Sometimes we, I know before I got saved, I thought Christians must be the most miserable people in the world. They have to do all this stuff, you know. They've got to go to church, and they've got to read their Bible, and they've got to pray, and do all that Christian stuff. And I thought, man, it must be a miserable life. And I didn't know that actually it's a much lighter life than being burdened down with sin. And, but sometimes Christians even go back in their mind and get bogged down and, you know, some heavy stuff, because life happens, doesn't it? We get problems coming our way, got family, got job, bills, and sometimes those things just get heavy. And we need to know that there is a lighter side of life, we don't have to live on the dark side, we don't have to go around with a Dark cloud floating over us, and we don't have to be like Eeyore saying, oh my, it's only going to get worse from here. Well, we're going to be in Philippians chapter 4, the book of joy, Philippians. We'll be in chapter 4 in just a minute. So we're preaching today on the joy habit, the joy habit. Joy for the Christian ought to be a habit, something that we do habitually because of who we are in Christ. One time, I told you last week, talking about the lighter side of life and learning how to laugh at yourself. We have to learn to laugh at ourselves, don't we? If you can't laugh at yourself, call me, I'll laugh at you. We have to learn to laugh at ourselves. And I told you about when we were building this church, Brother Matt might remember that. Glad y'all are here, by the way, from Florida. I'm glad Daniel and Rain, glad y'all are here today. God bless you. And man, it's good to have kind of short-tailed relatives, is that what they call us? Erica's brother and his family. Good to have them down here as well. I told the story last week, Matt, about when we were constructing this building and that night we had some visiting preachers and I brought them over here to show them that the thing was under construction and I told them how I stepped in the bucket of paint and ruined my joy. I was just trying to be a big show-off and stepped in the paint and lost all my dignity. Well, I learned to laugh at myself, but I'll tell you another one. This happened in this building not too many years ago. I was sitting over there in my seat and getting ready to preach. Aaron was leading the singing and I'm getting ready to preach. And my socks felt like they had kind of drifted down a little. Have your socks ever happened that way? your socks ever drift mine felt like they drifted down and so I pulled up my socks to get them nice and snug you know before I went to the pulpit and so I got to the pulpit and man I'm just really preaching a great sermon you know it's just really a wonderful sermon when I got through Aaron came up to me and said dad I was so embarrassed your your pant leg was tucked into the top of your socks through the whole sermon I said if you'll tuck your pant leg in your socks people won't expect near as much out of you Well, you've got to allow them to laugh at yourself. There is a lighter side of life and everything doesn't need to be heavy and dark and dreary in the Christian life. Here's some funny things people try to do to be joyful instead of being crabby or curmudgeon. Here's what they do. Some people practice in the mirror. They try to look cheerful but end up with a smile that's kind of the one you get when your dentist says, now you're going to feel a little pressure. Some people will whistle a happy tune, trying to look cheerful, but it sounds more like the death throes of a tea kettle. Then some people talk to themselves in the car, you know, they say, like a pep talk, a coach goes to the players, they're talking to themselves in the car and say, all right, you can You can do this. You don't have to be grouchy at Walmart. You can do this. You can do this. Well, I've never got to Walmart without being grouchy. I'm still working on that one. And then people overuse the word blessed. Somebody asks, how are you doing? Oh, I'm blessed. Well, maybe you ought to tell your face about it. Well, some people walk into the room with too much cheer. They're just trying to really overdo it. You ever see anybody like that? Man, they're just trying to really overdo it, trying to build up cheer and joy on their own. And they walk into the room, and they're just, oh, man, they're waving their arms like an airplane propeller, and they're just going all over everything, and they're kind of overdoing it. Somebody's saying, man, who put the espresso in their sweet tea? And we just kind of overdo it a little. There's those that use too many emojis in their text or their post on Facebook or something. They're trying to sound friendly so they add 14 smiley faces, 3 hearts and a random pineapple just for good luck. Well, we can overdo some of those things trying to build up joy in our own heart, in our own life, in our own face and we ought to want to be joyful. but there is a way to have real joy. Here's a little poem I just got a hold of. Some folks wear frowns like armor, keeping tenderness at bay. Their words come out in little snaps that chase kind hearts away. But deep inside, behind the look, behind the sighs and the groans, there lives a heart that's aching hard and weighed down in the bones. They're not unkind, just burdened. Not