Joy Is A Choice | Cornerstone Church | Pastor TJ McConahay

But something I noticed last week and it informed the message that I wanna tell you guys today is that every question came in and probably 80% of them, there was a sense of worry in the question. You could tell that the question came from a place of anxiety.

And here's the good news is, the Bible actually has a lot to say about worry, has a lot to say about anxiety. So if you guys with me today, let's open our Bibles to Philippians chapter four. Let's hear what the word of God has to say. We're gonna do Philippians four, four through eight, four through eight.

So what the Bible says about worry. Rejoice in the Lord always, and I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all because the Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the peace of God,

which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

The place that the Bible starts

is in this verse four, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. Now rejoice is one of those words that you really only use at church. There is no moment in your life outside of church where you've used the word rejoice.

It's not like you're on the golf court with golf golf course with the boys and you hit one two fifty dead center right in the middle of the fairway and your buddy goes, rejoice for you don't have to go to the wilderness to find your ball. You know?

It's not like, you know, when you know when your wife does that thing where it's like she's got a friend and that friend has a husband and then they do like a play date with the husbands, know? And now you're having dinner with someone you don't know. But you know like that time where like they cancel last minute? It's not like you rejoice

for I've gotten my leisure time back, you know. It's a it's a bible word and it's one of those words that when we proclaim it, we proclaimed it this morning. It's a word that we feel more than we really understand. But I think if the Bible is gonna say that the place that we go to first, if we're gonna

be people who fight worry is we have to go to this place of rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always. So it's really simple. It's two words, re and joy. The idea here is that you activate joy. Now, that's crazy because a lot of people,

they conflate joy with happiness. They think joy and happiness are the same things, but they're actually completely different because they come from two different spots.

See, happiness comes from external things. I go to the movie, I like the movie, I'm happy, you know? I go golfing, I like the golf, I'm happy. You know, I read the book, I'm with a friend, I'm happy. Those things and joy is not like that. Joy is not a reaction.

It's something you can choose into, it's something you can discipline yourself into. You can choose joy, you can choose joy, why? Because joy is a choice. Now, I want you to think about how crazy that is what I just said. All the situations could be wrong. The house is burning down and you are expected in the Christian life

to choose joy. That seems wild to me. It seems like there are other emotions that you're supposed to feel in these moments, but the Bible seems to teach that we have to have this switch that we turn on and we're joyful. And it doesn't just say do it sometimes. It says rejoice in the Lord always.

We're like the motel six. We've got to keep the light on all the time with joy. And on paper that seems ridiculous, but in practice it's beautiful. You guys ever met somebody whose life is just saturated in the joy of the Lord. You ever seen that? Dude,

I became a Christian when I was 16 years old. Me and my buddy, we were rough. I looked like a stoner because I was one. My buddy, he also looked like a stoner because he was one and God saved us. He had a Mohawk, I had a hoodie, I wore just sweat pants and sweat clothes everywhere I went.

And so when we started going to church, people thought, no way, no way should these guys, and untruthfully, a lot of church people judged us for being there. But there was this guy, was an old guy. His name was Richard. Actually his name was Richard Winters, no relation to Lynn. But man, that guy would always see us

and the joy of the Lord would just beam out of him.

He was one of those dudes who knew the word of God so well that he just spoke in Bible verses. He wasn't quoting Bible verses. He just he just spoke in the word of God came out. It was it was incredible. You always felt like you were in the like the presence of someone who's just a little closer to Jesus and man when he prayed

he could just take you to the throne room of Christ. You would just want him to pray over you because he just, he just had that but here's the crazy thing is he's an old guy and so the vibrance of his soul did not match his body. In fact, his body was shutting down the whole time I knew him. He had all sorts of problems

and you could see it. You know, in his weaker times, you'd see him wince. You'd see the pain kind of come through. And me and my friend, Adam, we loved being around Richard. So we always go up and talk to him. What's going on Richard?

And you could see, you could see, you know, he's in pain and he see it. He see these two boys there And he just flipped that switch. He flipped that joy switch. And he look at us. He say, boys, the joy of the Lord is my strength. I go, okay, okay, Richard, but it looks like you're kinda hurting.

Goes, oh, how blessed am I that the Lord would give me a trial in my life? Boys, you know, know, you gotta consider it all joy when you get trials in your life. Just all the time you say, hey, it comes in the night, but joy comes in the morning. He's just straight bangers over and over and over and over again.

He's just waiting, man. You know, he died one day and in the ambulance, he died and his wife told them, Hey, bring him back, you know? And they did. And she describes the story and it was crazy because it was the first time she saw when he woke up and realized he was still alive. It was the first time he didn't have joy.

