312: Jeremy Wolfe - Exhortation: True Happiness = Joy

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to good Chris Selfian talks. I’m Levi. I’m Chris. I’m Jason. And I’m Brian, thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. Each week we post a talk. That we previewed from suggestions sent in by listeners from around the world.

2. 0:30

   Then we record a short intro beforehand as a personalized recommendation to you on why we are sharing the talk. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk.

3. 0:50

   Hello, this is Brother Chris. This week we’re listening to an excitation that was given earlier this year in April by Brother Jeremy Wolf at the Abilene Ecclesia in Texas. And into that expectation, brother Jeremy is drawing from some discussions that he had with another brother while they were working on a project talking about what is the meaning of true happiness. What I really enjoyed about this with brother Jeremy, other than it’s just enjoyable always to to chat with brother Jeremy and to talk through things.

4. 1:19

   And you can tell he is someone who who thinks very deeply about things and has lots of perspectives that I found to be really interesting is he talks about how that the happiness that the world pursues is not the same as the happiness that we’re supposed to have in our walk. And that instead that happiness is found through the sense of joy the scriptures talk about. And by finding that sense of joy, we’re able to find contentment regardless of the state that we might find ourselves in, whether that is, by worldly definition, a good time or a bad time or anywhere in between. And I find this just to be a good reminder. It’s something that I think your expectations and your perspectives as things are going on can have a dramatic impact on your outlook.

5. 2:11

   And so brother Jeremy goes into a lot of detail and a lot of examples of how to look at things and how that perspective can really have a dramatic impact on your walk. And I found it to be a really encouraging expectation. And I hope that you find it to be just as encouraging on your walk. So this was sent in as a recommendation from somebody in Texas who heard the excitation and recommended this one to us. So I hope that you find this excitation by Brother Jeremy Wolf to be encouraging to you and will help you to find that sense of joy, to find the true happiness that we have in our walk.

6. 2:52

   So with that, I will turn it over to brother Jeremy Wolf for his excitation entitled True Happiness Equals Joy. Morning everyone. I have to say, and maybe I should do so somewhat apologetically, that this exhortation comes from the same source as my last one, where I announced that it came from brother Nathaniel and I working on a construction project. Talking too much, probably, and but it was. It’s nice to be able to spend so many hours with someone like minded with you.

7. 3:24

   And it gets me to thinking, you know, the times in my life where I’ve probably felt the most resilient to the pressures and pain in the world around me is when I am getting to spend so much time with brethren. And I think about building this house and and Nate’s been up there with me quite a bit.

8. 3:45

   And we sometimes we don’t get a lot done because we have to stop because the conversation gets so good. You know, we’re, we’re solving so many problems, but also think about, you know, when we first bought that property we’re building, Ryan and I got to work together a lot clearing brush and trying to keep goats hemmed in.

9. 4:03

   And that was a good time. And we were able to get closer and bounce ideas off of each other. And I think about when I was young and building houses with my dad and most days I was with dad and Todd Landon and people that are like minded with me. And there’s something in that, you know, where you here, you’re on the same mission as the people around you and it builds resilience in you that comes directly from scripture. It’s similar to if you do the readings every day or or have some sort of spiritual food out of the book, the the evil in our own minds and the temptations and pressures of the world tend to bounce off of us better.

10. 4:43

    So I was thinking about that how you know that that makes us more resilient. And then Native recommended to me in our conversation at class that he had listened to with his family. So my family and I listened to it also. And it was about happiness. And this guy had distilled down what happiness is and he’d come up with the formula that’s events in your life minus the expectations. So like basically when we’re not happy to choose it because expectations not met.

11. 5:16

    And there’s, there’s kind of a lot to unpack there that I won’t get into a lot, but what it did is it, it kind of triggered in my mind some some thoughts I’ve had for years. So I went digging through some old notes that I had. And because I can remember, my dad had handed me a book when I was pretty young and it was the genius of discipleship, my brother Dennis Gillett. Really good book if you haven’t read it. And there was something in it that really impacted me. And, and it, as I look back through this, it made me realize, well, as a young man, this really did it kind of set a template for how I tend to look at things because it, it, it caused me to do a bit of a deep dive into what is it that makes us feel stable and good and our walk and, and trying to adhere to the gospel.