hateful, just worn thin. Life's pressure is pressed like heavy stones that bruise the soul within. And though they look like thunderclouds on some forgotten shore, their spirits beg for sunlight that they can't find anymore. We judge the face, the tone, the mood, the sharpness in their voice, not knowing pain has numbed their hearts and stolen every choice. But God sees the inward parts and still whispers strong and sweet, my joy can lift the heaviest heart and steady trembling feet. so when you meet a cloudy soul who seems to be a bit unkind look past the frown there may be joy they're desperate to find and gently point their way and their heart to the one who heals and stays for Christ restores the broken life and brightens the overshadowed days so in a sense we know when things are getting a little bit heavy We try to deny it sometimes, but we know when things are kind of going sour. We snap at somebody, have an irritable spirit all day long, and if you don't know that you've got that, ask your wife, she'll tell you. They're brutally honest. You can develop a cynical attitude, and it just looks like nothing's going to work out. Well, if that's your case, this message is designed for you. Let's read that text in Philippians chapter 4, beginning in verse number 4. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men, the Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me, do. and the God of peace shall be with you. Father, we pray that you'd bless in this hour when we come to you, Lord, to put our burdens on you. Lord, we know that there's an altar here, there's a heart that needs to be laid on the altar, and Lord, No matter how hard we try to lift up our spirits on our own, we just can't seem to do it. And Lord, we need you. We need to have joy in you. We need to make joy a habit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We've been studying the last couple of weeks. I wanted to bring a few messages because life, it does get heavy. And we're entering the season now from Thanksgiving to New Year's where holidays happen and people get together and seemingly have a good time. But you know, there's a lot of lonely people. There's a lot of people who Remember things that used to be that are no more. Family gone. Some loved ones have passed away. Maybe some relationships have broken. Maybe people have moved and just don't have friends. But a lot of things happen during the holidays that not everybody has a good time. And so I wanted to bring a few messages about the lighter side of life. I like that old Chuck Wagon song that we sang a few weeks ago. Keep on the sunny side. Always on the sunny side of life. Now we can't do that in our own strength, but we do have a Lord who can change that for us. And if we let these burdens build up on us, it can get so heavy we can't seem to get out from under them. And the Lord didn't just command us here In chapter 4 of Philippians, he didn't just command us to rejoice on our own, he showed us how. He showed us how. Let's watch his steps in these verses, verses 4 through 9. It's kind of a practical handbook. We call it Paul's practical handbook of joy. And remember, Paul didn't write these verses when he was laying on a beach in the Caribbean. or for you newcomers in the life, the Caribbean. I grew up in the days when it's still the Caribbean. Paul wasn't laying on a beach somewhere when he wrote this. He wasn't sipping iced tea and eating coconut under a palm tree. You know where he was? He was in prison. He was in prison and he's telling other people how to how joy. Well, if he could have joy while he's inside the prison, where did he have that joy? He didn't have the joy because of circumstances, he had the joy inside himself. And that, my dear friend, can mean the difference between having joy and not having joy when it's on the inside of us. Circumstances are going to surround you all life long. It's not going to get better. There's always going to be some circumstances that are disappointing and discouraging. But if we got joy on the inside, I think it was Adrian Rogers that called it an inside job. He preached a sermon similar to this one time and he called it joy as an inside job. And it is an inside job. And we're going to look at it because if you're in chains on the outside, you can still be free on the inside. Let's look at Paul's first prescription. We're going to call it a prescription because the Bible does say that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Y'all are kind of dull this morning. Did you stay up too late watching the movies last night? A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. If you take your medicine, it's going to make you better, at least that's the philosophy behind it. Look at the first thing Paul gives us, that we ought to maintain a rejoicing mindset. A mindset. What does the Bible say about our heart? As he thinketh in his heart, so is he. In other words, I'm not who you see on the outside, I'm not my circumstances, I'm not what I'm doing, I'm what I'm thinking about on the inside. So joy has to be a mindset, it's something that has to exist continually, something that we are trained to do, have our mindset that we're going to be joyful. Now we can't think ourselves into joy on our own, but we're going to learn before this is over, I hope that we can have joy because of Him. Maintain a