Joy Dead Or Alive

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. The last few years, there's not a lot of joy anywhere else. Amusement, yes, not joy. One of the things that we realized about joy last week is joy is not necessarily a feeling. It's not just being happy. It's not Pollyanna. I know I'm dating myself. There was a movie, right? I never saw the movie Pollyanna. How was it? Eh. It's up there with Old Yeller or something like that. I don't know. Was it about the same time period as Old Yeller? I'm thinking maybe. No? Old Yeller was sad though, wasn't it? Pollyanna, always optimistic. No, joy is having that perspective, that ability to look, not just at now, but seeing the future that God has coming toward us. That's the way the Bible talks about the future too. It's not that we're going to approach the future, but the future comes toward us. That's called the paraousia in Greek. Yeah, I know, a Greek word already. I don't even have a slide for that. Which means the appearing of Christ at the last. He is our future. That's why Paul could have joy in all sorts of bizarre circumstances. Today we're going to talk more specifically about a couple of them. We're looking at the fact that Paul talks about joy is the fact that it's coming to get you, not in a bad way, but it's coming to welcome you in. Joy is that invitation into that perspective that God has about this world. I'm hoping maybe at the memorial service to share, or to at least hint at that perspective that many students don't necessarily have right now, but they so desperately need. Stanley Hauerwas, in fact, said, Society is a society today of unbelief. Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and self-expression. Don't you kind of see that in the last few years? It's like all of a sudden it's less and less and less, but I'm trying to get it, and I'm trying to hold on to it. We do things like eat dessert first because life's unpredictable. Have you ever heard that one? We're trying to find ourselves. We're trying to discover ourselves. We're trying to find something in this life that's worth living, but we don't have this long sense of journey and purpose. And I think this was especially difficult during the COVID time period for a number of younger adults who don't have that perspective. Some of us, I saw, at least anecdotally, more older people, including me being old, but people who have had a little more experience, but also who have a little more foundation under them, could look at COVID and go like, yep, we're going to get through this. We've gone through things before, and we know there's something much more in life than just the next year or two. But many people in our society don't have that anymore. And I'm telling you today, that's not who you are, whose you are, or the perspective you need. It's not what the Bible, the story of the Bible is the fact that it's, we're going to, ultimately, we know we're going to celebrate. We're going to be filled with wonder and amazement at what God has done. It's going to blow my socks off, man. When we get there, I don't even know what I'm going to do. I don't know if I'm going to fall apart or everything's going to come together. It's just going to be almost unbelievable. It's like that song, Imagine, you know, can you imagine? I don't know what I'm going to do, but I know it's there and I know it's coming. I don't care what I do. I know what God has for us. That's what Paul is dealing with. And he's writing this letter of Philippians to a church that is puny and small, maybe even smaller than us, by the way. 30 people, 40 people in a city, you know, 50,000. And he's writing from jail, Roman jail. Pretty shocking. So let's read through. We're going to kind of get down to some practical matters in the first chapter of Philippians. Now, starting at verse 12 and following. I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole Imperial Guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice. For I know that through your prayers and the help of the spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not a...