12. 6:06

    And I decided back then through the influence of that book, that’s not happiness. It’s something deeper than that. And brother Gillett utilizes the term joy as superior to happiness. And it’s not all, it’s not all that simple because that’s these are English words and we’re, we’re trying to grapple with using English words to explain what was recorded for our learning.

13. 6:36

    But if you think about happiness, well, the first thing I’ll say is if you, if you do a Bible search for happiness, you get about the same result you get when you search for a mortal soul or fallen Angel or it’s not in there. And there, there are things in there like cheerfulness, rejoicing, joy, things like that.

14. 6:58

    But I just think that’s interesting that if you were to ask anybody in the world, and probably a lot of us, what, what do you want? What do you need? I just need to be happy, right? That’s kind of what people are wired to want to feel happy, feel good. And we all too often are looking for that low hanging fruit of this temporary feeling of cheerfulness is what is what we’re actually after. But we know through this book that it’s not about us. God didn’t create us just to save us. He didn’t create us just to make us happy. He created us to be something holy and better and to have an opportunity that we can seek.

15. 7:37

    And in that comes a deep seated feeling that is much better than happiness, that happiness can actually spring out of. And we’ll use the term joy to cover that in this talk, that more substantial foundational feeling of stability. And if I really think about it, what where it comes from as being fully converted. You know, we’re all in here because we believe in this book. We believe in the gospel.

16. 8:06

    We all agree on our first principles together and and Christadelphian teaching. And if we really do though, if we really believe what this book has to offer, then we stand with a quiet confidence and a resilience and not I don’t want to do too much of A dive into root words and things like that, but there’s a couple of Old Testament words translated joy.

17. 8:37

    One of them is translated often in joy and but it’s more often translated except to accept something. And I don’t want to act like a language expert or anything, but that resonates with me. There’s a good it’s a good feeling to be able to accept things because we’re we’re victims of our own minds all the time.

18. 9:07

    And like I said leading up to this is we have all these expectations and hopes and ideas and desires and needs, and then we forget reality. And you know, you can’t change the people around you. You can’t change your circumstances all too often, but you can’t accept them. You can accept people for the way they are.

19. 9:29

    You can accept that you do have the flesh in you and that you are weak, not accepted as in go with it, but you can accept that that’s going to be there. Satan’s going to go with you wherever you go and what are you going to do about it is where you have to settle. And God built us that way where we need purpose, we need, we need a mission, we need direction, we need a struggle to to work through, something to overcome. And so there’s a lot of accepting. We have to accept the circumstance we’re in. We’re in a dire circumstance.

20. 10:04

    We’re mortal, we’re dying, everybody we love is dying. So we have to accept that, be fully converted, that there is hope. And then amazingly, we can feel pretty good anyway. We can feel all right because there’s there’s something else better out there. And so into the New Testament, the word most often used for joy is best translated a calm delight according to the the concordance. And so that goes right along with it too in the New Testament is, you know, this isn’t some sort of a spring up and jump around in the aisles and dance kind of joy. It’s a quiet, calm confidence that gives you delight. And that is exactly what we feel. I think that describes what we feel whenever we we read the hope of the gospel that Jesus was pressing forward so fervently.

21. 11:07

    That’s what it gives me when I feel like I really believe this and I really want to be a part of this. It gives you direction and it calms you. And that’s the feeling that we’re actually after is a feeling of stability and hope. And so while joy is an English, it’s a, you know, the definition would be a strong feeling of pleasure or our motion of gladness and happiness and the light that’s caused by something good.

22. 11:40

    So that, that is all. That’s, that’s a good definition of what we want to feel. And I think it’s important, you know, to, to think about the severity of not looking at it this way and the, the, the pitfalls that you can go into. And I’ll back up a little bit right here and say, you know, the severity of not moving forward toward the gospel and something that you really hope for and feeling joy in it.

