Rejoice

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Now, I've told this joke before, but I think it bears repeating. Amanda was six years old, and she was in the kitchen on the table with pencils and drawing away with colored pencils. And her mother came in as her mom was just passing through and said, Amanda, what are you drawing? And Amanda says, I am drawing a picture of God. And her mother said, oh, Amanda, but you know, nobody knows what God looks like. And Amanda says to her mom, well, they will after I'm done with this drawing. Yes, we don't have any images of God, and the Bible has got a commandment about trying to create a statue or likeness to worship God. But the question still remains, what do you imagine or image, or how do you project, or what do you think God is like? What is he at his heart? What makes him tick? What may tick him off? What is he in his character, in his being, beyond the power, and the glory, and the might, and the omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence that most would attribute to God? Who is he? What is he like? That's the big question, I think, that we need to have. Quite frankly, this is what A.W. Tozer says about when you think of God, what that means, and how important it is. Because what comes to our minds when we think of God is the most important thing about us. How you see God determines how you really see yourself, and this world, and other people. If you think God is more or less the divine watchmaker, as the deists did, some of those who were founders of our country, where they thought, yes, there is a grand designer, he set up this world like a ticking watch, now we get to discover it, we can exploit it, we can use it, we can control it. He's no longer in the picture. Our reason is the number one thing about us. And they lived in response to their understanding of God, that he was distant, and had moved, and left the planet. If you believe that God is all about fairness, and he's basically holding court every day to determine and weigh you on the scales of good and bad, you'll probably try to do a lot of good things, and then to bargain with God that you're better than you're worse. That you've done good, enough good, to make up for some of the bad things that you've done. And you can start playing kind of the lawyer games with God. But, if you believe that God is love, not power, not just about justice, not just about omniscience or omnipresence or omnipotence, but about love, all loving, all joy, then you have a whole different picture of being in God's presence. The fact that he enjoys you being with him, wants you to be with him. That it's central to his person is this fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all joy, all love, all being, all celebration, the dance of eternity from beginning to end. All of a sudden, then, being in God's presence, joining in worship, doing things with God, having him be in your life, is no longer an obligation or a threat or an evaluation every day, but it's a joy itself. It's a celebration. It's a party. So today, in our second message on replenish, we are going to be talking about rejoicing. And what it means, that at the heart of creation, in the heart of redemption, in the heart of salvation, is God's joy. And his joy becomes our replenishment of our souls. We're going to read a short passage from the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah, chapter 8, you can follow along here. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep. For all the people wept as they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready. For this day is holy to the Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So from this passage, we're going to explore these three things about replenishment and joy. What joy actually is, why it's important, and how to get more of it. How do you experience it? What joy is? The word is used quite often by a lot of people, and I think for many people, joy and happiness are interchangeable. Happiness actually is from the old English word, happenstance, and it's based on circumstances. And people rejoice or are happy in this world when their team wins, when they get a promotion, when they get a good grade, when something good happens, when they experience a fun event, when they are gathered together and they have a celebration of a birthday, or, well, anything they can think of. And I think from that, people think joy or happiness, for them, goes up and down and is always just temporary. It's based on circumstances. You have to, like, get to joy. Life itself can be dull or drudgery or difficult, and so you work for the weekend. And we're seeing that right now in the state of F...