rejoicing mindset. Philippians 4.4, look at it again. Rejoice in the Lord always. Do you see that word always? Rejoice in this joy that we have, we ought to rejoice always. And it says to rejoice where? In the Lord. And so if we're going to rejoice, we have to do it in the Lord, not in ourselves because we may not be doing too good in the flesh. But if you've got Jesus living in you, you've got something in you pretty good, right? Something perfect. Rejoice in the Lord always. And then he says, and again I say rejoice. That again directs us to think we're supposed to rejoice. And he says, and again I say rejoice. So that suggests a continual mindset of joy. And this matters to us because it keeps us from sinking under life's pressures. It trains the soul, instead of looking outward, to look upward in Him, in the Lord. Well, joy is a strength. What's that little song we sing from Was it Nehemiah? The joy of the Lord is my strength. Scriptural. And it makes a pretty good little song too. You ought to learn to sing that to yourself. The joy of the Lord is my strength. I can sing. I can just quote the scripture. Paul doesn't begin, notice here, he doesn't begin with feelings, he's not talking about emotions, he's not talking about something that we can drum up, he's talking about something that lasts and lasts. There's a man by the name of Charles Trumbull, he was a long-time editor of the Sunday School Times and he taught victory and joy and peace and preached about it, but deep inside he didn't have it. He said that he felt like a man dragging a loaded wagon uphill. Sometimes we can be that way. He said he preached joy but rarely tasted it. One night he was at a Bible conference and a verse came out. And that still small voice of God spoke to him from Galatians 2.20. Let me read it to you. But Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. What's he saying? He's saying, I live a life, all right, but that old life was crucified. Now I'm living a life that is Christ living through me. It's not my life. It's not that old life. It's not a fleshly life. It's not a carnal life. It's the life that Jesus lives within me. He learned, Trumbull learned that I can't drum up joy, I can't drum up peace, I can't drum up a lighter side of life through what I'm living in the flesh. It has to be Christ living through me, not me living for him, but he is living through me. I think it brings out the fact that we have a struggle going on inside of us Like those funny little lines I read about people doing things to try to look cheerful or be cheerful, they were faking it. You can fake it and it might help for a little while, but that's you doing it. If we're going to have real lasting joy, it has to be because we recognize that He lives in us. When you got saved, what happened? Jesus came in. Through the Holy Spirit, you're indwelt by Jesus. He said when He left this world and went back to heaven, He said, I'm going away, but I'll send you another comforter. That's the Holy Spirit that lives within you. And if you surrender to Him, like Charles Trumbull did, if you surrender to that Spirit that lives within you, then Christ begins to live through you, and it's not you, but it's Him. He surrendered the striving. Willpower can't produce joy, but Jesus can. How can Christ live in me and experience his joy instead of producing it in the flesh? Well, it's going to be kind of a feeble illustration, but the Lord laid it on my heart. The difference between me trying to do what needs to be done, the difference between me trying to be joyful and just relaxing and let the Lord live through me. Years ago, I've had a few surgeries, in fact I've had so many surgeries, they put a zipper in me last time so they could just open me up. The first time I had surgery, I was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Man, I'd never gone through anything like this. And when they wheeled me into the operating room, I remember they had all these things hooked up to me and stuff, you know, holes poked in my arms and these tubes and all that stuff. And they had the anesthesia already hooked up. hit the go button yet, where it went into my arteries at that point. And so I'm laying there nervous, man, I'm thinking, how am I going to endure this? It's probably going to hurt, man. They're going to cut me open. This is going to hurt. And I was expressing that to the nurse there. And she said, don't worry about it. She said, that anesthesia is going to take care of everything. When it gets in you, you ain't going to worry about nothing. You ain't going to even know you're here. And I said, well, maybe I'm afraid I'll wake up in the middle of it or something. The anesthesiologist said, OK, we're ready to give you the anesthesia now. And he pushed the button that let it go into my IV. And he said, now, don't worry about a thing. Just relax. Go to sleep. You'll wake up when it's all over. You won't know of anything about pain. And he said, now you'll feel a little warmth when it goes in there and maybe a little bit of a taste in your mouth. He said, do you feel it yet? I said, yeah, I think so. He said, now count to ten backwards. I said ten, nine, eight. I didn't know anything. You know why? I didn't have to grit my teeth and say, I'm going to endure this pain. It wasn't in my power. It's what was in me. The anesthesia in me gave me perfect