23. 12:15

    You know, what is the, what’s the alternative? You know, it can, it’ll, it’ll bury you. And the class that Native recommended to me, the guy said something that really struck me for a couple of reasons. He said, this guy said his son had died and he said his mind, his brain reminds him, I think he said 16,000 something times.

24. 12:39

    It’s, you know, just just constantly he’ll be doing OK and his, his mind will say, yeah, but your son’s dead, you know, and you’re, they said every single time it’s excruciating pain. And I can’t imagine more pain. You know, I don’t think a human could feel more pain than that. Unfortunately, we all know people and that have that have experienced that. And he described it as a sharp pain that went down in the bottom right corner of his heart. And that jumped out at me because I, I know that feeling he’s talking about where something is so painful you can’t process it and you just feel it. And he said, you know, we’re, we’re a victim of our own minds, which is what the Bible tells us, right? The deceiver in our mind.

25. 13:21

    It’s, it’s always lying to us. And at best, our brain is telling us what it thinks is right at best. And it’s usually wrong. And he said it this way. He said my brain tells me my son died, and I have to tell my brain. Yeah, But he lived. And that was kind of beautiful to me because I think about people that I’ve lost or, you know, whenever something terrible happens and it changes your circumstance, it’s, you know, it’s like, yeah, but everything that led up to that, we had that or, you know, it doesn’t really matter.

26. 13:59

    You can use a lot of different examples, but our brain doesn’t tend, you know, God built us for survival. And if we’re not careful, you know, the our brain wants to focus on what’s negative because what’s negative is what kills us or hurts us. And so we tend to focus on it. But consciously, as we’re invited to elevate our way of thinking into a heavenly position through Christ, we have this opportunity to override that negative bias that we have and say, no, but he lived. You know, he, he’s dead.

27. 14:33

    But, but remember, he lived. Remember all these good times that we had. And you would never want to live in a world he’s, you know, this man would have never wanted to live in a world where that child wasn’t in his world. And you can just go on and on on that vein of it takes me straight to Romans 8, which I go to often personally.

28. 14:52

    I would imagine a lot of you do, and I’ll just read it. We know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.

29. 15:11

    So that would be the first born among many brethren. And they and these whom He predestined, He also called, and these whom He called He also justified. And then these whom He justified He also glorified. What then should we say to these things if God is for us, who is against us? So that’s that’s where I go whenever, when I’m down and I think about am I fully converted? Am I, I believe that I’m called and if I’m called by God, I need to accept that.

30. 15:46

    It’s my duty to accept that because I think I said that. I can’t remember if I said this in the CYC or or when’s it not class or something recently, but we all kind of know how sorry we are inside. Not kind of we know like we all know our weaknesses. We know how we go wrong.

31. 16:04

    So it’s really easy to be down on ourselves and think, why me? Why would God call me? Well, he did call you. He did and you have an opportunity to declare his righteousness in doing so. And one of the ways that we can do that is to accept that calling and all of our flawed way of doing things and, and put forth effort for him and that will give us joy. That is unbelievable because that’s the purpose that we were created for.

32. 16:34

    And one thing I think about, you know, talking about the severity of, of giving in to that loop of negativity where we don’t interrupt it with God’s way of looking at things from that bigger picture where like I read in Romans, God’s providing something for us even through we don’t even know. Sometimes we can look back on our life and see something terrible that happened and something better came from it.

33. 17:00

    But usually we can’t. A lot of times we won’t know until we’re in the Kingdom how all of that work together for good. And how even in our groanings, as it says earlier in this chapter, like our flesh is groaning and we don’t even know how to pray. And God is yet he is still there for us, still listening, still there to provide for us. And so we need to really understand the absolute importance of consciously thinking in a positive way that’s filled with hope.

