A Life Lacking Joy

Porch, how are we doing? Are we doing okay? Great to see you. Welcome back. I'm so glad you would make time to be here with us this evening. Special shout-out to everybody who is tuning in online. Dallas, you look good. I can't see you on the camera, but I'm assuming you look good as well. We're so glad, wherever it is you are, you're tuning in with us tonight. Special shout-out to all of our Porch.Live locations, but particularly Fort Worth, Dayton, and Scottsdale.

Well, Porch, let me ask you a question. Have you ever been a part of a situation that was surprisingly sadder than it should have been? I know I have been in many of those situations over the course of my life, but there is one that stands out above the rest. Several years ago, Brooke and I got invited to attend a wedding, and it had all of the markings of being this amazing experience.

This couple were two of the best people we knew. Their families were incredible, to say the least. They had friends and family who were flying in from around the nation to be here on this special wedding day. The weather was awesome. The venue was outdoors. The sun was setting. It had that golden hour glow that everybody loves to take pictures around. There was a river nearby that was running with swans in its wake. It was a perfect setup.

It should have been amazing. And listen. The ceremony was. There were vows shared between the bride and the groom that were personal. Every story that was spoken was intentional. The gospel was shared. But then the reception happened…or it didn't happen might be a more apt way of describing it, because while everybody had shown up to the reception, it felt like the party never got to the reception. Have you ever been in one of those before?

Yeah, they had cake in the corner and the tables were set and food was getting passed around. It was a fajita feast that night, which I personally love. Yet, they were missing one critical element that is necessary for every wedding reception: music. You see, the day of, the DJ had called in sick, which left the catering service's busboy commissioned with the noble task of emceeing this event and making sure the party kept going, that the show would not stop, yet he was very unfit for the challenge.

So, what do you do in a moment like that when you see "Things are off the rails. This deserves to be celebrated, yet no one is taking any action"? You look at your wife and tell her to hold your drink, because this party is not going down without a fight. You know, you get in the DJ booth, son. You hop up, which is exactly what I did.

Now listen. I understand the limits of my qualifications being behind a turntable. I have no business being in that environment, but it doesn't take a genius to turn the houselights off, to turn the disco lights up, and to play the "Cha-Cha Slide." Everybody loves it. I don't care what you think. It gets people on the dance floor. And, boy, were they dancing. "Dance the night away!" That's what was happening that entire time. We were celebrating. We were rejoicing. We were appropriately responding to this amazing event.

These two beautiful people had just made the biggest decision in their life to enter into covenantal relationship, loving union, for this life and ever, and the most inappropriate response would have been to be apathetically sitting nearby, counting down the clock until we gave them their grand send-off. No, the right thing was to rejoice. It was to celebrate. It was to party. It was to praise the fact that they had stepped into something so significant.

Why do I tell you that? Because I've talked to so many of you, and what I've found is that a lot of you have made the biggest decision in your life. Not that you've gotten married. That's why you're here. (You laugh. You know it's true.) You've made the biggest decision in that you have already entered into loving relationship with Jesus Christ, yet your experience since the day you entered into that relationship feels less exciting and more synonymous with the somber soundtrack of whatever spiritual busboy is sitting in the DJ booth of your life.

You look at your situation, the circumstances of your life, the qualities that mark your walk with God, and what you feel is apathy, disinterest…maybe some occasional optimism, but you feel infrequent satisfaction. If that's you here tonight, then hold my drink, because I'm here to save your party. That's what this series is. This series is the most valiant attempt I can make at helping you engage with the kind of life Jesus wants you to have. He doesn't want you to settle for something melancholic or apathetic indifference in life. He wants you to experience unbridled, overwhelming joy. That's the promise the gospel puts forward.

So, I want to help you engage with a God who wants you to be joyful, which is something that so many of us, if we're honest, can't begin to relate to. You see, according to the World Happiness Report, which came out last week for this year on International Day of Happiness, it reported that our country, the United States of America, for the very first time since the report has been composed, fell outside of the top 20 worldwide. We came in at #24.

That's not even the most alarming thing. Despite the fact that the United States, year after year, as the report has been issued, has been declining in the ranks of our general happiness as a country, the most alarming fact was that when you polled the group of young adults from within America, we went from #24 to #62. We are the most unhappy segment of our country. Founding editor of the World Happiness Report, John Helliwell, said the low scores among young people aren't a matter of less education or lower income or bad health. Instead, it must be attributed to a matter of mood, how we generally feel about life itself.

