Cultivating Lasting Peace and Joy in Christ

1. "The reason for the difference between the way the one taxi driver, the taxi drivers in New York operate and the way, you know, two people in Richmond, Indiana would operate. rate is because of expectations. Expectations. The taxi drivers expect turmoil. They expect conflict. See, most places when somebody runs into your car, you consider that a conflict. In New York, it's not yet. You see, your ability to, in New York, your expectations of having people in your face all the time, elbows in your face when you're on the subway, you know, your nose in someone's armpit, right, for 100 blocks. You know, this sort of thing that, well, that doesn't happen to me too often because of my size, but some of you I know right where you live, and I really wonder how you do it. It's a matter of expectations." [04:03] (61 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "A lot of Christians are cast down all the time and are losing their peace and joy all the time because they don't expect the attacks on peace and joy that are inevitable. I'd say one half, two thirds, maybe three quarters of the depression that we experience as Christians is depression. Over our depression. We're sad that we're sad. We're surprised that we're surprised. We're upset that we're upset. And if you weren't so upset about being upset, you wouldn't be as upset. At least a half of being upset is the anger and the guilt and the frustration. You say, it's not supposed to be like this. Because you don't have the proper expectations. Christians do not come into the Christian life with the proper expectations." [05:32] (45 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "The minute you make peace with God, instantly all of God's enemies declare war on you. And they're not nice enemies. You see, before you became a Christian, your main enemy in life was a good guy. Someone who loved you, someone who cared about you, someone who was doing everything he could to wake you up. Now, when you become a Christian, all your enemies are bad guys. And the three enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil. Now, if you don't have proper expectations, you are going to get mauled because, well, think of warfare. If you don't come in with proper expectations into warfare, you will be mauled. If you have, if you, overestimate or underestimate, if your expectations are off at all, you're going to be killed in a battle." [08:02] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "Joy is a buoyancy, a spiritual buoyancy that comes when you're rejoicing in God. Second Corinthians 4, 16 to 18 is a terrific place where Paul's saying, I don't remember at all, but Paul's saying, we're down, but we're not out. We're crushed, but we're not destroyed. He's talking about buoyancy. He says, Christians have got a joy that doesn't mean that we're impervious to suffering. It means that we're unsinkable. We're constantly getting wet. We're constantly being pushed down, but we don't stay down, or at least we don't sink. There's a buoyancy about it. We're constantly being pushed down. The buoyancy comes from a focus on the unchanging privileges we have in God." [11:35] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "The opposite of joy is not sadness. The reason that can't be, the opposite of joy cannot be sadness because the Bible is constantly talking about the fact that you can be joyful when you're sad. If you don't know what that means, you haven't gotten the hang of it yet. It doesn't mean you're not a Christian, but it really means you haven't even begun to tap into the resources that are yours. If what I just said makes no sense at all, you may not be a believer at all. You may not understand at all. If on the other hand, it's just something very difficult to grasp, it could be that you're a believer, you just haven't really gotten a hold of something that's critical." [12:33] (34 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "There's a big difference between joy and happiness. Happiness comes from the comfort of having things that you want. Joy is a deep kind of rejoicing, an assurance, a maturity, a mirth. I'm only going to use the word mirth, but we don't use that word much. But it's better than the word happiness, I think, for our purposes. There's a deep mirth down deep that says, I've got the only thing that really matters. And you constantly say that to yourself, and the more you say that to yourself, the more you say, hey, that's pretty good." [12:58] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Peace is confidence and trust in God's wise control of your life. The opposite of peace is anxiety. You see, there's a difference. Some people say, what's the difference between peace and joy? And the answer is, joy is the opposite of hopelessness. Joy has to do with the mirth. Joy has to do with actually being up. But peace has to do with the steadiness. And the opposite of peace is not hopelessness or despair. The opposite of peace is worry or anxiety. And peace, therefore, has to do with confidence in God's control of your life." [20:01] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "Worry is the absence of thought. Or we'll put it like this. You can either talk to your heart or you can listen to your heart. You know, tomorrow your heart's going to start to say, oh my word, what are we going to do about this? What are we going to do about that? Oh my gosh, what are we going to do about this? It goes like that all day, doesn't it? Some of you. Now there's two things you can do with your heart. You can sit and listen to your heart and you can go, you can talk to your heart. In Psalm 42, you can see exactly what happens. David in Psalm 42 is depressed and he says, why art thou cast down, oh my soul? Who's he talking to? Himself. He's talking to his soul. Why art thou cast down, oh my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God. What he's doing is instead of listening to his heart, he's talking to his soul. He's talking to it. He's saying, think about this, think about this, think about this. Don't forget this, don't forget that. Don't forget who it is that made you. Don't forget who it is that saved you. Think. Worry is listening to your heart. Peace comes from talking to your heart." [28:01] (61 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "The world, the flesh, and the devil basically come after you to try to get your conscience to go crazy. They basically, it all comes down to accusation. And the main way in which your joy and your peace is destroyed is by the world, is by the world, the flesh, and the devil getting after your assurance of your salvation. You see, they come alongside of you and they talk about your past. They say, think of the things that you've done. Haven't you ever noticed that you'd be walking down the street and all of a sudden something that you did a long time ago is incredibly vivid in living color and quadraphonic sound and it comes up right as you're going along?" [37:06] (36 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "The reason that you will lose your assurance is if they come alongside of you and they poison your conscience. There's a great place in Pilgrim's Progress where there's a man named Mr. Conscience who's a watchman around the city and if anybody tries to break into the city, Mr. Conscience runs around saying, awake, awake, awake, awake. You know, there's enemies and what Satan does is he comes up and he poisons Mr. Conscience not to kill him but to drive him insane so he yells, awake, awake, awake when there's nobody really coming in and he goes to sleep when there's somebody coming in and that's the way all of our consciences are and that's the way the world, the flesh, and the devil tries to get at us. He tries to poison our conscience and get us to look more at our sins than our Savior." [38:25] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)