34. 17:34

    Because if we don’t I, I noticed in Deuteronomy, I’ve written this down years ago. This is in Deuteronomy 28 where we have all the blessings for serving God and all the cursings for, for not doing the things that God desires of us. And it’s terrible. I mean, it just goes through these horrible curses that the people will have to live through. And it says in verse 47, Deuteronomy 28, it’s because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart. And you know, back in verse 37, it uses the word horror. It’ll become you’ll become a horror. And I think it’s important to look at it that way. We want to run away from that horror that that leads to flesh that we, that is, we’re led to by fleshly thinking. And the reason we can go there is because we forgot to serve God with joy.

35. 18:37

    That’s what it says in Deuteronomy is all of that pathological disaster of, of falling away and falling away and falling away. It came from not having that goal in mind of, of, of joyfully serving God. And so I think of it like this. You know, if, if we read this book, like they, like they tended to do when they were living under the law, especially they look at these laws and the rules and you know, we don’t want to serve God because it’s the rules. We want to serve God because that’s what we’re supposed to do.

36. 19:17

    And we love God and that’s what he made us for. And it’s similar. I can think of it in my own way, Like I don’t want my wife to love me or my kids to respect me because I told them to, because this book tells them to necessarily. I wanted to do it because all of my effort and all of my love for them makes them want to fight for me and love me and respect me.

37. 19:39

    And that gives me great joy when that’s working. And God is exponentially more that way. He’s provided this thing for us, this opportunity that if we grab hold of it, the joy goes to him also. And man, what an unbelievable thing to think about it that way. It’s not about us. When we think it’s about us, It’s disappointing because we’re kind of sorry, like I said, but if we have this chance to give God joy now there’s something that I can that I can feel like I, I would like to do that. And, you know, I think it’s important to. To think about the simple things that hinder us, you know, doubt, fear, worrying over small problems and, and allowing that fear, that negativity bias in our brain to to tend us toward dread and, you know, fearing the judgement. You know, it’s just those things we need to look at as, as things that it’ll all fall into place if we’re just moving forward and serving God.

38. 20:52

    So, you know, in the Old Testament, you think about joy and when it uses the words translated into joy in the Old Testament especially, it’s often expressed with like singing and even dancing. And then, you know, in events like enthronements or after a victory of some kind. And my, my, my mind goes to David immediately with his, not only in the stories of his jubilation and his, he had a very expressive way of showing his joy that we would probably shy away from now, you know, in our serious way of doing things.

39. 21:33

    But you can see in the Psalms that he wrote why he expressed joy. And we won’t look him up for the sake of time. But Psalm 511, he, he expresses that he has joy because of the protection that God provides him. Psalm 16, he talks a lot about hope that gives him joy. Psalm 21, the confidence of strength and of God, confidence in God’s strength.

40. 22:01

    Psalm 32, God’s mercy gives him joy. And Psalm 51 he refers to salvation, the hope of salvation giving him joy. So protection, hope, confidence in God’s strength, God’s mercy, salvation, what those things all have something in common when I look at it, they’re very substantial and they’re very relevant. And good times or bad times, if you’re really happy and you feel like God’s protecting you, that’s a good feeling.

41. 22:30

    If you’re really sad and you feel like God’s protecting you, that’s a good feeling. So that’s that resilience that we’ll get into even more that the difference starts to to distill the way of a biblical joy versus the happiness that we all want to seek in our daily lives.

42. 22:51

    In the Bible, we’re seeing something that’s very deep seated, very foundational, something that we have to really believe in. And I think we know, you know, we can look at each other’s examples and sharpen one another. And I think we all know whether it’s in this room or people that we’ve known in our wall that that seem to kind of have this together, whether they would describe it this way or not. And there’s something really there. And a lot of times you might not recognize it. Brother Gillett used an example in in his book about how when you can’t find something, you’re looking for something everywhere.

43. 23:33

    And then finally you do find it. And it turns out it was you just couldn’t remember exactly the shape and color and, and then you find it and it’s, it’s great because you found this thing. And you know, a lot of times we get this wrong image of what a happy, well adjusted person is. But then you find yourself drawn to these certain people. And if you, if you adjust that vision of what is it I’m looking for in this person, you see it.