Now, it's important to acknowledge that while the science is varied, even debated, to some extent, 30 to 40 percent of your happiness in life is genetically impacted, which helps explain why some of us are more or less prone to positivity than others. If that's you, if melancholy or apathy is a part of your normal experience, we're going to get to that.

Maybe this isn't even the case. Maybe, for you, it's something clinical. It's a diagnosed depression. If it's something in your life that aligns with a mental health challenge or struggle in any way whatsoever, we're going to get to a place where we talk about these things and present to you how joy is still possible in your experience.

Regardless of whatever your genetic predisposition is, it is nonetheless true that happiness is one of, if not the leading priority for our generation. We want to be happy. We seek to be happy. Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be happy? I bet you're trying to be happy, yet this report is saying we are increasingly unhappy as we try our best, and we're finding ourselves falling in the ranks because we're not as satisfied as we want to be in life.

What are we getting wrong? Not just for the secular sitting in this room, but even for the spiritual. Christians are not omitted from this data. What you find is that too many believers today claim to know where the source of all satisfaction is found…it's found in Jesus…yet they look so very joyless. This is the case for some of you. This was the case for me.

Just a couple of years ago, at the end of 2023, I found myself in a spot where I was standing onstage, telling people where joy was found, but then I would walk off the stage and wonder how I'd lost it myself. I felt like a spiritual snake oil salesman to some degree. I was pawning off on everybody what would work for them, but it just was not working in my life. Some of you can relate to this experience. If you can, listen to me. The logical explanation is not that this isn't true; it's that we've gotten something wrong.

So many of us know everything about Jesus, but we don't feel anything for him. If that's you, if you're somewhere short of satisfied in life, if you're wondering, "Man, where did I go wrong?" then you're in the right place, because we want to help you get your joy back. But before we can know how to find joy, we have to talk about what joy is, which is the goal of tonight. The goal of our evening here is to lay a foundation for what joy actually is. If you don't know what it is, then you don't know where to find it.

I'll just say this from the outset, here week one, as we move through this series in the coming weeks. So much of what I'm going to share with you, so many of the ideas I have, have been developed through the brilliance of people like G.K. Chesterton, Dallas Willard, John Mark Comer, and Jon Tyson…these four for me to name, but there are so many others. I want to acknowledge them, because you're going to see their thumbprints all over this series as we work our way through.

As we begin, we have to talk about what joy is before we can talk about where joy is, because before we can learn how to experience it, we need to unpack the essence of it, because therein lies the problem for so many of us. Without knowing what joy is, we won't know where to look for it. Recently, just a couple of months ago, I found myself in Target trying to pull together the biggest birthday bash possible for my wife. She had turned 30, so it was a big deal. I needed to make sure we had all of the markings of a good birthday celebration at the home.

So, I went into Target. I was looking for confetti, I was trying to find streamers, I wanted to find a card and some flowers, and I wanted to find those big foil balloons. Do you know which ones I'm talking about, the ones everybody loves to blow up and have for their birthday? That was the object of what I was looking for.

So, I walk into Target and make my way over to the arts and crafts section, and the balloons are nowhere to be found. It makes no sense. This is exactly where they should be. This is décor for my wife's birthday. Where are the balloons? So, I make a lap around Target. I take another lap around Target. I make a third lap around Target.

Now, so frustrated, I find an employee, and I humble myself before them and ask them, "Where are the big foiled, numbered balloons?" They said to me, "They are not in the arts and crafts section. They are in the party supply section." You see, I thought I knew what I was looking for, but I was mistaken. It's not arts and crafts; it's party supplies. The minute I had clarified what it was, I knew where to go and look for it.

So, what is joy? If you don't know what it is, you will not know where to find it. Here's a definition for you. Joy is a lasting emotion that is not achieved in life but received from God who felt it first and feels it most. That may come as a surprise to some of us, because when we think of what mood God is in, joy does not normally spring top of mind. It doesn't crack the top 10. Instead, something different likely comes to mind.

When we picture the face of God as he's staring back at us, we interpret a different mood altogether. Just try it for yourself for a minute. When you think of what mood God is in, what do you come up with? This is not rhetorical; this is conversational. What mood do you see on God's face as he looks at you right now here tonight? Proud? What else? Disappointment. Delighted. Joy. Love. Faithful. Happy. Anybody else? Patient.

