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Advent 2024: Joy · The Father's Business Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The Father's Business was founded by Sylvia Gunter to encourage people to a deeper relationship with God.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I'm Elizabeth Gunter Powell.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: And I am Kimberly Roddy.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Father's Business Podcast.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: We are so glad that you've joined us.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Welcome everybody and thank you for joining us today as we continue our Advent series.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Today we're talking about one of my favorite themes of the season, which is joy.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I love the song Joy to the World, I love singing all four verses of it, and so I am super excited that we get to talk about joy today, and I'd love for us to start by focusing on one of my favorite verses.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Psalm 16 is one of my favorite Psalms in all of the Bible, and Psalm 16, 11 says you make known to me the path of life.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: In your presence there is fullness of joy.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: So I love that this verse points out that joy isn't just a fleeting emotion or something we have to manufacture, but it's found in God's presence, and that really has kind of been a theme through our Advent series.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Kimberly is that it's none of these.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Whether we're talking about hope or peace or now, joy is something that we have to manufacture and that is so freeing to me that it is not up to me to produce these things, but that they really are aspects of who God is and he gives of Himself freely to all of us.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I think, elizabeth.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I think it's often easy to confuse joy with happiness.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I actually remember it's this clear memory in my mind of when I discovered the difference.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Like I can remember back.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I was actually in my 20s and someone pointed out I was early 20s, I think it was in college, and someone talked about the difference between joy and happiness and all of a sudden, something clicked differently than it ever had before.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: I'm sure I'd heard it before, but it clicked differently and it's just stayed with me that this happiness is.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: You know, it's based on our circumstances.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: It's a good day at work, it's Taco Tuesday, it's fun holiday celebrations, you know, it's things going according to my plan.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: That makes me happy.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: When my dogs greet me when I walk in the house, it makes me happy.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: You know, seeing a friend makes me happy.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: But joy is something so much deeper than that.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: It is something that should be unchanging.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: If we really look at joy and the character of God and our relationship with God, because it's rooted in the knowledge that God is with us and that is so much of what this season is about is that the name Emmanuel, which is one of our favorite names of God, I think, for you and your mom and myself, it's all.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: One of our favorite names of God is that he is God with us.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: He is camped out, living among us, present with us, and so it's the assurance of His presence, and that's what joy comes from.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: It comes from the assurance of His presence, of his promises, of his love, and I think that is why the angels proclaimed in Luke 2, I bring you good news, because they are announcing the presence of the Messiah.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Today, in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: He is the Messiah, the Lord.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and those shepherds?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: They were just ordinary people working the field and then this angel comes and announces the birth of Jesus to them.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know that there's video in heaven, but I hope that we get to kind of like go back and watch some of this, because I can't imagine what this was like, but I would love to see it.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And their joy wasn't tied to their circumstances.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: It was tied to the good news that a savior had been born, because their life circumstances did not change.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: They were going to go back to the same field and be the same shepherds with the same sheep, and yet everything about their lives also did change in that moment, at the announcement of the Savior.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: And the same is true for us.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Today.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: We still have that same good news.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: It's still true.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Jesus has come and because of him we can experience a joy that is not dependent on what's happening around us.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: We can actually experience joy in the midst of what is happening around us.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Right, it's because it's rooted in the love and the grace of God and it's poured out through Jesus, his son, Right.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: But that is so hard, kimberly, because, like you were saying, like everyone's like, have you had a good day?
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: And my answer to that yes or no is based on the circumstances of my day.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Did most things go the way I wanted to?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Then, yes, I've had a good day.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Did everything I try blow up in my face?
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Then no, I have not had a good day.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know how I begin to.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: But I think I almost need to find a different question to be asking myself and others.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it's not did you have a good day?
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Because if you had God in your life, it was a good day.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Whether it felt good or not, it was a good day because he is good.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So it is really this one's really tricky and, as you said, to know the difference between joy and happiness.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And the verse that comes to my mind is John 15, 10 and 11, which says if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: These things I have spoken to you that my joy may on these podcasts, because every week God is just pounding this in my head.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: It was his hope.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: It was his peace, and now it's.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: My joy is in you.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I walk around with the joy of Jesus inside of me, of Jesus inside of me.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So, as I was just saying, at the end of the day I should be able to say that every day is a good day because I have the joy of Jesus inside of me and he is able to make my joy full.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And so when we abide in God's love and we experience his joy, it's not just a little joy, it's the fullness of joy that only he can give us.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And yet I look at my life and that's not my daily experience, and so that means there's something that I need to shift.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: It's not a God problem, it's a me problem.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And how do I intentionally work on aligning my spirit, soul and body with Father, son and Holy Spirit in every moment, so that, whether the circumstances I am in are fun or not fun, I can be overflowing with that fullness of joy at all times?
