Elevation with Steven Furtick - Backseat DJs Part 1

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Where your joy comes from will determine when it runs out. If you’ve just made a decision for Christ, please respond HERE: ele.vc/tIepfr To support this ministry and help us continue to reach people all around the world click here: www.elevationchurch.org/giving/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick. I'm the pastor of Elevation Church, and this is our podcast. I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message. Look, I want to preach about joy today, and I want to get there from a story and then share several scriptures with you. Can I tell you a story? Yes. I just got a new car last year. I drove a Nissan Maxima for 10 years before I bought this new car. I loved my Nissan Maxima.

My car before this Nissan Maxima was a Nissan Maxima. That's how much I liked my Nissan Maxima. I maximized the maxima, and it was very good to me. Only thing that I ever remember happening other than the time it cut off in an intersection was that one day I was driving down the road a few years ago, and my stereo system started doing strange things. It started skipping around to different tracks without me telling it to. And the volume kept increasing and decreasing.

And so then I would put it back on the song I wanted to listen to, and I would turn down the volume or turn up the volume, depending on it, would go both ways without me telling it to, without me turning the knob. And it happened for about 10, 15 minutes straight one day that I was driving, and it seemed like my speakers, my car had a mind of their own. So I thought maybe my maxim I got a demon. And then I looked in the back seat and realized it wasn't a demon. It was my daughter. That she had the center console down, and I never rode back there, so I didn't realize that all the years that I've had this car. you can control the volume and skip tracks from back there. And she was laughing, and Graham was back there, and he was laughing.

And they were controlling something from the back that I was trying to deal with in the front. And they thought it was so funny. And I told him, stop that. It's annoying when I figured out what they were doing. Two or three minutes later, there goes the volume up and down again. There goes track two, track three, track four. Again, it's on shuffle. And I turned around and said, I'm telling you, I'll stop.

I don't like it. It was maybe cute the first time for you, but it's really driving me crazy up here. Stop. And a few minutes go by, and it starts happening again. I pulled the car over the third time. I pulled the car over the third time on Providence Road. I said, let me explain something to you. I said,

Y'all are passengers in this maximum. I'm the driver. That means I'm the DJ. I get to choose what comes on this stereo and how loud it is because the driver gets to be the DJ. I want to preach to you for about 37 minutes today about backseat DJs. Because I suspect that there are some things in your life that are being controlled from the back seat, that are being controlled at a level that you're not realizing that they're being controlled.

And I believe that today God is going to use me. And trust me, I've studied. Joy has become more important to me every year that I've been alive. I feel like in my 20s, I just cared about accomplishing things. In my 30s, I've been figuring out, what's the point if you don't enjoy it? What's the point in doing something awesome if you are not in a position to appreciate the accomplishment because you constantly need more? And I spent my 20s and maybe the beginning of my 30s just trying to get more, more, more

more popularity, sometimes that meant more impact, sometimes that meant more influence, Sometimes that meant more money, more resources, more friends, more phone numbers, more connections. But lately I've been asking the Lord for more joy. And it sent me on a scriptural trajectory, and I want to bring you into it today. Would it be all right if we talk for a little while today about what's controlling your joy? Amen. I'm excited. Do you feel my enthusiasm?

James, chapter 1, verses 2 through 4. We'll start here. I believe there are some things that are destroying your joy that you are unaware of. James is going to teach us how to develop joy. Very different than discovering joy. Discovering joy means it's waiting somewhere and you've got to find it. It's waiting in your next career move. It's waiting in your next relationship.

It's waiting somewhere you're not right now. But James is going to show us something that may be familiar to a few of you, but it is very strange if you consider what he's actually saying. And I want to just read those verses, those three verses to you. He says, James chapter 1, verse 2, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters. Whenever you face trials of many gods. That's not where I was looking for joy, by the way. That's not what I was praying for, hoping for, asking for, believe him for. Anyway, this is what the Bible says.