Okay. Here's what's fascinating about the answers we just gave. So many of the answers we gave are attributes of God. They're not attitudes of God. You see, often, when we think of the mood of God, we look at him, and what we find is we're not comfortable with the attitude he may be showing, so we'll ascribe an aptitude instead, because the attitude we may see is that he is disappointed. That's one that has hung over my life for so very long.

Maybe we look at him and see that he's angry. He could be frustrated. He might be indifferent or apathetic or annoyed. I don't know what mood you may see on the face of God, yet we know that when we consider who God is…not who we are but who he actually is…joy is a really logical mood for him to take.

Dallas Willard says it like this: "Central to the understanding and proclamation of the Christian gospel today…is a re-visioning of what God's own life is like and how the physical cosmos fits into it. It is a great and important task to come to terms with what we really think when we think of God. […] We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life…" I love that. He must lead a very interesting life. "…and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe."

You see, fundamental to finding joy is the understanding that God is the most joyous being in the universe. It doesn't take long to learn that this is the case in the Scripture. Just turn to page 1. You read Genesis, chapter 1, and find that God is making day after day after day, and he is consistently attributing goodness to them.

He says, "That one is good, and that one is good, and, oh, that one is good. The fourth one is good as well." He runs the full gamut and finds they're all good. Listen. God is not full of himself. He is not self-inflated. He is not easily impressed. God is truthful, so when he says that these days are good, it's because they are. They're good days. As he talks to Job later in the Old Testament, as he's describing the creation narrative, he says:

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?"

The angels reacted to God's work of creation in a way that wasn't just awe or applause or a polite golf clap in the background. They were losing their ever-loving minds! "Did you just see what he did? He breathed out the stars. He stretched the universe across. He just laid the foundations of the earth. Oh my God!" That's the reaction of the angels. They're less like a church choir and more like sports fanatics, the Bills Mafia. They're doing all of that stuff as they watch God do what God does.

They're not the only ones who approve of him. God approves of his own work. You see, when the seventh day comes around, he chooses to rest. Why? It's not because he's tired. God does not fatigue. He does not rest from his work; he enjoys his work. That Sabbath day is a declaration of a desire to delight. That's what God is doing in that moment. You see, Sabbath for you and me is less about recovering from our work and more about rejoicing in God. That's what he was doing. That's what we should do too.

If that's not enough for you, just keep going, because as you read farther through the Old Testament, you find all of these festivals. Specifically, there are three festivals God gives to the nation of Israel. They are pilgrimage festivals…Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. God required them to honor these every single year. Now listen. These festivals, for sure, were considered holy conventions for the people of God, yet they weren't just holy conventions; they were joyous occasions.

It was a chance for the people of God to get back together and remember what God had done ("Did you see that? I remember when he did that"), to break bread, sing songs, play music, reminisce about all that had happened, and dream about what God would do. This was the nature of these festivals. As just one example, look at what Nehemiah records in chapter 8 when it's talking about the Festival of Tabernacles, and the people have just heard Ezra read the law of the Lord.

"So the people went out and brought back branches and built themselves temporary shelters on their own roofs, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house of God and in the square by the Water Gate and the one by the Gate of Ephraim. The whole company that had returned from exile built temporary shelters and lived in them." Again, this is the Festival of Booths or Tabernacles. "From the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day…" Meaning, as far back as you can think. "…the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great."

I would have loved to have been there to see it. The recording is they have never gotten this crazy. They are wild about what God did. They're remembering how he led them through the wilderness and brought them to the Promised Land, and since the days of Joshua, they have never responded like this. They are so full of joy. They are partying like you wouldn't believe. They are rejoicing at the goodness of God.

In this scene, everyone has come back to Jerusalem. They have set up booths, or temporary tabernacles, and they are celebrating his goodness for, not one day, but an entire week. How good is it of God that he would command them to celebrate for a week? That's pretty awesome. You might get up and have a good time one night, but he's like, "Hey, try to put seven of those together." This thing has more in common with tailgating in our modern day than anything else you might be thinking.

It's similar. They show up, and they get the gang back together. They pull up for the big event. They pitch their tents. They start roasting the barbecue, and they have the music playing in the background. They pull out the old photo albums and start sharing stories with each other, and they're throwing the pigskin. (Just kidding. That's a bad joke. They're Jews, and that would be unclean. They're not throwing any pigs around.) They're just having a good time.

