Finding Joy Amidst Sorrow: A Christian Perspective

Devotional

Sermon Summary

Bible Study Guide

Sermon Clips

"Your hope in suffering does not put you to shame or give out is because the love of God that is your being loved by God is poured by the Holy Spirit into your heart. That's a miracle. Do you know what that tastes like to have the Holy Spirit pouring through the gospel a sense I'm loved by the creator of the universe, and you know your hope is not going to fail?" [00:29:05]

"Paul believes that truths and the argumentation created by the sequencing of truths actually does the miracle by the Spirit of giving you a heart of hope in the midst of suffering. And I say this just because there are so many people I've stood in this room right here for over what built in 1991 you do the math." [00:31:06]

"How many people would prefer a pill or some psychological strategy to sustain joy in suffering than words just words, just argument, just divinely given logic? If you believe that, namely that Paul's argumentation for how we can be given the miracle of joy in suffering can't happen through words, you should rip Romans out of your Bible." [00:32:45]

"Second Corinthians 6:10, we are treated as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich. And that phrase, sorrowful yet always, shows that we haven't done anything amiss by putting verses together here in this second group. Sorrowful yet always, so he's the one who puts them together." [00:33:12]

"One of the reasons there can be joy and sorrow simultaneously is that the reasons for the one and the reasons for the other are different, and they're both true. Both sets of reasons for why there should be sorrow and why there should be joy are true. They're not contradictory; they're both true." [00:35:14]

"I was 28 years old, and my mother and my father were leading a tour in Israel. I was married, had a little two-year-old, and the phone rang with one of those calls you want never to get. 'Hey Johnny, this is Bob, brother-in-law. I've got bad news. Your mom and dad were in a bus accident hours ago, and your mother didn't make it.'" [00:36:20]

"While I was weeping, I did not plan this. There erupted from my memory and from my heart explosive joy. Father, thank you. She was a spectacularly good mom. Father, thank you. You gave her to me for 28 years. Father, thank you in recent years that we had a clearing of the air from all my teenage feisty disrespect." [00:37:28]

"According to Revelation 21, which we read earlier, tears are correlated with death and loss, and crying is correlated with pain. Let me read it to you: 'He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.'" [00:39:28]

"Pain and loss hurt. They just hurt. You can't stop them from hurting any more than if you smash your finger with a hammer. They hurt. That's what pain is. Pain is what brings up sorrow. Pain brings up crying. Christian joy doesn't mean you don't feel pain, and when we feel it, when tears come, that's real." [00:40:06]

"Picture joy as a granite, a great, I mean very big, maybe as big as this room, a big granite boulder on the rugged seacoast of your life. It's solid because it's built out of the sovereignty of God, the forgiveness of sins, and the preciousness of Jesus. God is in charge of your life down to the details." [00:42:06]

"And then the storm comes, and the waves rise, and they crash over this boulder, and they submerge it out of sight, and the bright shimmering laughter disappears under the surface of tears and the surging waves of weeping and sobbing. But nothing, nothing can dislodge this boulder of joy in all that God is for us." [00:44:05]

"Embrace all the scriptures, love all the scriptures about joy and sorrow. Grow your families, grow your churches into mature, strong, stable Christians who know from experience and know from scripture that weeping lasts for the night, but joy comes in the morning, and also know that the night of weeping is a night of unshakable joy." [00:46:03]

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