Okay? Politics, my bills, my kids, whatever, all these things on the horizontal. how much time you spend focusing on Jesus. I will tell you that if you're having a rough time, if you're having a rough day, you're probably focusing too much on the horizontal and not enough on Jesus.

So, get back to focusing on Jesus. That's the best place. And when you get attacked, because you will you will have people come up against you. You will have people cut you off.

You will have bad things happen to you. People will sabotage things. Okay? Pause.

Try not to react. Okay. If you stay in your in the word, pause, take a deep breath, pray, and then respond instead of react. Okay?

And if you do react, just you repent. Okay? We come back to repentance. You repent to God.

God, I'm so sorry. I fell short there. And then if you offended someone, go and apologize to them. It doesn't matter if they accept your apology.

Okay? If you repent to God that when you do something wrong, okay? And then you apologize to whoever you want. You're free again.

You're back to love, joy, and peace. You can be in freedom, right? Um, so what happens if you slip up? The Holy Spirit convicts you.

Conviction is different than guilt. Okay? Conviction is the Holy Spirit holding up the standard. All right?

And us realizing we're falling short. All right, I got to get better. Okay? Guilt is judgement and condemnation.

So an example of guilt is the devil sitting there. You mess up and the devil sits there. See, you did it again. You're such a loser.

You've always been a loser. You've always done that. D, you know, you'll never be better. You'll never whatever.

Holy Spirit is way different thing. Oh man, God, I'm sorry. I did it again, didn't I? My I'm such a knucklehead.

It's a whole different attitude. It's I fell short here. No big deal. You can't lose your salvation by messing up like that.

You can't. Okay, you're saved. You can apologize. You're not You're not going to hell if you slip up.

You can slip up a million times as long as you're repenting and trying to turn back to the Lord. That spirit will grow in you and it will fall away. Okay? It will fall away.

Whatever it is that you're struggling with, it will fall away. The only way you don't end up there is if you reject Jesus. Okay? As long as you're out there focusing on him, you're going to slip up sometimes because you're not perfect.

But that's okay. Repent. All right? And get back into love, joy, peace.

You will grow more joyful. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Look at your trials with joy. Let's pop over to James.

Okay. James 1 verses 2-4. James is so great. Uh, I'm reading now the Bible.

My brethren, 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. Okay? We're to count it all joy. When we face what?

Trials, tribulation. You're going to face them. Times are coming where it's going to get worse in America, not better. Okay?

We need to be more focused on Jesus to be able to be that strong person in the in the storm for the people around us. Okay, that's that's how we should be and we will face troubles. Yes. So did Jesus.

Praise the Lord. In Acts five, man, this is a great passage of scripture. So at the beginning of Acts is the the the young church, okay, the early church. And in Acts five, the uh they were out there talking about Jesus and the church was going.

It was really Pentecost had already happened. You're getting a thousand people a day joining the church. And they the the Pharisees, the same ones that that you know uh killed Jesus, right? They get the disciples together and they want to kill him, but Gamma steps up and convinces him not to.

and he was kind of one of the big rabbis, I guess, at that time. He had trained Paul and he convinced them that listen, if what these guys are doing are from man, it's going to fail. But if what they're doing is from God, not only can we not stop, but we'd be fighting against God. And they agreed.

And so we're at Acts 5:40 and we see, and they agreed with him. And when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. They beat the disciples. Okay?

and then they let him go. So they departed from the presence of the council rejoicing rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. And daily in the temple in every house they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. They got beat and they came out of there.

Woohoo. Yes. I got beat like Jesus. Yes.

Yes. They were excited to actually get experience the same thing as Jesus. They were so excited to be counted similar to Jesus. Compare that to the Christian in 2026.

You know, oh that guy cut me off. Oh, I'm so mad. It's a whole different thing. I mean, here's these guys.

Peter, Peter, check this out, man. Look at all this blood. You know, dude, you got beat seven times. I only got beat six.

Yes. High five. I mean, they were excited about suffering for Jesus Christ. And if you identify with Christ, you will suffer things like he did.

Okay? Have you ever been rejected? I mean, I have. You put it out there and you get rejected.

Whether it's at work or whether it's uh witnessing to someone, you you feel like you need to ask them, tell them about Jesus, and then they just look at you like you got lost crawling out of your ears. Um or or or you took a chance. Well, John 6 verse 666. That's right.

John 666. 666. Okay. From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more.

Jesus got rejected. Okay. They walked away from Jesus. In the next verse, I it won't be up there, but Jesus asked the 12, "Are you guys going to leave too?"

You can almost hear the the sadness in his voice. He He had the words of life. Okay. And these people walked away from him.

All right. He didn't do anything wrong, but he still got rejected. Have you ever been betrayed? Have you ever had like given your heart to someone and then have them give it to somebody else?

Okay. Or or or be stabbed in the back by a coworker or something like that? You ever heard of a guy named Judas, right? Jesus got betrayed, too.

30 pieces of silver. So, if those things happen to Jesus, they may happen to us. All right. I've been betrayed.