This is just one of three pilgrimage festivals, seven religious festivals, and it's not including new moon feasts, regular Sabbath celebrations, and the Year of Jubilee. You know, that festival that happened every 50 years that served as a gigantic reset button on every mistake and every debt and every misstep you ever took. That's not worth celebrating, is it? That someone would look at everything you did wrong and say, "You know what? Reset. That's all gone."

God is so joyful, and he wants his people to be joyful. It's not evil of him or wrong of him or malicious of him to command us to party, yet our experience does not feel like that, does it? We must have gotten something wrong. God wants to remind us tonight of what he has done. Yes, as we look through the Old Testament, that he delivered his people out of Egypt, moved them through the wilderness, forgave their sins, blessed their harvests, and made sure to preserve their families and legacies forever, but we also should remember what he has done in our lives.

We should recall and recollect and even share with one another the goodness of God in our day, because every single example is a declaration of his joyfulness and the joy he wants you to come into. You see, God is joyful at heart. He wants you to be the same. He wants you to be very happy, which puts some of you on your heels.

You hear that, and you're like, "Whoa! Hold on. That feels like a massive contradiction to everything I ever learned in church growing up. God doesn't want me to be happy; he wants me to be holy. He doesn't care about how I feel; he only cares about my character. He doesn't care about what I'm doing so long as I'm doing it like Jesus. Right? God is much more interested in me becoming like Christ than anything else."

I wouldn't disagree with you, nor would the author of Hebrews, but listen to what he says about Jesus. "You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; this is why God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy beyond your companions." If our walk is a walk where we get to become like that, joyful beyond comparison, I'm in. That sounds pretty awesome.

Yes, everything God is doing is trying to form you into the image of his Son, as Romans 8 would say, and the image of his Son is one that has a joy which surpasses that of anybody else. Jesus is incomparably happy. He is exceptionally glad. He is supremely pleasant, so pleasant that no one else can even come close in comparison. If you don't take that or me for enough evidence, then just look at the life of Christ.

His birth was heralded as good news of great joy for all people (Luke 2:10). His kingdom was proclaimed as a place of everlasting joy (Romans 14:17). So cheerful was Jesus in life that people claimed he was a glutton and a drunkard. Listen. You don't get a reputation like that by being a stick in the mud. "You know what, man? You have too much to eat, and you might have too much to drink. You look a little too happy with yourself." That's Luke 7:34.

He performed miracles that astounded crowds and sent the sick rejoicing (Matthew 15:30). He was happy in the Holy Spirit (Luke 10:21). His life's work was the joy of saving people (Luke 15:3-7). He joyfully endured the cross, despising its shame (Hebrews 12:2), and he gives joy to all who see him, a joy that will never, ever be taken away (John 16:22). Jesus is far more full of glee, gladness, and gaiety than you think.

If all of that's not enough, John Piper would say that Jesus Christ is the happiest being in the universe. His gladness is greater than all the angelic gladness of heaven. He mirrors perfectly the infinite, holy, indomitable mirth (which means amusement or laughter) of his Father, which means that as we become more like Christ, shouldn't we be happy too?

You see, Jesus wants to make you into a person who is deeply joyful. "But, Kylen, there's a difference between joy and happiness. Surely you know this. You've grown up in the church. You've spent time around Christians. These are not the same thing. Yeah, I believe God wants to make me joyful, but this whole thing about happiness? I'm not really sure that makes sense."

Who says? The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible does not in any way ever suggest that joy and happiness should be disassociated from one another. In fact, when you read the Scriptures, there are multiple examples…I'll just give you a few…of where those two qualities, joy and happiness, sit side by side. They are paired together.

Psalm 32:11: "Rejoice in the Lord and be happy, you who are godly! Shout for joy, all you who are morally upright!" Psalm 68:3: "But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful." Psalm 100:1-2: "Sing to the Lord, all the world! Worship the Lord with joy; come before him with happy songs!" Psalm 118:24: "This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad [happy] in it."

I could keep going, but you get the point. You cannot drain joy of its emotional element and call it joy, yet so many of us do this so very often. So many of us have fallen prey to the idea that this is the life God has called us to live. For so many, Christianity is about doing the right things more than feeling the right way.

It's all about religious creeds and observances, that I come to church on Sundays, give when the plate passes, attend group on the weekdays, make sure to keep my nose clean on the weekends, and try to do my best to confess my sins and pray my prayers. I want to fear the Lord as well as I can. We do everything right, but we feel totally wrong.