Dude wanted to be with Jesus and he was mad that he was still alive. Dude, that had to be what Lazarus felt, right? Like he's with Jesus, he's in a better place, he got this stuff and all of a sudden he's back in the tomb. No, man. He did die a few years later And it was crazy because his funeral was not sad. Everyone

there was excited for Richard, why? Because we knew where Richard was. He was where he always wanted to be. He was with Jesus

and there was a happiness. There was a joy. The joy that he lived out bubbled over to all of us and even went up to Adam at the time. Was like, dude, this feels weird. And he looked at me and he said in his best Richard Winters impression, he goes, the joy of the Lord is my strength. God, I wanna live like that.

I wanna live so on purpose for Jesus. I wanna be a man after God's own heart so much that they celebrated my funeral because of the faith that I had in Christ. Because they know in that moment that I am home with Jesus. Rejoice in the Lord always. I can say it again, rejoice.

Let's move in. Let's look at verse six and seven. It says this, notice that last part. Let your gentleness be evident to all. It's five. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. And then verse six,

do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I love the way the NLT says this. Don't worry about anything, pray about everything.

Wanna know why? Because prayer drives out worry. Prayer drives away worry. Have you figured it out yet, guys? God wants a relationship with you. He doesn't want you to just say things to him. He wants you to interact with him as a person because the way that God has revealed himself to us is as a person.

Last week we talked about this a little bit, the Trinity. It's a theology that a lot of people just kinda lay sitting there because it's hard to understand.

How does one become three and three become one? How do they fit together? How's there one God but three, but then there's one. How does that make sense? Math is not math and I don't know how to do this, but I wanna suggest you this. To know God is to acknowledge that there's parts of God that you will never understand.

And here's the thing about that is that actually qualifies him to be God because if you could wrap your eight eight pound brain around an eternal God that would disqualify his Godhead. You will never completely understand God and that is beautiful.

So the trinity three can become one, one could be three that lives in a place that we don't understand but here's the thing is, it might be hard for us. It might be hard for us to explain but the trinity is beautiful in its application. Wanna know why? Because the reason that God wants a relationship with you

is because he exists as a relationship. His nature is relationship.

You know, they started figuring this out like around the Renaissance time, how beautiful it is that we have this Trinitarian God and they started painting these beautiful pictures and you can find them all over. But what they did is they painted the Trinity and they'd have like three divine beings and they're sitting around a

four sided table. And the way they painted it was you were standing here and you could see the Father, the Son and the holy spirit. And they painted it in such a way where they were inviting you to the table. See, God is inviting you into relationship with him and in that relationship,

that's where the worry starts to go away. Because in my prayer life, I don't need God to tell me the answer to every question. I just need to know that he knows the answer to every question and I can have peace because my father knows what he's doing.

Guys, if you haven't figured this out, the place that the anxiety goes away is when you stop being transactional with God and you start being relational with God. I had a time in my life where I was far from God. Now God was never far from me. I don't believe that. But in my heart, I was far from him.

And it was actually in a time when I should have been closest to him. I was in Bible college and I was learning every day these different theologies, these different Bible verses, and I knew more about God than I'd ever known in my life. But for some reason, during that time, the word of God became a textbook.

And you know how they say you shouldn't work with family members because it kind of messes the relationship up? I stopped being relational with God and I just became completely transactional with him. God do this thing and I'll do this thing. God do this thing and I'll do this thing.

And somewhere along the line, I just lost sight of what it means to just be in communion with a God who loves me and wants relationship with me. I had a 1998 Volkswagen Jetta at this time. And, it always had problems because that is the way of the Volkswagen.

And my dad's a mechanic and I'm in Portland going to Bible College. My dad lives in the Bay Area, and my dad says, hey, TJ, if you can bring your car down to me, I will do a full tune up and fix whatever's wrong with it. That's the love language of any college kid, like free stuff. And it's weird in college, right?

Because there's no other time where like someone says, hey, would you drive hundreds of miles? And you go, yeah, I'll leave in about ten minutes. And that's what I did. I got in my car and I started heading down to California on I-five.

And it's raining, but it's always raining in Portland, so it's not a big deal, but the rain's getting fat and it's getting crazy, and then all of a sudden, there starts to be warning signs on the road. And it's right before you come up to the pass that takes you into California, and it's saying, hey, whiteout conditions,

snowfall expected, four by fours only. Now there's no version of the Jetta that is four wheel drive and I just keep driving anyway. And we get to a spot, we start climbing and that rain turns into snow and it's not just snow, it's white out. And it's just, it's adding up really quickly.