44. 24:00

    All of a sudden they have this deep seated joy in their life. They tend to be the people that you’re most drawn to. And I’ve really thought about this of people in my life that and throughout the years that have helped me.

45. 24:13

    And I think that’s beneficial because we want to be there for each other. And I, I want to be able to develop into some someone that people can lean on and look to because that’s a big part of Our Calling as as a part of the body. And so I think it’s important that we get that wrong image out of our head about the bubbly happy. Sometimes they are that sometimes people do have that. That’s more of like a temperament thing though. But what the people that are generally well adjusted and happy and strong, that’s deep seated joy. And they’re getting that because they’re fully converted and they’re confident and it gives that like the real word you’re trying to express that acceptance or that calm delight. You know, we can be accused of lacking joy in our services and sometimes maybe there’s some validity to that criticism. But when I look at this group, there’s a lot of joy, there’s a lot of belief, there’s a lot of faith, and we just need to be sure what we’re looking for with each other. And you know, I think a lot of about when I think about this, the the peril of the sower, I won’t turn there for now. We all know the story.

46. 25:24

    The when the seed falls among the rocks and springs up, it’s like someone that springs up with joy, but not it’s not that real joy. It’s not that same joy. It’s like, you know, you don’t want to hear the gospel and think that sounds amazing, but then you have no root and so you die away. So like I said earlier, where we go, Satan goes, our brain goes with us.

47. 25:50

    The deceptive thoughts that lie to us all the time. Like I said, at best our brains telling us what it thinks is true. That goes with us everywhere we go. So when we hear something in this book that gives us hope, it can be right, it can be correct, it can be good, but don’t let don’t be that person that doesn’t let it take root and, and really meditate on those things and develop something deep inside yourself, because then it just becomes a frivolous happiness that comes kind of from a good plate of food or something.

48. 26:25

    You know, you don’t want it to be like that. You want it to be something real, something that sustains you through anything. And, you know, we, we try to draw a distinction between US and the, the other churches say that sometimes they appear, appear to be more joyful in their services. And they’re, you know, we know better than to to allow the stimulation of, you know, things being induced by frivolous doctrine or music or whatever it might be. But but, but let’s look inward.

49. 26:54

    Let’s think about what do we do that’s like that? You know, do we put out a facade of, of what we want people to think we are? Do we, you know, we can accuse the other churches of that, but what about us? Do we do that? Of course we do. And we we think people are buying this image that we project of ourselves. What good am I doing you if I project an image of this happy, well adjusted individual with inside? I’m not, I’m not doing you any good and I’m not doing me any good.

50. 27:27

    And let’s make sure within our brotherhood and within this ecclesia, we’re not doing that. Let’s be real with each other and let’s be aware of each other’s problems. Let’s confess our faults to one another and and bolster one another. You know, there’s nothing wrong with cheerfulness. There’s nothing wrong with joy and songs and dance and cheerful faces.

51. 27:53

    But if that stuff’s not there, you can’t assume that somebody’s not doing well and, and doing the right thing and worthy of, of following and, and working together with them. Because just because life is, is turning rough for someone doesn’t mean that they’re not looking at things the right way. And, and, and those people are the best examples for us.

52. 28:19

    There’s a good, a good thing that I, I’d written down where but Jesus did say be of good cheer several times told people be of good cheer. And it was always when something horrible was going on. So what is that about? And I’ll just kind of run through the the palsy man that was led down through the roof when the disciples were in peril on the sea. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in peril on the sea. I mean, I think that I have one time people that live more in a sea going culture might laugh at me, but I thought it was pretty scary.

53. 28:57

    And you know, on a on a small boat in cold water with, with large swells, that is very unsettling. And the woman that had the issue of blood and the disciples when they were about to lose, lose Jesus, he tells them to be a good cheer. And you know, all those cases like me saying how how terrified I’ve been on the water, like somebody would have told me to cheer up right then I’d have been like, yeah, I wish I could. But this is, this is one of those cases of very poor translation.