We've adopted all of the right habits, but we have lost the right heart. God wants so much more for you, Christian. He wants so much more for you than boring belief, than a belief that will not compel the world to watch in wonder, yet leaves them so underwhelmed with this God you believe in that they dare question if you even believe it yourself.

Dallas Willard says, "How many people are radically and permanently repelled from The Way [Christianity] by Christians who are unfeeling, stiff, unapproachable, boringly lifeless, obsessive, and dissatisfied? Yet such Christians are everywhere, and what they are missing is the wholesome liveliness springing from a balanced vitality within the freedom of God's loving rule… 'Spirituality' wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God."

So, what am I telling you? Like, you shouldn't do it if it doesn't make you feel good? You're only obedient if it makes you happy? You should only pursue holiness so long as it preserves your joy? No. What I am saying is if your obedience is costing you happiness or your holiness is empty of joy, then something is certainly wrong, because that is not the way God designed it. God does not want your begrudging submission. He's not interested in your religious compliance. What he is interested in is the happiness of your soul. That's what he wants for you.

In a way, unhappiness in our lives should be a red flag or a signal flare that something needs to change, no different than if you woke up tomorrow morning and your back hurt. Like, "Ooh, man. Rough night." You went to sleep again, and you woke up, and it was still hurting. You went to sleep again, and it was still hurting.

You wouldn't likely respond by saying, "You know what? It's making me tougher." Instead, you'd get rid of the mattress. You would dispose of it quickly. You would make sure to take note of the fact, "This isn't the way my sleep should be conducted. I shouldn't be left feeling worse; I should feel better." It should raise a concern. Yet here's the thing, Porch. Too often, we are willing to tolerate our spiritual discomfort because it's just what we're supposed to do.

"I'm just supposed to walk with God even though it doesn't feel right. I'm just supposed to read my Bible even though I haven't gotten anything out of it in weeks. I'm just supposed to confess my sin even though no one is actually holding me accountable. I'm just supposed to go to church even though I'm just going to keep up appearances." We do all of the right things, but we don't feel any of the right way. That should be deeply disturbing to us. It's deeply disturbing to God. He doesn't want that for you.

Now listen. I'm not saying there is not a place for discipline in your life. We're going to talk about it. Yet within the concept of what joy is, it is the offer on the table for you from Jesus as he tries to form you, morph you, mold you into his image. Jesus did not begrudge God's Word. He did not begrudge going to synagogue. He did not begrudge gathering with the saints. He found joy in it always, and he wants you to find that too. He wants to lead you into deeper waters of delight, into a place where you can't swim, but he's going to show up and provide.

So, if your soul is unsatisfied, if your heart is unhappy, then the chances are good that you're pursuing joy in the wrong things. You're looking to the world; you're not looking to God. You're inspecting transient things; you're not looking to transcendent things. That's why jobs, guys, girls, trips, influence, pay, a better body, and relief from your pain are leaving you empty. I'm not saying those things are inherently bad, but, gosh, they are certainly insufficient to satisfy.

G.K. Chesterton said this, and this quote was what began my deliverance from joyless despair. He said, "Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagans, is the gigantic secret of the Christian." Which just means that while the world is quick to promise and promote that joy is found right here, the secret is that Christians are the only ones who ever find it.

Christians are the only ones who ever actually find joy. Why is that? John Mark Comer says, "Joy is more than an emotion; it is a condition of the heart." It's a condition of the heart. As he unpacks that idea, he turns to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, chapter 5, and starts working through the Beatitudes.

I remember studying the Beatitudes with a Bible study group, a group of guys I was discipling a few years ago. As we were working through it, looking at the original language, that word for blessed… "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are those who are persecuted." That word blessed can also be synonymously interpreted as happy, which feels odd.

"How can I be happy when I'm persecuted? How can I be happy when I'm hungry or thirsty? How can I be happy when I am poor in spirit? How can I be happy when I'm meek? Jesus, this doesn't make any sense." Jesus is saying that your happiness does not depend on what the world does to you; it depends on what God is doing in you. That's where your happiness depends. It depends on what God is doing in you, not what the world does to you.

So, what is he doing? What is God doing in your life? He is making you more like Jesus, which means he is actively, persistently, and constantly deepening your joy. That's what he wants. God is more interested in your joy than you are. He wants for your satisfaction more than you do, and he is begging you to take him up on the offer.