And then all of a sudden traffic just stopped on I 5, it's completely closed down.

And I'm like, I gotta get to California tonight. I gotta, I can't just turn around, I gotta get there. So I get out of my car and there's a police officer up at the front who stopped all the traffic and I am wearing, because I started my day in Portland and it was kinda nice that day, flip flops and shorts.

And so I walked to the front of this line, I talked to the cop and I say, I really gotta get through. Is there a bypass? Is there another way? And he's like, yes, there's a highway and you can go on it, and I do know that it is open, but you will need a four wheel drive vehicle. Is your vehicle four wheel drive? Yeah.

It is. I think there's no way I'm gonna get there. There's no I don't know how to get there. And but I'm thinking, you know what? In this line of cars that are stopped and backed up on I 5, there's a bunch of four wheel drive vehicles.

So every single one that was four wheel drive, I knocked on the window and I said, hey, that cop just told me there's another way around and I kind of gave them the directions. And so my idea was if I got like five or six or seven of these cars to be in front of me, they would serve as a plow

in front of me and I just ride behind them. Dude, I thought I was the smartest person in the world, you know?

And and they did. And so I'm I'm behind like seven or eight other cars and I'm just driving right in the same spot that they're plowing ahead of me and I'm thinking this is great. I'm gonna get there. It's gonna be awesome. And then all of a sudden, the lead car takes a wrong turn.

And I know the way to go and I'm thinking, what's this dummy doing? But now everyone's following him. They all thought I'm thinking, I know, no, we gotta keep going straight. So I decided in that moment, I'm just gonna go straight too. But now I don't have

the plow that I created in front of me. It's whiteout conditions, there's about a foot of snow and my Jetta now is not driving, it's skiing, it's sliding like back and forth and keeps on trying to get to the ditch and I'm scared and I realized if this car stops,

I'm gonna freeze to death in flip flops and shorts and a 1998 Jetta, I'm that dumb. In that moment, I realized that I was scared and I needed to start talking to God. So I started praying.

I started crying out to the Lord as my car is just going back and forth between the ditches and just barely making it that way. I turned the music up. It's like Chris Tomlin, How Great Is Our God, right? And I'm singing off key at the top of my lungs and I'm like, each time I'm about to go in the ditch, I'm like, how great.

I'm just like in that mode, you know? And I just keep kind of going back and forth, back and forth. And the crazy thing is soon it's so dangerous, it's so crazy,

but I'm talking to God and the weird thing is as I'm talking to God, the worry starts to take me out of that moment and I realized what I've been missing all along is this communion with God, this relationship

with Jesus and even though I'm in this situation, it's really scary and I might die. I'm so happy because I'm finally with my father. I'm finally crying out. I'm finally talking. We talk me and God in the craziest way for an hour.

We get to the other side of that pass, we started going down and the snow turns to rain and it was crazy because coming into California, that's an eight lane highway, okay? There was just cops on the side of the road. No one else coming through from Oregon that day, except for a 1998

Jetta with this dude in the thing, right? Now,

guys, that day I realized I don't wanna be transactional with God. I wanna continue to be relational with Jesus because when you're with God, there is no task that is too big for him. And even though it's scary, and I know that you're probably going through really scary things right now, but if you tried to just be with God,

Be anxious for nothing but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be known to God and the God of peace and the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Have you been with Jesus lately? Let's look at the last part of this verse.

Here's what it says. Philippians four:eight, finally brothers and sister, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Guys, discipleship takes discipline

and what discipline is ultimately is focusing on the right things. Taking your eyes and your intention and your will and pointing them in the right direction.

You gotta concentrate on the right things in order to become the right person. If you concentrate on the bad things, you become the bad person. If you concentrate on the good things, you become the good things. There's a, I was talking to my buddy

and so there's this war that's going on in the counseling field. He's a counselor. He's been a counselor for like twenty years and he, excuse me, and he told me, he said, TJ, in our field right now, there's a ton of people who are at odds. And the reason is this,

for years and years and years inside of all the counseling fields, everyone sort of thought that the best way you can help people with their problems is going back to their darkest moments, going back to their trauma and unpacking that and putting it in the right spots. And he goes, at first it really does help,

but the problem is, is that we end up staying there. And so every counseling session is about you going to your darkest moment in your life

and unpacking that. But the problem is, is if you focus on all the dark things in your life, then what you see is just darkness going forward. You start to tell yourself a story about yourself that you are the sum of your worst moments. And so we've had this like revolution and it's called rumination.

That's the idea of what you ruminate on is what you become. So yeah, we still do the trauma care. But from that place, we start to build an encouragement. We start to build in praiseworthiness. We start to build in excellence and goals and what you want to become.