peace. I didn't feel anything. Everything went great. You know what? When you're having pain and misery from life around you, maybe things have gone sour in some areas and maybe there's things that's just weighing you down and it's just causing pain. It's not by your own gritting your teeth and trying to produce joy in you. It's just sitting back and relaxing and letting the Lord inside you live through you. Let Him bring your joy. I thought about this too, another little silly illustration. I've flown on planes a few times. I'm getting to where I don't like it as much. What if I got on a jetliner and we're going across coast to coast, across the country? What if I get on this plane, they got me in the back seat, you know, and I get up and I'm thinking, man, I wish we would hurry up and get there. What if I get up out of my seat, start walking down the aisle and flapping my arms like wings? Would I get there any quicker? Would it make things any better? Would it make things easier? No, that plane's going to get there whether I stand up and flap my wings or not. That's the way it is when Jesus lives within you. How do we bring this down to something practical? Sit down and relax. That doesn't mean become complacent. It doesn't mean become irresponsible. You do what you're supposed to do and trust Christ for the results. If you're needing joy, and who doesn't? If you're needing joy and peace and laughter in your life, and where you really enjoy things and you're not burdened down with anxiety and care. You don't need drugs to deaden your feelings. All you need to do is sit back and say, when I got saved, Jesus moved in. Now I'm going to quit flapping my wings, trying to make things better, trying to help him out. I'm going to quit trying to help him fly the airplane. I'm going to sit back and just relax. Hey, how did you get saved in the first place? Wasn't it by faith? You got saved by faith. You know he died on the cross to pay for your sins. There's nothing you can do to help him out. When Jesus died on the cross, he said, it is finished. What do we do to be saved? Believe. by faith so after we get saved having peace and joy and contentment in life comes the same way by faith just sit down and say he did it all he lives in me so instead of fretting and worrying trying to figure things out make things work on my own I'm just gonna rest relax and let him do his job because I don't do his job very well And neither do you. Well, it's kind of like young people's battery on their cell phone gets down to 1%. What do they do, man? They go into a panic and start looking for some place to plug it in and recharge their phone battery. Well, our soul is the same way. Our joy is the same way. We need to stay plugged in to Jesus. I'm talking about staying aware of Him. Being aware of Him continually every day. The joy of the Lord is your strength, but it's your choice to decide to let Him live through you. It has to be a mindset. Number two, cultivate a gentle spirit. Cultivate a gentle spirit. There was a couple of ladies in the church in Philippians here, Euodius and Syntyche, evidently they had worked side by side in the church before and they evidently got along okay in the past but they're kind of at odds with one another, causing some division in the church there at Philippi. And that's why Paul wrote in verse number five in our text, let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Now that doesn't mean the Lord's coming back right now. Paul didn't say that. He said the Lord's at hand, meaning the Lord lives within us and the Lord lives in those around us. And the Lord's there to help solve your problems. And so there's no use fighting and being mean-spirited. That brings a lot of chaos into life, ruins your joy. I heard about the two ladies that got on the city bus. And they're both trying to sit in the same seat. And one of them said, that's my seat. I was here first. I saw it first. The other one said, I touched it first. It's mine. This is my seat. And they're arguing back and forth. And finally, the bus driver just got up and went back there, causing such a scene, arguing with one another, both of them wanting that seat. And neither one of them would give in. He went back about halfway, and he said, look, I've got the answer to it. And so they both looked at him and said, what is it? He said, I'm just going to let the ugly one sit in the seat. They both stood up the rest of the way. We don't have to be ugly in spirit. We don't have to be unkind, but rather gentle. Paul said he was gentle when he was among those people. He was gentle as a nursemaid would be kind and gentle. Some people got a chip on their shoulder, and if you do, somebody's going to knock it off. Things are not going to be as sweet, but if we're gentle, life gets a little bit better. A gentle spirit lowers the temperature of every room it enters in. A gentle spirit. Intentional gentleness. There's times when we kind of go on autopilot and we can be gentle by accident, if there is such a thing. Other people are gentle by nature. It's part of their personality. Still others are gentle because they decided to be gentle. You know what will smooth your marriage out, ladies and gentlemen? Learn to be gentle. Instead of demanding, commanding, criticizing, to yelling? What if both people in that marriage decided to be gentle? A soft answer