Welcome to the Open Gate Ministry,

Fullness of Joy

This morning when you woke up, I hope that your heart was the same as mine, and that you said as the Psalmist David did, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go to the house of the Lord!” (Psalm 122:1). I hope that you didn’t wake up this morning and say, “Oh no! It’s another Sunday morning and I have to go to church!” I hope that when you woke up this morning you said, “Yes! It’s Sunday morning and I get to go to the house of the Lord, because I get to meet with the Lord! My God is a good God, a loving God, who has great plans for my life.”

Now today is a very special day for me. Sixteen years ago today, on a farmhouse outside of Lacombe, Alberta, a young man named Jerrold shared the Gospel with me and told me that there was a God who loved me so much, that if I would give my life to Him, I would never regret it. And it’s true – I never have. Since that day, I have enjoyed serving God and living a Godly life. And if you don’t know God, I pray that you would meet Him, and realize that spirituality is not just about following a bunch of rules, and dressing up nice to go to church on Sunday morning. It’s about having a personal friendship with the God who not only created you, but loves you so much, and desperately longs to have a friendship with you. That’s the God of the Bible.

But there’s something missing in the church today. There’s something missing, and I wonder if we can find it, because it’s something we need on this journey called life. There’s something missing in the lives of so many of God’s people, and it’s called JOY. It’s God’s desire that we would have not just a little bit of joy, but fullness of joy, and rivers of pleasure. That’s the title of my message.

This past Friday afternoon I took my family to the mall on a shopping trip, and most of you who know my wife know she likes to shop. As we were getting ready to leave the mall, we stopped at Dairy Queen for some ice cream. We got some ice cream cones for the kids, and as I was scanning the menu, under the “Blizzard” section (that’s the stirred up ice cream with all the good chocolate stuff in it), I noticed an item on the menu that said, “Extra Stuff – 99 cents.” So I asked the cashier, “Could I get some of that extra stuff, please?” She wasn’t quite sure what I meant by that (I’m sure no one had ever just ordered the extra stuff before), so she called her supervisor over, and she said to her, “He wants the extra stuff.” The supervisor explained to me, “You have to order the Blizzard before you can get the extra stuff.” I just wanted the extra stuff for 99 cents – that was a good deal! She said, “No, you have to get the Blizzard – then you can get the extra stuff.” You see, in our lives, so many of us aren’t experiencing the extra stuff – we’re not experiencing the joy of the Lord because we don’t realize that there’s something else we need to have first before we can get the extra stuff. We’re going to talk about that in this message.

In Galatians 4:15, Paul asks, “What happened to your joy?” And I want to ask that same question to you today. When I was at church yesterday, I was looking around our sanctuary during worship to see if I could see any joy in the house of the Lord. There was a little bit of it up at the front with some of our young people, who were dancing before the Lord in worship. But there wasn’t a lot of other joy. And some of you might say, “Well, pastor Chris, my joy is on the inside. I have the joy by faith, brother! I just don’t like to express it on the outside. It’s an inner joy.” Well, if you’ve got an inner joy, then let it out!

So what is JOY? Joy is a topic that is mentioned in the Bible over 650 times (it talks about joy, rejoice, rejoicing, glad, gladness, and delight). So some of you might say, “Joy is not an important topic. You should be preaching about faith or prayer or Bible study, because those are important topics”. But to me, when the Bible talks about a certain topic over 650 times, that tells me it’s a pretty important topic. Here’s what the Bible has to say about joy:

Psalm 43:4 - the Psalmist calls God His “Exceeding Joy.” Some of you might say, “Well, I don’t need all that joy stuff, brother, I’m just serving Jesus.” Well let me tell you something about this God you’re serving. He IS exceeding joy! That’s His name, and that’s His nature. If you get around God, you’re going to get a little bit of joy in your life, whether you like it or not.

Matt. 25:21 - For those of you who say, “I don’t need all that joy stuff,” guess what? Heaven is called “the joy of the Lord.” When we stand before God on the day that we enter eternity, He will say, “Enter into the joy of the Lord.” So you better get used to joy down here on the earth, because there’s going to be a whole lot of it in heaven.

I once read of a little boy who used to escape his bedroom after being punished. He would crawl out of his bedroom window down an old fruit tree to the ground. One day, his father told him that he was going to chop down the fruit tree, because it hadn’t borne any fruit for a number of years. That evening, the boy and his friend bought a bushel of apples, and during the night, tied those apples on the barren branches. The next morning, the man could not believe his eyes. He said to his wife, "Honey, I can’t believe it! That old tree hasn’t yielded any fruit for years, and now it’s covered with apples. And, the most amazing thing is that it’s a pear tree!"

You see, joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life, and you can’t fake it! You know if you have the joy or not. When you have the apples hanging on the pear tree – that’s not real fruit! We can pretend all we want, but God doesn’t want us to pretend. I’m not talking about putting on a mask and pretending that we’re all right when we’re not. I’m saying if we realize today that we don’t have the joy that God intends for us to have, then let’s find out where we can get it, and go get it.

Now I’m not saying that life isn’t hard, that we don’t go through difficult times and seasons of loss. But joy is different from happiness. I’m not talking about happiness, because happiness is based on our circumstances. We are happy when good things happen to us. I get a new job – I’m happy! I lose my job – I’m sad. Young people – you get a boyfriend or a girlfriend – I’m happy! They break up with you – I’m sad. I get a new house – yes, I’m happy! Then I have to start fixing it up a year later – I’m sad. I get a new car – I’m happy. I realize I have to make payments on that car – the happiness is gone. Happy, sad, happy, sad. It comes and goes! But joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives that does not depend on our circumstances. It doesn’t matter how dark it gets, it doesn’t matter what negative things happen to us, if we have the joy of the Lord that doesn’t come from any outside source, but the presence of the Living God, nothing can take it away from you. That’s the kind of joy we’re talking about here today!

Joy comes from living a life in obedience to the Word of God! If you think about it for a minute: If there is a God, and He created this world that we’re living in, and He gave us a blueprint for life that tells us how to live, and His desire is that we have abundant life and fullness of joy, if we’re not experiencing what He intended for us, could it be that we’ve strayed just a little bit away from this blueprint? Because He said that when we walk in obedience to His Word, when we follow the guidelines that He has laid out for us, there is fullness of joy!

Now I want to show you something here that I discovered very early on in my life – the way to pursue the presence of joy. How do we get into the place where joy is? The Bible says that fullness of joy is found in God’s presence. That tells me that if I want to experience joy, I need to get into God’s presence. But the question is – how do I get there? Well guess what-you are already there. In fact, you have been in the presence of God since the day you were born. The Spirit of God is alive within you at this very moment, filling you with His power and blessings.

So rejoice, my friends. You are blessed and loved by the Creator and Master of the Universe, who loves you and wants nothing but the best for you. That fills my heart with joy and makes me face each day with a song in my heart. And once you learn how to find that Spirit within you, you will be so full of joy there won't be room for any sadness or worry.

Go forth in the joy of the Lord.