54. 29:27

    The word it’s, it’s, it’s kind of odd that most modern quality translations do it this way. But what it what the word means is to have courage. He was telling to have courage. That’s way different. You know, he was saying, now if, if I’m scared on the water and he says Jesus, and if you know Jesus and he tells you be of good courage.

55. 29:51

    Now I can get behind that. That would that would kind of resonate with me a little bit more or if you the palsy or the issue of blood or when you’re about to lose someone you love and you’re trying to come to grips with that courage. That doesn’t mean the pain is not going to be there.

56. 30:05

    That doesn’t mean the fear is not going to be there. All that means is stand strong in the face of it. And and Christ had given the people that he says this to something substantial. He talked about the gospel. He talked about hope. He talked about things that are real and these are things that when he has instilled that in you and then he says have have good courage.

57. 30:32

    You can you can think about the lessons he’s taught you and plant your feet on those and you do feel courage. And so I want to, I want to step away from that.

58. 30:45

    Like I said, we don’t want to have that cheerful, happy thing that that only can exist under favorable circumstances. You know, you can feel joy at a funeral.

59. 30:57

    You probably aren’t going to feel happy or cheerful at a funeral, but you can feel joy. You can feel a deep seated hope that comes from really believing that there’s something more. In 2nd Corinthians 10, six verse 10, Paul says you can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing. Does that make sense to people in the world? Do you think people that don’t people haven’t read this book to be sorrowful and rejoicing at the same time? Like that sounds like what you would call an oxymoron, but it’s not because I think everybody in this room has experienced that to be sorrowful, sorrowful yet rejoicing. And that is a weirdly comfortable, powerful place to be.

60. 31:42

    And I you can all think of your own examples of that. If it if it’s losing someone you love that that that had this show to life, well lived, that endured to the end and you lose that person, grief is there. But like I said earlier, that I thought was neat that that guy said, but that person lived and they were part of of your life and they have a hope and there’s some kind of powerful joy in that.

61. 32:08

    That’s not really the same as any other kind of joy. So not only is it possible to be sorrowfully yet rejoicing, but it’s, it’s, it’s like some of the most powerful joy you can possibly feel because it’s got your mind reduced down to its basic elements of what we really are and what a dire circumstance we’re in. And yet you still have hope.

62. 32:30

    And that’s where you can really feel like we have something here and we really do. And that gives me so much joy. I think it’s worth looking up. I read in Romans earlier, just a couple pages over for me, Romans 5.

63. 32:54

    Let’s see verses 2 through 6 through. And we’ve also obtained our introduction into faith into this grace in which we stand. And we in this in, in this translation, it says exalt or to or to have or to rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exalt in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance, proven character and proving character, hope and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It was given for to us.

64. 33:33

    For while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. So there’s just there’s a lot there that I could I could just make the whole excitation on those few verses right there. You know, the love shown to us while we’re the mess that we are. How does that not give us hope, You know, and and he he brings perseverance into it. And that’s what I’m trying to get at is that acceptance, that stability, that fool, that feeling of being fully converted.

65. 34:06

    That is what gives us that perseverance. We’re able to persevere. We’re able to be those that overcome and inherit these things that are promised to us.

66. 34:19

    And I just think that’s just such a great a great thing to try to to try very consciously to develop into our lives and and doesn’t matter what comes our way. Then we’re standing on the same thing and good times and the bad times. James one, we all know the verse count it all joy when you fall into temptation.

67. 34:45

    Even, you know, there’s, there’s a lot to unpack there, but there’s there’s just opportunity to serve everywhere, to overcome temptation serves God to not be angry, to not have a bad reaction, to constantly turn our mind back to the way he has taught us to be. That is service to God. And we all believe in this gospel.

68. 35:09

    We all want to be in the Kingdom. We all wish we just knew how to serve sometimes, right? We do. But if you want to know how to serve, think about what your problems are. Think about what the problems are, the person sitting beside you. There’s your opportunity to serve. There’s your opportunity to joyfully work on something, work on those problems and allow the mind of God to break those things down for you and show and help you to see what they really are.

