Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to week three of our Advent mini episodes where we're talking through the themes of Advent. I'm Evan Earwicker.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm Ben Fleming.
[00:00:09] Speaker C: I'm Lindsay Parnell.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Thanks for listening along as we take the four themes of Advent. Right. Which are. Help me out, Lindsay.
[00:00:17] Speaker C: Hope, hope, peace, joy, and love.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: So this week we're talking about joy.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: I love that we get mini muffins and very tiny coffees for these episodes. It's pretty great. I like the theme you guys have going on.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Ben, let's hear from your mini coffee. Let's hear it.
So stupid. We don't have coffees here, but there's no video today.
We can regular size.
We're talking about joy.
This is always whenever joy comes up.
I think the starting point when we talk about the joy that we have in following after Christ, we have to separate it out a bit from circumstances. Right. Otherwise we create this kind of version of Christianity that's detached from reality and it's just not found anywhere in historic Christianity or Scripture.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah, this joy is like the come what may joy of this is something that is now part of the hardwiring of who we are, which leads to a lot of interesting questions, like, can I weep and have joy? Can I suffer and have joy?
Can I suffer and feel the suffering and feel the joy? And it sounds like. Right, based on what Jesus is teaching us. And our understanding of scripture is, yes, all those things can exist together at the same time.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: A few weeks ago, Pastor Josh was talking about a reasonable gratitude. You know, like when you're grateful for something that you should reasonably be grateful for.
And yet there's something that goes beyond that in what he called a gospel gratitude.
And when it comes to joy, I feel like it's the same thing. There's a reasonable joy that comes when life is really sweet or good or wonderful that we feel that joy. What we're talking about is that, sure, but it's that gift of grace that is joy when the circumstances are actually not conducive to it.
And if we don't have that peace in our Christianity and all our Christianity points us to is like, keep praying until God gives you the good circumstances so you can feel joy. We're actually not rooting our joy in the person of Jesus. We're rooting it in our circumstances.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Is there anything worse than this joy that is just glossing over what's happening all around you? Right. I think that's the tendency is like, well, I'm going pretend, and we'll call that Joy. And that's not it either.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I'm wondering, this might just be semantics here and correct me if that's the case, but joy versus happy, Like, I've heard teachings how these two things are different, but I have a very hard time separating them in my brain. Is there separation between joy and happiness? I feel like the quintessential teaching is happiness is based on your circumstances and joy is not. So is that kind of the idea here or.
Talk to me about that.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: I remember in Eugene Peterson's, probably his biography, he was talking about translating the Beatitudes, and he was really going to bat when he was writing his paraphrase to translate blessed into lucky, because he felt like that was actually how a modern person should interpret what they were reading in their day, when. So they're reading, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And he was like, you're so lucky if you're poor in spirit, because God's kingdom is yours. And so I do, like, maybe not separating it out so much and saying joy sounds like this maybe sacred old quiet thing.
But, man, I am just. I'm so happy.
And I don't know. I think we have to find the words that resonate and that don't just get stuck into this kind of noise of religious jargon.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: I think the best experience that I've had with it, I don't know that this is going to define it. I've been with people that I think have preached the joy kind of message, and this is a little dark, but then they get to the point of death and then they're overwhelmed with fear. Right. And I think it kind of can speak to this. I mean, difficult moment, but maybe this shallowness of this understanding of joy. And then I've been with people that I think have had every single right to fear at the end of their lives, and there's like this sweetness and contentment and joy that comes through even in the middle of, like, actual physical pain and still an unknown of exactly what the next bits of their life or afterlife are going to be like. And there's like this.
It's not peace, right? There is. There is joy. It's not simple contentment. There's something that is connecting with this greater purpose that creates this gravitational pull to where we belong with Jesus in discipleship. I think you can maybe you can feel it more than I could define it with words.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Right?
Yeah. It does remind me of that John Wesley quote I used a while ago, where his whole goal in his ministry was that people at the end of their lives, at the time of their death would cry out in calm assurance, oh, death, where is your sting, Grave, where's your victory? You know, it's like this. It's this juxtaposition of something that just overrides all the things that create that fear or that shame or that feeling of like, all is lost. It's funny that you say supernatural joy.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Feels unashamed to me for some reason. That's a connection. I don't know if there's a real connection to that anywhere, but I feel like joy is shameless.
[00:05:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's beautiful.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: There's a prayer today. Pastor Brandt wrote this for us. And maybe fill in the blank as you're listening to this.
Here's the prayer. Lord, thank you for blank.
I praise you and rejoice in your holy name. Raise up your joy in me to overflowing as I walk in your truth and your grace.
Joy and thankfulness, I don't think they can be separated. I think they come as a package. And I don't know that it's always, if you can be thankful, then you get joy. I think sometimes the order can be mixed up. Sometimes we receive joy as a gift, pure gift of grace, and our response to that joy is thankfulness. So whatever side of joy and thankfulness you're on, if you're listening to this, let's spend some time in prayer, thanking God for what he's done and what he's doing, his faithfulness and receiving the joy that comes along with it.
