Come All Ye Joyless | Come All Ye Faithless | Menlo Church Live Stream

Now, I want to be clear. Happiness, in terms of emotional state around positive circumstances in your life, that's what happiness is. It's not the villain. Like, that's great. When it happens in your life, we should enjoy it. Happiness isn't the villain. It just can't be the vision. That can't be the goal of your life because it's dependent upon things and situations you can't control. [00:24:42] (19 seconds)  #HappinessIsTemporary

And without a Jesus-shaped vision of joy, without a Jesus-shaped vision of Advent or Christmas, the cultural promise of happiness at any cost is the most convenient and available vision for life to reach for. But what we're going to see in the very first Christmas is that there is something deeper than circumstantial happiness available, something that doesn't just happen to us. It happens through us. It happens within us. And ultimately, in Mary, the mother of Jesus, we will see that joy grows in places happiness can't reach. [00:25:16] (36 seconds)  #JesusShapedJoy

This is the paradox of joy, that something is happening inside of us that is different than what's going on around us. There's an inner confidence and peace and a capacity to weather the storms of our lives, a state of being that goes beyond our circumstances. This joy is what grows in places that happiness can't reach. She was favored and troubled. She was chosen and confused. She was blessed and afraid. [00:32:11] (29 seconds)  #InnerJoyBeyond

Mary demonstrates that joy isn't just pretending that everything is okay. It's understanding that everything is not fine. And that even though that might be the case, choosing a path with God that is deeper than everything else around us is the wise choice. Fear is often our pathway to the deepest kind of healing. If we will simply be honest about our fears, if we'll be honest about the things that we go, if I didn't have this or I had to face this or that person left, this job was no longer available. Oftentimes that thing, if we were willing to give it to God, on the other side of it, there is far greater joy available. [00:35:03] (41 seconds)  #RealJoyNotPretend

Finally, we see that God grows joy in surrender, not certainty. When Mary asks God how Gabriel's plan was about to happen with the birth of Jesus since she was a virgin, it wasn't a cynical question. It was out of sincere curiosity. And we know that not only because of how Gabriel responds, but because of her response after that, after the plan is communicated and she gets a sense of just how profound this moment is in her life and in the history of the world, as much as it's going to affect her expectations and her circumstances, she is in. [00:35:44] (39 seconds)  #SurrenderForJoy

And I wonder for you and me if that's the descriptor of what our journey with God looks like, or if we only trust God once we've determined that his plan is trustworthy. She trusted that if she kept walking with God, he would keep revealing the next right step. See, joy, it isn't the reward for her getting her life under control. It was the fruit of her deciding that even if she wasn't certain about everything, she could surrender to God and trust his hand on her life. [00:37:05] (29 seconds)  #TrustStepByStep

But I didn't, not really. I trusted my worry more than God's wisdom. I trusted my anxiety more than God's activity. So I did all the Christmas stuff, right? I did everything on the outside that you would expect a pastor to do. I preached sermons. I led services. I prayed with families. I helped Christmas happen. And inside, I was unraveling. [00:39:56] (23 seconds)  #WorryVsWisdom

I didn't cling to fear because the situation was too big. I clung to fear because I didn't really believe that God would show up unless I stayed in control. This idea that God only works in my life when he sees I've worked as hard as I can first is not actually true. That's not just stress. That's a spiritual posture. That's a disposition of the way I think about the world. Do I go to God first, or is he my last resort? [00:41:36] (34 seconds)  #LetGoOfControl

Many of us, we live there more often than we want to admit, not just at Christmas, but all the time. We grip our kids, our relationships, our calendars, our image, our finances, that really difficult class, that relationship we hope comes into being our future with white knuckles. And there's no way to even get into our lives. And then we wonder why joy never shows up. We say that we trust God, but we give him no room to move in our lives. Everything's a non-negotiable. And Mary, she shows us another way. [00:42:10] (32 seconds)  #LoosenYourGrip

She didn't have certainty. She didn't have control. She didn't have the full plan. What she did have was a surrendered heart and open hands to say, God, if this is what you're calling me to do, I'm going to trust you with it. Her surrender, it's the very thing that made space for joy, not the thin, seasonal happiness that we settle for around Christmas today, but God-rooted joy strong enough to stand in the middle of the chaos of Christmas when it first started. [00:42:41] (28 seconds)  #TrustWithoutCertainty