turneth away wrath. See, that's what he means in our text about let your moderation be known unto all men. Moderation. Chill out. Chill out. Just don't be uptight. Let Christ live through you. Wasn't he gentle and kind? Yeah, he got in a couple people's faces, but it was something. It wasn't because he was contentious. It was because some people were doing some things that needed to be straightened out. And you and I don't have to straighten everybody out because I'm not Jesus and neither are you. The person who has moderation in their life. The person who has gentleness, he doesn't snap, he doesn't rage, he doesn't throw emotional hand grenades into the situation and make things worse. You ever be around somebody that gets upset real easily. I mean, even playing a game. I mean, some of you might be in a game, maybe you're playing Monopoly during the holiday season and one person finally, they just get all they can take. You've landed down here, you're charging me too much rent on that hotel, I can't seem to win anything, boom, they just throw the whole table over. You ever see anybody? People do that. Yeah. Gaming rage, isn't that what they call it? Gaming rage? It's kind of like road rage, only it's when you're playing a game. I don't think about that road rage, too. Those people carry guns. Vance Havener, an old-time preacher back in the last century, he went through some very tough times. He, too, like Trumbull, preached about joy. And he was sharp as a tack, a dynamite preacher. But he went through some heavy, heavy times. I mean, it just drained him. He couldn't seem to get the victory over it. But that heavy time hung on to him so long that it changed him. He finally surrendered to the Lord and said, Lord, I'm going to let you have your way. I can't change this situation. And when he came out from that hard, hard time, he came out with a smile on his face And from that time on, he preached about joy a lot. He won the victory in times of trial and hardship. And I'm saying that to kind of give you a little bit of hope, because if you're going through something right now, you don't have to think this is the end. It might just be that God let it come into you, like stepping in a paint bucket to bring a smile to your face and help you to get a joy in your life that wouldn't have come there any other way. He used to make fun of people who didn't have joy after that. Some of you folks look like you're baptizing a pickle barrel full of pickle juice. Well, that ought not to be us. And he'd say, if you have the joy of the Lord, you ought to notify your face. And those laughs were forged in sorrow. Well, let's bring this to our last one. When the soul is not overloaded, Well listen, I might make this the last one, I might go a little further, but I want to at least get this one in. Release your burdens in prayer. Look at verse number 6 in our text. Verse 6 and 7. He says, Be careful for nothing. Now the word careful just simply means don't be overly anxious, don't be stressed out, don't worry. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by what? By prayer and supplication. With Thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God by prayer. You know how that works? If you've got a water heater in your house, and I hope you do, winter's coming. If you ever looked at it, the guys will probably know this at least, on top of your water heater or on the side one, there's a pressure relief valve. It's a safety feature built in because a water heater can get stuck or something and it just keeps on cooking and cooking and building up heat until it'll just explode the whole water heater and blow your house up. So it's required, it's mandated by law that they put a pressure relief valve on it. and that pressure relief valve senses when the pressure gets so great and it will let the pressure off through a little tube that goes down under your floor instead of just exploding your whole house. You know what prayer is? It's a pressure relief valve. When you begin to sense that you're getting a lot of pressure built up, circumstances, hardships, problems, trials. Things are getting heavy. When you sense it, that's when it's time to trigger your pressure relief valve and go to the Lord in prayer. It lets the pressure off. Besides the fact that He can answer prayer is the fact that it does you some good to just talk to the Lord about it. Our scripture, our text says the Lord is at hand. You don't have to wait till evening. You don't have to wait till morning. You don't have to wait till things are exploded. You don't have to wait till everything gets hopeless. The Lord is at hand. He's ready to hear you. He wants to hear from you continually. Now we ought to have that time in the morning, maybe in the night when we pray, maybe a longer time, but we ought to carry on an ongoing conversation with the Lord throughout the day. so that we let some of that pressure off as we go along. Just talk to the Lord. He's at hand. He's there to listen. Let Him know what you need. And as a result, in verse number 7 it says, And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Through Christ Jesus. It's not in our will, it's not in our flesh, it's through Christ. Prayer is the believer's pressure valve. He said be careful for nothing, don't carry anxiety around with you. Have you ever carried an overstuffed backpack and maybe