I've been rejected. Okay, we're to rejoice, man. We get to experience the same thing Jesus got to experience. How is that built?

How does how does that happen in one's life? It's focusing on Jesus. Okay, James says this is going to lead to patience and eventually being perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Okay, maybe you're in a dark time right now.

you had a vision of something that God wanted to you thought God wanted to do in your life and it's not worked out the way or it's or darkness has followed you know what what that vision was remember trial and trying times brings patience okay I was uh reading I have a devotional utmost for his highest by Oswald Chambers I love that devotional and in there he wrote um something relating to this he said God will bring the vision he has given you to reality ity in your life if you will wait on his timing.

Never try to help God fulfill his word. Wait. Anyone who's been a believer for a while knows you run ahead of God and and all of a sudden it goes the wrong way because you weren't patient. You ran too fast.

Okay? You've got to you got to take Exodus 14:14 says the Lord will fight for you and you should hold your peace. So be patient. The process of becoming like Christ is forged in our trials.

in our tribulations and our slip ups. And when you slip up, you just repent and you get back out there with joy in your heart. Okay? Look at Peter.

If you see Peter in the Gospels, he's a he's a hotthead. Okay? Cuts off the ear of the guy. Oh, no.

I'll never I'll never deny you. First guy to step out of the boat. He's always Russian. Russian.

He's always wherever. If you read first and second Peter, okay, which was written years later after the Holy Spirit's had time to work in him, they drip with grace, peace, love, joy. You see the result of the Holy Spirit working in his life over a over a lifetime. Okay?

Who I was is not who I am. Okay? God's been working on me and hopefully he's been working on you and and And that's all from focusing on Jesus. My mom and my my brother are probably watching.

They know. I mean, my grandfather, for anyone who's a grandparent, okay, you love those grandkids more than than anything, right? My grandpa actually stopped wanting to play chess with me because I was such a rage aholic, okay? He he was I was such a a guy.

And and I've told some stories of the times when I was a teenager or when I was in my 20s or 30s and the things that I did that were so self-centered and and immature. Okay. The person I am today is a lot different than I was back then. Um the goal is Galatians 5:22 and 23.

Okay. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering of al also often uh said as patience, kindness, goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control. Against such there is no law. Those are the things that as I look at these characteristics, I can say I am better in all of these characteristics than I was, but I'm not perfect in any of them.

So I get to still grow. I get to still continue on. And the key is your focus. You've got to focus on Jesus.

So you wake up, you get into each day, okay? You go, you get focused on Jesus, you pray. Prayer and Bible reading will keep you, it's a spiritual discipline will keep you focused on Jesus. Okay?

Go into your day in love, joy, peace. And when something gets out of that, gets you out of that, okay? Repent. Get back in.

Get back on the game. Okay? It's okay. It's going to be all right.

Repent, man. God, I I'm sorry. I lost my cool again. You know, please forgive me.

And then you go and apologize to whoever you you you wronged. And and you know, God, help me help me to do better next time. And you grow. And that's and as you continue to do that, those sins start falling away.

You get to keep growing. Okay? You can go into each day rejoicing, responding, not reacting, okay? And living in love, joy, peace.

It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Fruit happens. You have to water it, plant it, water it, grow. It takes time, okay?

The fruit of the Holy Spirit takes time. You're not going to be saved today and perfect tomorrow. It it it takes time to work those things out. What you don't want to do, though, is go back to that old self that's gone.

You've got to put that away. You're a new creation. You've got to cling to that new creation. Cling to what Jesus says about you.

You're a prince or a princess. Okay? You are. You are a co-air of Christ according to Jesus Christ.

So go each day rejoicing. It's a dark world. And as these guys come up, okay, it's a dark world out there. And The world needs someone who's flowing with love and joy and peace.

Okay? The world needs it, man. And if you're out there and you're struggling right now, you've had a rough time or you're not, I I I beg you to to start turning more time back towards the Lord. Okay?

Focus on him. Focus on getting back into the spiritual disciplines of of the Bible and prayer. Okay? Get God back into your day because the world needs that kind of person right now.

Okay? They need someone who's exhibiting the joy of the Lord. All right? And it's something we can do.

We can be those people. Amen. Let's be that. Let's focus on Jesus and be those people, okay, in this time.

So, I'm going to pray and then you guys take off here. Heavenly Father, God, as we uh as we come to a time of reflection, Lord, I just pray if someone here doesn't know doesn't know your love, um hasn't asked you into their heart, Lord, I pray that they come forward now. Let's take it down here. If if you're in a place where you've been focusing too much on the horizontal, the crazy of life, where you're struggling or you're you're you're just in a place that's dark or angry, I just pray that you come up here, lay it down.

We'll pray over you and we will um and and focus on the Lord and and remember what he saved you from and remember who you are in Christ. You're a new creation, Lord. And I just pray that that your spirit will break out in this place now and they will go into this week just with love and joy in their hearts in Jesus name. Amen.