See, joy, it doesn't grow where fear is in charge in our lives. Joy grows where we release the illusion that we're the ones holding the world together, and it is an illusion. Maybe, just maybe, the reason that some of us feel joyless is that we're just, honestly, we're tired. We're tired from trying to run a universe that we were never designed to carry. [00:43:10] (25 seconds)  #JoyOverFear

And this is where we need to be honest. See, happiness and joy, they do not grow in the same way. Happiness just, man, it's kind of easy. You know what it takes. It just takes energy and distraction and spending and scrolling and performing and planning and entertaining and sometimes, if we're honest around Christmas, pretending. You're not actually happy, but you know that's the part you're supposed to play. In other words, happiness is the sugar rush of the soul. You get a quick hit and then you crash. It fades as fast as it comes. [00:45:15] (37 seconds)  #NotJustHappiness

Joy takes something different. Joy takes investment. Joy takes slowing down when everything in you wants to speed up and go at the pace of spending your way to circumstances that you hope you can control. Joy takes sitting with God in places that you would rather escape. Joy takes telling the truth about what is really going on inside of you and inviting God to meet you there. [00:45:51] (23 seconds)  #SlowDownForJoy

Second, release what you cannot control. Paul says that he has learned the secret of being content in all circumstances. And his secret was not that he needed to orchestrate more outcomes or manipulate people to get what he wanted. That was not the secret. For him, he understood what this was going to look like. Mary, she hands God the most important part of her life and she says, let it be according to your word. I'm in. And joy grows where surrender takes root in our life, where we decide, God, you get to call the shots. [00:48:20] (35 seconds)  #ReleaseControlFindContentment

That's what joy does. But it takes an investment. Happiness just takes more effort and more effort and more effort. Happiness collapses as soon as your circumstances shift. But joy stands steady because its roots go deeper than anything life can shake loose. So this Advent, Mary, she's inviting us into a deeper life. Paul is showing us what it really looks like. And Jesus is offering to grow in you a joy that your circumstances can't touch, can't reach, can't accomplish. [00:50:20] (31 seconds)  #InvestInJoy

Long after this Christmas, we will be paying down the debt that we incurred in pursuit of momentary happiness. With things like buy now and pay later and attractive credit card opportunities, a lot of Americans will be paying for this Christmas next Christmas. Happiness always makes you pay for what you get long after you get it. But joy is the opposite. Joy is getting what Jesus paid for by going from a cradle on that first Christmas on his way to the cross to secure your forever hope. [00:50:57] (34 seconds)  #JoyPaidByChrist

Happiness drains you, but joy was bought for you. It fills you up. Happiness is earned. Joy is given. Happiness is purchased on credit. Joy is purchased at the cross. At some point, you have to realize that the reason joy feels so different from happiness is because joy does not depend on your and my effort. It does not depend on you and me manufacturing an outcome or my life circumstances being okay or my effort or my performance or my personality. [00:51:31] (31 seconds)  #JoyIsGift

Joy is not something that you and I achieve. It's something that in Jesus we receive. That's the secret that Paul learned in Philippians 4. He doesn't say, I found the strength within me. I found the power of positive thinking. He says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Not through optimism, not through hustle, not through getting life under control, through Christ. And Mary discovers the same truth. [00:52:02] (25 seconds)  #ChristIsOurStrength

Her joy is not the product of her circumstances. Her joy is the product of her surrender to the one who would enter her circumstances. But the foundation underneath all of it is not your and my discipline. It's God's grace. And this Christmas, I hope you'll receive it. Not our spiritual strength, not our understanding and endurance to push through, but God's presence being made more and more present in our lives. Not our ability to hold it all together, it's his willingness to hold you and me together. [00:52:27] (30 seconds)  #JoyThroughGrace

And here's the good news this Advent. Every place that happiness can't reach in your life is exactly where Jesus has already gone. Into the fear, into the confusion, into the disappointment, into the grief, into the exhaustion that has made you wonder about God. God is waiting because there's something deeper for you than even what you think you want in those places. [00:52:58] (21 seconds)  #JesusGoesThere