you got books and you got binders and you got all kinds of stuff in the backpack or maybe you're going camping and you got all kinds of equipment in your backpack and you're walking along, you don't realize, you just, you know, you begin to trudge along, it's gotten so heavy, once you pull that thing off and lay it down, you can breathe a sigh of relief. That's what it's like to unload your cares on the Lord. The Bible says, He careth for you. He didn't design you to carry everything. He didn't design you to be sad and mad all the time. He designed you to let Him live His life out through you. Well, how do we do all of this stuff? Well, we've got to be careful about saying, how do I do? Because doing is what we're trying to get away from. We need to stop trying and start trusting. You say, well, how does this come together? Well, train your mind on the right things. Verses 8 and 9, let's read it again. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest and just and pure and lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. Think on these things. The word think, that verb think means that you're to direct your thoughts. Your thoughts shouldn't be something that happens to you. Your thoughts should be something that you're in control of. Martin Luther said, you can't keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can keep them from landing in your hair and building a nest. And that's the way it is with your thought life. If you don't control your thought life, you're never going to have a great deal of joy and peace. Because he says here, Paul, remember Paul's in prison and if anybody ever had a reason to have little joy to no joy, it would have been him. And yet he said, if you want peace, if you want joy, if you want contentment, and he is the one that said I've learned in whatsoever state I'm in therewith to be content. If Paul learned how to do that, I think it would be wise to listen to his advice under the inspiration of Almighty God. He says, think on these things. You know why a lot of us stay mad? Because we're thinking about somebody that did us wrong and we rehearse it over and over and over and we'll wake up in the middle of the night thinking, well I wish I had this to do over again. This is what I would have said. I would have shown them a thing or two. I'd give them a piece of my mind. Most of us haven't got enough of a mind that we need to be giving any of it away anyway. You know what I'm talking about though? As you run those thoughts through your mind and you're nursing your hurts, the more you nurse those hurts, the more they're going to hang around to be fed. What do you do? Well, forgiveness is a good place to start. And then control your thoughts. I've heard some married couples say, well, I've told them, you need to forgive your spouse. Well, I'll forgive them, but I ain't forgetting. What are they saying? I am forgiving them with my lips, but in my heart, I'm going to stay mad and I'm holding a grudge. It doesn't work very good that way though, does it? Paul says, control your thoughts. Think on these things. Think on things that are true and lovely and just and pure. Things that have virtue. Think on those things. When you hear some kind of gossip about somebody, brother, sister, fellow church member, instead of just jumping on board and selling them down the river, man, maybe you ought to just take time and say, well, that's my friend. I don't want to say anything bad about them. That's my brother. That's my sister. Well, we're quick to accuse and convict before the verdict is in. Well, we ought to control our thoughts. It has to become a habit. The habit of joy has to be from a trained mind that I can refuse to think about heavy stuff all the time. I can decide and choose if I'm going to think on the good things. It's my decision, but I've got to train it. Psychologists say that anything that you do, any habit that you want to change, whether it be good or bad, any habit that you want to change, you're going to have to do it for at least a couple of weeks, the new behavior, before the new behavior sets in. So this joy thing is not something you can get on the altar and say I'm going to be joyful from this day forward and then everything is going to go on autopilot from there on out. You have to train your mind to think about those things. My wife and I have been married, next year will be half a century and we haven't always had perfect peace in our marriage. In fact, the first few years was a little bit of rough sailing because we weren't used to each other. I wanted my way and she wanted her way and we were both kind of stubborn. Her a lot more than me. You know what we finally decided? I can't do a lot to change her. She can't do a lot to change me. I have a better outcome if I try to change me rather than her. and I've decided to love her. I mean, she's weird, but I can still love her. We don't like the same food, but we've just decided, well, I didn't like meatloaf. I mean, meatloaf was the worst thing in the world, but she loves it. Well, a few years ago, I just decided it's not worth having a squabble over at mealtime. If she wants to have meatloaf, I'm going to try to learn to like it. At least I'll eat it and try to smile. When I tried doing that, it wasn't near as bad. When I changed my thoughts that I'm going to eat it anyway, and when I changed my