Enter Rest Through Joy

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

Hi, I'm sure you find yourself in a busy season of li fe. What I want to do today is I want you to help, I want to help you enter in to God's rest amidst the challenges and the busyness and the hardship that I'm sure you are facing. The thing we need to get down today in order to enter rest is to practice joy.

So what I'm talking about is how do we practice joy in our life, because joy is serious business, according to God. As Paul teaches us in Philippians, he says, rejoice. I'll say it again. Rejoice. That's what he says. He emphasizes it twice. And when we look throughout the scriptures, God's desire is that we might experience joy in the midst of every season, in the midst of every challenge.

So, well, how do we do that? Well, I think it comes down to three things. We want to commit to play, creating, and connection. Let me tell you a little bit more about that. So, as Paul says, we are to rejoice in everything. Say it again. Rejoice.

Well, how do we do that? Well, he says to think on things. Whatever's excellent, and noble, and right, and pleasurable, think about those things.Pleasant. When we think about the scriptures, we get this overarching picture. of restoration. The world is created, but it's broken, and the future is a world restored. And one of the ways that the world is described, the metaphor described, the way it will look when it's restored, is from Zachariah, and he says that there'll be kids playing in the streets. I love that.

When I think of my childhood, there was a lot of playing in the street. The house we grew up on had a street on the, in front of our front yard, and we were on a side lot, and so there was a corner, and we played baseball there all the time. First base was out in one road, and you had to hit it over. the other road for a home run. And so we were playing in the street all the time, and cars would sometimes have to stop. It wasn't busy, but they would stop, and they'd wait for us to get down to play, and then they'd drive through and wave. I love that picture. Kids playing in the street.

The World Restored looks like kids playing in the street. Now, as adults, we sort of think, oh, play is just for kids. Well, tricks are just for kids. Playing is for everyone. And so I want to challenge you. How do you play? Because here's what happens when you play. You're doing two things. One, you're making a statement. You're making a statement that you think the world is good, that the future is one of restoration, that there's hope.

And so even in the midst of the challenge, even in the midst of the busyness, even in the midst of the hardship, your choice to practice playing is you participating in a spiritual practice that makes you present right where you are. For some of you, maybe it's golf. For others, it's pickleball. Maybe you love going to the SU game. Whatever it is. What do you do that helps you play? And are you giving yourself space in your life to do it? The things that block it, I think, are often our mindset around it. We actually think that we shouldn't play as adults. We're too responsible. We have too many things to do. We're too busy. Whatever that might be. Work on that. Say, you know what? Playing is part of being a full human being. And when I'm playing, I'm participating in God's good creation.

Second, make sure you have the time. You know, if you don't have the time to do it, if you don't set aside time for it, you won't, you won't do it because the busyness will take over.

And finally, some of you might not even know what you have fun at. You might know, how to play. And so your homework is figuring out what play really looks like. So if we want to enter into God's rest, through the practice of joy, we want to learn how to play.

Second, we want to be creators. Genesis 1, it says that God made humanity in God's image. Verses 1 through 26 of chapter 1 are all about how God creates, and then in 27 it says that God created humanity, male and female, in God's image. And so here what we see is that we see that we, as human beings, were created in the image of a creator.

We are to be creators ourselves. And just in case the author didn't make the point, in Genesis 2, it tells the same story from a different angle, and says that God placed the humans into the creation to till and keep it. And by that, it's like a sense of cultivation. So we are creators and cultivators in the world around us.

And so for you, you're gonna enter into joy through the joy of creation. We create all kinds of things. And creating things is fun and joyful. Whether you like to cook or art and pottery, we think about Jesus and Jesus in his first miracle creates wine out of water so that the party can keep going.

Maybe what you like to do is you like to create spaces for people to have healthy relationship and celebrate. Maybe you are helping lead your local little league or youth sports team and you're helping create that framework so kids and families can have fun. Figure out what it is that you like to create and give yourself time and space to practice that creation because when you're creating you're going to experience joy because it will resonate with your identity.

Human beings were designed to be creators and so as we take time to create then that helps us experience joy and enter into God's rest. So, what is it that you do that you would like to create, and is there any space in your life for it?

So we've talked about play, we've talked about creation, the last thing I want to talk about is connection. So, again, back to Paul in Philippians 4, he says, Rejoice in everything. I say it again, rejoice. And then a verse later, he says, Do not worry. Jesus has a similar teaching. He says, Do not worry. Consider the lilies of the field, look at the birds of the air. And I think in both cases, the teaching to not worry is important because worry is the enemy of joy.

Whenever we're worrying, we're caught either in what I call the fake future, worrying about all the different iterations of things that could be, might be, how we might respond to them. Or we are ruminating. on the past and we're stuck in the woulda shoulda coulda place, if only. Both of those things, what they do is they steal us from the present.

And the present is the place that we get to experience God. The present is where we experience ourselves. The present is where we experience others. And so worry is the enemy of joy because it takes us out of the present. And Jesus antidote is so helpful. Look at the birds of the air. Consider the lilies of the field.

That look, that considering, focuses our attention. And so, for you and I, one of the things we want to do is we want to figure out practices that help us be present. You know, I think in down moments we run to the cabinet for some food, or our phones for a quick hit of dopamine. And those things don't actually help us become present.

I'm talking about fun things. Like puzzles. So I came downstairs the other day and my wife's doing a puzzle and it's a thing that she started to do a lot of. And it's because for her, when she's doing a puzzle, it helps her be present right where she is. And she enjoys the process. I was talking to a friend of mine, and for him, it's bonfires and 80s music. And so he likes building a big bonfire and sitting outside, blasting 80s tunes.

What is it for you? What is it that helps you be present? In the midst of the busyness of your life, in the midst of this hectic season that you find yourself in, in the midst of the challenges. God desires for you to enter into rest. And one of the ways we do that is by practicing joy.

So be a person who practices joy, play, create, and connect so that you might have a flourishing life. Glad to be with you. We'll be back again soon talking more about how we enter God's rest amidst the race of life. Thank you.