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Again, elizabeth, as we have said every week during the series so far, and I'm sure we'll say it next week as well it is an invitation to slow down.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: That's what Advent is.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: And so if we don't slow down, if we don't pause and reflect on the gift of Jesus, then we won't really know that deep sense of peace, the deep sense of hope, the deep sense of joy and the deep sense of love, which is what we'll talk about next week.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: And so we are not experiencing His joy in the day-to-day, if we're honest, more than likely, or many of us because we're not aligning our spirit, soul and body to His spirit, soul and body.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And I think that's again where we have to be intentional, which is again what we're saying all the time, and it's a reminder to you and me and to everyone listening, because it doesn't come naturally.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: It doesn't come.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: It can get easier as you walk out your faith, but it's not this.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: The natural man doesn't do that, doesn't live that way.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And so it is again.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Advent season is again an invitation to just slow down and to pause and to reflect on the gift of Jesus and the joy that fills our hearts.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: And joy then, as it fills our hearts becomes contagious and I think about I was with a friend recently.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: One friend has a three-month-old child and another friend has a actually just turned one actually yesterday turned one and that little girl is so full of joy in life and she is full of energy and she's starting to walk around and babble and talk and the joy that these two little ones exude is like it just makes you smile, right.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: And that's what I think about, like I mean, that must have been the baby boy.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Jesus came and sure, babies are messy, humans are messy, but there's also such a deep sense of joy that a young, infant baby brings us.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it can turn a room of adults into babbling idiots when a little baby comes in the room because we're all so excited and just the way it coos and gurgles and laughs just lifts everyone's spirits around.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: So yeah, can you only imagine just how joyful Jesus was as a baby, and that would have been so fun to be his babysitter.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: He would just have been a delight to be around.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Not as you said, not that he didn't cry and have messy diapers and all the things that a human baby does, but I think there would be just so much of the essence of God's spirit inside of him as well that that would have been an amazing thing to be around Jesus as a baby.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the innocence of that joy like there's innocence in that baby, right, right and I think the innocence of that and the naturalness of that is what Jesus wants for us as His children, because he sees us as His children and he wants us to experience that joy internally deeply.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: But he also wants us to share that joy with others and I think so often when we interact with people in the day-to-day, when we're discontent and we're fighting for joy, our vulnerabilities get more like they harden and they get more defensive and we tend to be complaining and griping or one-upping another rather than just truly sharing joy and happiness with others.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: I'll admit that's probably one of the biggest things I got to work on.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: I need to learn how to just walk in the joy of the Lord truly and let that be my strength each day, rather than just focused on the things that are wrong or the difficulties.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I don't try to be a complaining person, but if I really think about how people experience me, they might experience me complaining more than they experience me being joyful, and that's something that needs to be reconnected and realigned with God's Spirit so that I can receive His joy and live out of that.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: It's not easy, and I know that Psalm 51 says restore to me the joy of your salvation.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: As you mentioned last week, elizabeth, it's a heart and a spirit of gratitude and when we're filled with gratitude for what God has done, it naturally overflows and that joy is restored to us and it can overflow into our relationships and our communities and even the ways that we respond.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, kimberly, you and I talked about this on the podcast before.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: We're both kind of bent this way that we're always trying to reform things, make them better, do things with excellence, and so that does have a tendency to make our bent sound critical to other people.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: As you were just saying, the experience that most people may have of you is probably critical and complaining, and sometimes it's just critical and complaining right, sometimes it's out of this passion that we both have that.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: But it could be better, like that yearning for everything, not just my life, but deep down in our core we know we were made for something better than this world that we're in, and so but it gets kind of twisted and it comes out as complaining instead of gratitude or finding words of life.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: And I think about my husband.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: He will come home from work and he'll be like you'll never guess what someone said to me today and it's just someone he ran into in his day, said the smallest little word of affirmation to him and he's like and all they said was this he's like that just meant the world to me.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, that and that didn't take much for that person to do that and look at the impact that it had on him or I.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: I'm laughing because you're talking about you know other people's experience.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: If you might be a little more complaining I'm thinking about the numbers of times that I'm in the car, and both mom and I will do this to each other.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: It's a very polite way to do it, but most recently I'm the one in the car who's meh, meh about something because it didn't.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: You know, the person didn't do it the way I thought it should have been done, right.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So I'm just dot, dot, dot, dot, dot dot, just about that.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And she'll just go look at that beautiful tree.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Isn't the color of those leaves delightful?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Totally disengage from whatever I'm talking about and point out something that she's admiring on our drive.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And part of me gets frustrated because I'm like are you not listening to me?