thought pattern that I'm going to have her to make a meal that she likes instead of trying to make all the meals fit me, things got a lot sweeter about meatloaf. Sweeter in our marriage. Now, it's not just meatloaf. There's a lot of things. She loves to go shopping. I'd rather be hitting the rear end with a dead skunk as to go shopping. Unless it's Harbor Freight. If I go to Walmart with her or to TJ Maxx or something like that, man, getting on those floors in there, my hips start to hurt right away. I have to go back to the car and sit down where it's better. Now I can spend it a lot longer in Harbor Freight. I think their floors are softer. I'll take her to go shopping wherever she wants to go and try to take her wherever she wants to eat. You ever have that discussion with your spouse? Where do you want to eat? Oh, I don't care. Anywhere is okay with me. Well, are you sure? What would be your favorite? It doesn't matter, anywhere. And so finally you decide, well, I'm going to pull in over here and we'll eat this one. You start to pull in and she says, we're not eating here, are we? Yeah, you've lived through that, I can tell. She'll try to guide us to the place she thinks I like. You know, I figured out a way to get over that though, that choosing where you eat. You just, sir, here's how you handle your wife. Just say, sweetheart, guess where I'm taking you to eat tonight? And whatever she says, that's where you take her. Because that's probably what she had on her mind, right? We're talking about controlling your thoughts. If you want to have joy and peace and contentment in your life, control your thoughts by making it a habit to think on the right things and keep your mind off the wrong things. That's what Paul's getting at here in chapter 4. Think on these things. You know, on your computer or on your phone, if you go to one of your social media apps, go to YouTube or TikTok or something like that, and whatever you tend to watch, the algorithms are in control, right? They know what you're like. If you click like on something, guess what? You're going to see more of that. If you rewatch a video or something, guess what? That's the kind of videos you're going to start getting. Whatever clues you give, whatever you seem to be thinking about is what the algorithms are going to give you back. And your thought life is the same way. You have to train it because it has algorithms too. And if you give positive, faithful, joyful thinking in your mind, that's more of what you'll get back. If you think negative, hateful, unkind things, Awful things, immoral things, that's what you're going to get back out of your mind because it works like an algorithm. You've got to train it. If you go on my YouTube, you would have seen that For You page, I don't know if they still do it that way now or not, but used to whatever you watched a lot you'd see more of the same thing. And so you'd see a lot of classic cars on my YouTube and maybe some woodworking sites and you'd see those just over and over again. Since Harrison's been born, my two-year-old grandson, he comes over to see me every day. Now if you look on my YouTube, you're going to see a string of videos on there that's been in my watch history. All you're going to see is Leo the truck. You know why? Because that's what we've watched. That's what we see. Your mind works the same way. What you put in is what you're going to get out. How do we conclude all this? Call it quits. Life on the lighter side is possible. It doesn't have to be heavy. It doesn't have to be miserable. It doesn't have to be hurtful, painful, sad, mad. Paul promises and the God of peace shall be with you. Make joy a habit. It's not through trying from the flesh. It's letting Him live through you. That works in life. Just let Jesus live through you. Quit trying to be in control of everything. If we didn't have anything else to be happy about, The fact that you were a lost sinner on your way to hell and now that Jesus lives within you and you've got heaven to look forward to, if you didn't have anything else going on in life that was good, that one thing, the fact that you don't have to go to hell, now you get to go to heaven and be with the Savior forever and ever, that ought to be enough to put a smile on our face that can't be wiped away. Joy. Make joy a habit. Make joy Let's pray. Father, I pray that you'd bless in this moment when we think on the things that you've given us from Scripture. Lord, that joy is not only possible, but it's what you want in us. Lord, help us to train our minds throughout the day to catch ourselves when we're being unkind, having bad thoughts, Help us to notice that and to recircuit our lives around the Lord Jesus and let him live through us. Let him live through us. Lord, I pray for those who may not have ever trusted Christ as Savior. They don't have heaven to look forward to. Lord, I pray that this would be the day when they'd say, I am a sinner. I agree the Bible must be right. I'm a sinner. But I don't want to go to hell. I'd rather go to heaven. I believe Jesus died to pay for my sins. I believe He rose again the third day, just like the Bible says. And this day, I'm going to put my trust in Jesus as Savior and let Him put a smile in my life. You've got your bow and your eyes are closed. I'm saying to Christians, make joy a habit. Don't live under a cloud.