69. 35:40

    You know, it’s interesting, as I said, like happiness is not, is not really a word used in the Bible. It’s not in the fruits of the Spirit, but joy is. And so when you think about fruit, it goes along the same thing that I’ve been saying fruits, not it’s not like sugar, you know, like it’s not like eating a sugary bowl of cereal.

70. 36:00

    Fruit is something that’s substantial. It’s full of good nutrients and fiber and it’s, you can’t just make fruit, you know, God put it there and it grows steadily. It grows on dull days, it grows on sunny days because it has to grow slowly. And all these fruits of the spirit of that way. And that’s how joy is as one of those fruit. It’s it, it grows deeply into your character and it’s, it’s not this quick dramatic thing that comes to us and then leaves.

71. 36:34

    It’s a part of us. I want to say this, you know, I, I was thinking about Paul and Silas singing in prison, and it talks about them feeling joy while they’re in prison. And I was thinking about how soft we are. You know, we really are. We’re very coddled. We’re talking to Sunday school about living in this country and being protected by laws and thinking that we’re really free and we have insurance. We have refrigerators and microwaves and air conditioning and the Internet and social media. And we’re very we’re soft, we’re distracted. But we are made out of the same stuff as Paul and Silas. We are capable of what they did.

72. 37:26

    Let’s not sell ourselves short. We are capable of building inside of ourselves something that could make Paul and Silas sing in prison. We have the same king that they had. We have the same gospel presented to us that they had. We don’t have to be as weak and soft as we are. We don’t have to be.

73. 37:48

    We can make the decision not to be and we really we better because bad things are going to come. We know that, but we also know that we can overcome those things. And it’s the overcoming of those things that makes us different. That’s who we’re promised we’ll inherit the things of the Kingdom.

74. 38:09

    So I’ll stop there. You know, as we, as we protect the bread and wine, I hope that we can feel that solemn joy. You know, that as unworthy as we are, we’re shown mercy and we’re given hope and we’re given opportunity. And then as we go about our daily lives, you know, I hope we can feel that joy that Paul did, that he was kind of worthy to have opportunities to suffer in the name of God.

75. 38:36

    And and remember in our lives and our relationships, our life’s going to be disappointing sometimes. Our relationships are going to be disappointing sometimes. But God didn’t put these things in our lives to make us happy. Only hopefully they do make us happy. But that’s not the point. The point is this framework that he put us in, the way life happens to us and the way our relationships with each other are, they’re there to make us holy. They’re there to make us better.

76. 39:03

    They’re not just there to make us happy. And so that helps us to have that acceptance that I was talking about. And we can identify then not only with Paul and Silas, but with Jesus himself. Because what was it that got him through the cross?

77. 39:23

    Acts 12/2. It was the joy that was set before him that he endured the cross. Despise the shame. So I was close with something that can help. That really helps to still my hope and Jesus words. Matthew 25.

78. 39:53

    He alludes in the parable to what we can hope to hear from him when we come face to face with him. Well done, good and faithful servant. You’re faithful with a few things. I’ll put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master.

79. 40:24

    Thank you for listening to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast. We hope this talk helped you in your walk and brightened your day. If you would like to hear more, please subscribe for new episodes. We are on all major podcast platforms and also on YouTube. If you enjoyed this particular talk, please share it with someone else who you think might enjoy it too. For show notes on the talk you just listened to, visit [email protected] or check out the Show Notes section of your podcast player.

80. 40:53

    Please share your thoughts on the talk from this week on our Facebook or Instagram pages where we are at Good Christadelphian talks or leave a comment on our YouTube channel where these talks are posted as well. If you enjoy listening to the talks that we post and hear one that you think we should share, please tell us about it.

81. 41:09

    You can send a suggestion using the Contact Us tab on our website or message us on any of our social media accounts. Thank you for listening. God bless and talk to you next week.