We start to paint a picture that's better than the one they're sitting in and that's where we're starting to see breakthroughs. Well, the crazy thing is they're just learning what God's been telling us all along. Whatever is true, whatever is excellent, whatever is prayed, think about such things. Think about those things.

You are not the sum of your worst moments.

God could look at you and he could call you by your sin. He could give you an identity that is your worst moment. He could call you a liar. He'd call you a fornicator. He could call you every name in the book. He could put a curse over your life and you would be guilty.

But the God of the universe when he looks at you, he doesn't call you out your sin. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So when he looks at you, he calls you child. And if he calls you child, then you have to claim what God claimed over you. And we have to put aside these curses. Guys, if God says you're his,

then you have to believe that it's true. Think about such things. Focus on the right things. This year, I became a coach of a fourteen U rec league baseball team. Thank you. Thank you for that guys. I really appreciate that. I mean, wow.

I became the coach of the fourteen U team because it's happened the same way that most things happen in my life. My wife signed me up for it. And so I became that. Hey, your son needs a baseball coach, no one signs up, so you're gonna be the baseball coach this year. All right, I don't know anything about

I know a little bit about baseball, but I don't really know what it means to be a coach. I've coached before, but it's never been all that great. But this year was different. I decided that I was going to coach these kids like I pastor, and I've been a youth pastor for twenty years. So I know how to do youth discipleship,

and the way you do it is you get them to focus on the right things. You simplify and you get them to focus on the right things. So our team, 14 you, we're called the corn dogs. That's what we are. We're the corn dogs And we have three things

that we concentrate on more than any other things. The first thing is this, baseball is fun, not have fun. That's the elementary version. I want them to know at the core of the game, it's a game. And the team that's having more fun usually wins. So we are going to have fun. Baseball

is fun. The second thing is know your one thing. We give the kids one thing that they have to be working on a time, not two things, not three things, just one thing at a time personally that they're working. They have to know what it is and they have to be working on it. And number three is be the best teammate.

And these kids, they took us up on the three things. They embodied them. We chanted them throughout the year. Kids would just say, man, they look at me and like they know it'd be a stressful situation. They say, coach, baseball's fun. I said, you're right, Braden. They

would come to me and say, coach, I know that I've been just missing pop ups, so I had my dad just throw me pop ups in the backyard until he threw one over the fence. But now I know my one thing and I'm gonna keep working on it. And these kids, dude, they were the best teammates.

Imagine like not having a hit in a month, being at the bottom of the lineup, and your teammates are chanting your name when you come up to bat. It's awesome. Well, something crazy started happening when we focused on the right things, we started ruminating on the right things. We started to win.

We started to win. We started to beat everybody. Okay, now here's another thing. Told you about the war that's waging in the counseling community. There's also a war right now that's waging, that's raging in the youth baseball times. It's this, it's between rec league

and what they call club or travel teams. Some of you guys know what I'm talking about, right? Now, club teams, you have to try out and if you make the team, you get the privilege of paying hundreds to thousands of dollars to travel to the worst towns in America

and play a team that literally, you know, wasn't Gilbert, you know? Now rec league is kinda like church. You just have to say yes, I love baseball and you're on the team,

right? Is it? And so I'm the rec coach. So all of my guys, they just said, hey, I wanna be on baseball team and now they're on this team. But here's the weird part, is that a lot of times these club teams will play the rec teams as warm ups for their tournaments.

So throughout the year, our season, we had several club teams. Guys, we didn't just beat the other rec teams, we started to beat the club teams. Now, yeah, that's awesome. Okay. That is the most satisfying thing in the whole world, by the way. You want to see parents mad? They're paying thousands of dollars

and getting beat by the corn dogs. It is the best thing ever. Know, we beat a team so bad from Scottsdale that they wouldn't shake our hands at the end. You're not gonna shake the hands of the corn dogs, you know? Because we won. We went fifteen and two on the season and here guys, check this picture out.

We won the Chandler City championship this year, guys. This is this is the this is the day we won it.

Does that look like a bunch of elite athletes to you? No. That looks like the corn dogs. Right?

Dude, they tried to give me a Gatorade shower after he won the championship, but they couldn't lift the thing up high enough. And they got me just on the waist down. So it looked like I wet myself as I was handing out their trophies, you know?

These are my two coaches right here, Eric and Derek. We didn't plan that but that's who they are, Eric and Derek. Eric is Mr. Admin. He makes sure all of our stats are right. Derek has forgotten more about baseball than I will ever know. And we just put our efforts towards not just baseball, but the discipleship

of these young players and they performed. Guys, you know what's more important than baseball? Your relationship with Jesus. I think that the corndogs are kind of like us. We're not supposed to win, you know? We sign up because we realize we're broken and we need a savior.