The reason for that is because in Jesus we find not just the feeling of joy but the fullness of joy, a joy that persists through every trial or trouble or tribulation, that permeates your entire being, whether you walk into the office or go to pick up your mail or stroll through Trader Joe's or come and sit with your friends. It doesn't matter where you are. It's permeating your entire being.

It doesn't just persist or permeate; it also promotes to the watching world the wonder of the glory of God. That's the kind of joy he's bringing you into. That's why Jesus says in John 10:10, "I came that you might have life…" He could have just said that, but he goes further. "…that you might have life abundantly." John 15:11: "These things I've spoken to you that my joy might be in you…" But he goes further. "…that your joy may be full."

John 16:24: "Until now you've asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive…" But he goes further. "…that your joy may be full." John 17:13: "I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they might have…" Not just "my joy within them." "…the full measure of my joy within them." Jesus has come not just so you can feel joy but so you can be joyful. Do you understand the difference in feeling joy and being joyful?

I've used this illustration before, but it's the difference in normal acting and method acting. In normal acting, you have someone who looks the part whenever the cameras are rolling, but in method acting, you have someone who lives the part when the cameras are off. That's the difference. One is the event of acting; the other is the embodiment of acting. That's what Jesus wants for you. He wants you to move beyond the event of joy and into the embodiment of it. He doesn't just want you to feel joy; he wants you to be joyful.

So, the natural next question after hearing all of this… I've railed at you and yelled at you, and I've probably annoyed some of you to some extent. The natural next question is…Well, then, how do we find it? That's actually not the natural next question, because in asking that, we assume something too important to make any estimations or guesses about, which is…Do you actually even want it? Do you even want the kind of joy Jesus is offering to you?

Some of you don't want full joy. If everybody in this room wanted fullness of joy and was ready to go all in with Jesus, you would be deeply satisfied and I would be without a job. Lord, I pray that would happen at The Porch, because I want you to be joyful. I want you to go all in with him. But some of you don't want full joy.

You want instant gratification. You want fleeting pleasures. You want quick coping mechanisms just to make you feel okay for the day. Here's the thing: you will be content to try it on your own until you realize just how discontent you are on your own. You will do your best, but it will never, ever be enough.

But some of you are here, and you are ready to go all in. You do want full joy, not joy like the world promises but the joy that Jesus promises. You're ready for that. You're wanting for that. You're serious about this. You need to know that Jesus has always been serious about your joy too. He has been so serious about your joy, so much so that the most joyous being in the universe would come to the most joyless beings in the universe, that happiness from on high would come to our despair down here low.

Jesus wanted you to be a person of joy so badly that he himself would bear in himself all the sorrow of your sin. Jesus wants to take your bruisings, your brokenness, and he wants to mold them, form them, redeem them, and reconcile them back into blessings. He's willing to do whatever it takes that you might have joy, even at the cost of his own life. He'll come to live the perfect life, but he'll die the death you actually do deserve, for all sin is deserving of condemnation. He would be condemned in our place that we might find liberation, we might go free forever.

That's not all. He wants you to find more than a feeling but the fullness of joy, so much so that he won't just give it to you right now. He won't just give it to you tomorrow. He won't just give it to you next week. He won't just give it to you next month. He's going to give it to you forever! He wants to give you eternal, everlasting, infinite joy, the likes of which you will never grow tired of. Heaven will be far happier than you dare dream.

We'll never go there and get tired of the things we're doing. It's going to be better and better and better. Why? Because he is there with us, and he has come down here to get us. If you are looking for the fullness of joy, then you need to know the fullness of joy came looking for you, and his name is Jesus. He is looking for some of you tonight. Is it you? Let me pray for you.

Father, I pray with every fiber of my being that these young adults would believe the truth that you want for their happiness, you want for their joy, you want for their soul's satisfaction more than they do. I pray, God, right now, please, that some would take you up on the invitation, that some would be serious about the opportunity here, some would respond for the first time in rejoicing in a king who would come to save even the likes of them.

If you're here, and you're serious about journeying into the joy of Jesus, I am going to boldly ask you to put your hand up, to raise it high in declaration to God that "God, I want that. I want you. I want joy. I want Jesus. That's what I want." Put it up. Hold it up. Look around. You're not alone. You are not by yourself. There are others here who want the same thing you do. Let us be a people who do not linger behind but lean all the way forward and take God up on the offer that there is deep, soul-satisfying delight ready for us right now.

God, we believe that is who you are, that that's what you've come to give, and that we, too, can be the same. We love you. It is in Christ's name we pray, amen.