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Because I'm over here complaining.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: And then I'm like, oh yes, she is listening to me, she's tired of me complaining, so she's going to change the subject over to and have some gratitude about the beautiful tree we just passed by.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: And so it is that check that I think that we need because it, like that verse said in Psalm 51, restore me to the joy of of your salvation means that it's so easy for us to lose it.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: It's so easy for us to forget that.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I think that's why God tells us to be grateful and to remember and to think on Him and what he's done for us.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Because it is so easy for our hearts to become critical and as much as criticism comes out of my mouth, I don't like being around other people who are critical.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: You'd think I would work on that more and not be critical around other people, but it just sometimes starts flowing out of my mouth and I'm not even realizing how much it is.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: So we all need that community around us that'll remind us to oh, what a lovely tree.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: It's just a nice little nudge of change the subject.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I've heard what you had to say about that.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Let's move on to something else.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: We've talked each week about how to cultivate hope, how to cultivate peace, and I think today we do have to talk about how to cultivate that joy, because what I'm thinking about, as you just said, that is, I need to be reflecting on scripture, I need to be worshiping, Like you mentioned when we started off this podcast, joy to the World being one of your favorite songs this time of year and I had a friend who passed away in the summer several years ago and she loved Christmas.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: She exuded the spirit of Christmas.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: In fact, her family put out a ton of her Christmas decorations at the memorial service so people could take something home with them and remember her spirit of Christmas that she carried and lavished on people through the holiday season.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: We sang Joy to the World at her memorial service and it was so beautiful because you knew that she was like when you encountered her.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: You encountered joy, genuine joy, and her life wasn't easy None of our lives are easy but I remember singing that song at her memorial service and thinking of it differently, right, because it's such a different scenario for us to sing that song, but I think that's what worship does to us.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Worship brings us the beautiful reminders and it's something that is deeply received in our spirit and our soul has to listen to it and our body has to listen to it, and it brings us into alignment of just truly experiencing the hope that Jesus offers the, the peace and the joy.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: And and the joy that we can receive and experience and then overflow with as a result of worship, is divine, is contagious itself to our own selves as well as those around us.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: And so I think, along those lines, the things we've talked about this past, the last two weeks of we have to reflect on scripture, we have to have an attitude of gratitude, we have to be in community, we have to serve others.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth, don't you agree that those are all ways that we have to intentionally cultivate joy?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: If we don't intentionally fight for joy, all the stuff that we're receiving as outside sources, whether that be the news, what we're seeing on social media, what we're reading, the problems of our own lives, the lives of everyone that's around us it will snuff out joy and the world just becomes very heavy.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: And so, just like last week when we were talking about peace, we talked about finding times to be still and knowing that he is God and just experiencing the peace of God.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I challenge I'm trying to give myself this December is to put the phone down, to not read as much of the news, like I mean, if there's a major something that's going to happen, my husband will tell me about it, right, but it's easy to get consumed by news and media posts and other things, and this is one of my favorite times of the year.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: As far as music goes, I love Christmas music and so, as you're talking about saturating my spirit, soul and body with Christmas music, because most of it is talking about who God is and who we are in Him.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And so what a wonderful time when I get in the car, instead of listening to whatever podcast or news, radio or whatever else that I might want to listen to in the car.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Make those times that I've got to just get from point A to B turn them into sacred moments where I can just soak and listen to music that is proclaiming who God is and giving glory to him and it does have an impact.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: And I mean I can tell you know, if I go a day where, like, life gets so busy that I feel like I don't really have time to sit with Jesus or spend time with Jesus, I can kind of get away with that.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Make that two or three days in a row and all of a sudden my family knows you haven't been spending time with Jesus, because it does.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: It overflows.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Whatever I am putting in or not putting into my spirit, soul and body will then overflow to the other people around me.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: So I think a challenge for me this December is how do I intentionally focus in on who God is and the joy that he allowed His Son to come to earth to rescue us?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: So, as we close today, we want to leave you with this blessing of joy.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Heavenly Father, may your joy fill our hearts as we celebrate the birth of your Son.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Our hearts as we celebrate the birth of your Son.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Let the good news of Jesus bring us deep and abiding joy that overflows into every area of our lives.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: May we abide in your love and experience the fullness of joy that only you can provide.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: And as your joy fills us, may it spill over into our interactions with others, drawing them closer to you.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: In Jesus' name, the source of all true joy, we pray today Amen.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business Podcast.
• 19:36
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• 19:44
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• 19:49
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