We've all come from different walks of life and different places and we all carry heavy things into church. And the thing that qualifies us in this room is we just know that we're not good enough on our own, and we need some help, we need a savior, so we just sign up and we're put on this rec team called the church.

But if we focus on the right things, if we put our mind towards the right things, then what ends up happening is we become what the Bible calls more than conquerors. You walked in with some worry. The way in which you drive out the worry is you concentrate on the right things.

You know what the right things are? You know what the four things that you need to ruminate are? The Korndacs had three things. I'm gonna give you guys four things.

So the next time you feel worried, the next time you feel anxious, the next time you feel like feeling sorry for yourself, I want you to do these four things. The first thing is I want you to spend fifteen minutes praying. I want you to talk to God like he's actually in the room.

I want you to have a relationship with him, then I want you to read his word. I want you to hear his voice and I want you to just keep reading even if you don't understand everything. God will unlock it as it goes.

Then I want you to talk to someone who doesn't know Jesus about Jesus. You can just text message them, you can call them on the phone, you can go out to coffee with them. That's called evangelism. And then I want you to talk to somebody who knows Jesus about Jesus. It's called fellowship.

15, fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes. It's one hour. And after you spend one hour doing this, you're allowed to be as anxious as you want. But here's the secret. You won't be because you will know what you should have known all the time is that God is with you. You have a God who cares for you.

You have a God who can carry every burden that you have and you have a God who knows everything that you did but does not turn around burden for blessing but instead gives you blessing where you bring burden. Guys, there's sermons you get to preach where you have victory, and there's sermons

where you're still like, hey, I'm working on this one. Let me be really, really honest with you guys, I'm somebody who struggles with anxiety. There's real moments in my life where my heart, I can't I just can't even get it to stop like pounding that heart, you know? You you wanna know what panic is?

Try try having an anxiety attack when you're on stage in front of a bunch of people. Scary. There's one thing I found that works most of the time, and it's this. In those moments, when I feel like everything's closing in on me, I look to my father. I believe that he is with me, and I allow him

to take from me which what I should have never carried, which is my anxious thought, my worry, my pain, my trauma, and I give it to him. And there's an exercise that I do and I wanna give it to you right now. Will you stand with me as we close? This is what I do when I feel worried

and I want you to do it too. I want you to put your hands out in front of you and I want you to close them. Now, I want you to picture in your hands the worries that you brought in here today. Could be relationship problem, could be money, could be pain, could be trauma, could be sin.

Whatever it is, I want you just to put it in your hands and I want you to close your hands kind of tight. If you don't have arthritis, I want you to just close them tight. I want you to see the whites of your own knuckles right there and I want you to feel what it feels like to not let something go.

Now I want you to tell you the truth. The thing that you brought in here that you're so worried you were never meant to carry. God says this, cast your cares on me because I care for you. So we have to believe in a God who says, let these things go. I'm good. I I can carry them for you. I'm gonna pray.

And as I pray, I want you just to release your hands. I want you to feel what it feels like to have the blood come back into your fingers, and I want you to physically feel what release actually feels like. You guys ready? You ready? Somebody ready here? Let's let these things go. Jesus,

we believe in this moment that you are worthy, that you are able and that you are a better savior than we are sinners. We no longer claim what Satan claimed on us. We are no longer slaves to sin and so as we let go of these things, God, we open up our hands, we open up our hearts, we open up our posture and we say Jesus,

be real in this moment and take these things from me God. As we let our hands go and we let them slip up, God we look at you and we say you are the author and perfecter of our faith. We take our eyes and we put them on you. We concentrate on the right things and we say Jesus be near to me now.

And in this moment God we let it go. We let it go because you asked for it, because you died for it, because you hung on the cross to save us from it. And we say, God, we don't wanna be anxious anymore. We don't wanna be depressed anymore. We wanna be like Richard. We wanna say the joy of the Lord is our strength.

And in this moment, Jesus, as we let these things go, we choose joy. Not because it's easy, because it's available to us by the blood of Jesus Christ. And God, say with all our heart, we want what you want for us. God, help us to tell a better story about ourselves than we've been telling about ourselves.

God help us to believe in this moment that we are not the sum of our worst moments, but we claim the identity that was made to us in Christ Jesus. We claim that we are your children. So on today, on Father's Day, we celebrate a father who takes care of his children. We love you, Jesus. And all God's people said Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Happy Father's Day. The prayer team will be up front. Come get some prayer.