He said, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. I'm glad he's specified, because the first thing I want to mention to you today, all of these points, they kind of follow the theme of DJ. So the first one is the distinction of joy, the distinction of joy, knowing what it really is, understanding the nature of it. And James helps us to do that first by helping us to understand that there are trials of many kinds. That's what verse 2 said. The old King James that Pastor Mickey preached from said, diverse trials.

Because I have learned that we're not all going through the same thing, but we are all going through something. And how many know that there are as many different kinds of trials as there are different drinks at Starbucks as there are different colors of paint at Home Depot? I found out that there are trials that are associated with plenty. There are trials that are associated with poverty. I always understood the first one because everybody understands that being broke is a battle. But management of resources can, in its own way, test a part of your character that if you're not prepared to have it tested, it can create a lot more problems than financial poverty. In fact, financial riches can create relational poverty if there is not the emotional maturity

to help us to steward with understanding what we've been given. I'm a priest for Dave. You know, come along with you. It's true. There's single people trials. There's married people trials. There are trials that are associated with loneliness, and there are trials that are associated with companionship.

There are many kinds of trials. There are many different. That's what James is saying. He's making a distinction that there's different kinds of trials. And some of us are like, well, can I try a different kind of trial? Like, can I trade trials? Like, you're talking about rich people trials? I'd like to try those for a little while.

You're talking about married people trials? I'd like to try. I think I'd be good at those trials. I think I'd be better prepared for those trials. But we never again after the year that we had last year, get to associate joy with status or success. Because we have now seen that no matter how great your name is in the eyes of people, you can still want to take your very own life because joy is not a product of what people say about you. Joy is not a product of how people hold you in esteem

or in disregard. And so there's different kinds of trials. Added to that, most of us don't understand the distinction between a temptation and a trial. The language that James uses in this biblical writing, the common Greek of his day, allows for both. When he says trials of many kinds, he could just as easily be referring to economic hardship or persecution that many of this diaspora of tribes scattered abroad who were believers in Jesus were experiencing, or he could be talking about temptation. And it is important to know the distinction between the kind of trials that you will experience in your life. Otherwise, you might spend years blaming the devil for your bad decisions.

There are different kinds of trials. Some of our trials are the result of evil in the world. And that results in all kinds of different warfare that we could study for weeks about. Some of our trials are the results of things that we did contrary to our inner wisdom. There are many different kinds of trials. And if you don't know the difference between a temptation and a trial, you will try to use the wrong tool on the trial. Because when tempted, the Bible teaches resistance.

When you are tempted to step outside of the God's, given means by which you have been empowered to meet your God-given desires. The strategy, the tool, the technique is resistance. When you face a trial, however, not a temptation, but a trial, often the key is not resistance, but acceptance. And this was important for me to see the distinction because a lot of times I'm accepting what I should resist and resisting what I should accept. It's taking me time to learn the difference.

It's taking me prayer to learn the difference. It's taking me others' community to learn the difference. I'm having to get into the Word of God to know the difference so that I can approach my trials with wisdom. In fact, that's what James 1.5 says, and it's connected to this passage, even though I never thought it was. It says, if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault. And it will be given to you. Now, if you want to flip the flow this year, just do James 1-5. Instead of asking everybody around you what you should do, start with the source, start

with the solution. We're talking about your problems with people who are powerless to fix them. It's making you feel worse. It's making them feel worse. And everybody's frustrated. So I need the wisdom to make the distinction, to know the trial that I'm in. God, is this one that you want me to fight? Or do you want me to do what the parable said to do one time with the weeds that were growing up alongside the tears and leave it alone and let you deal with it?

There's a distinction. There's different kinds of trials. Some of the stuff that I'm dealing with as a parent right now is just called puberty. You can't cast it out. You can't annoy it. You can't instruct it. It's a different kind of trial. It's just life. Some of the stuff I'm dealing with right now is a temptation.

Some of it is actually, I believe, from the pit of hell. Not that the devil is personally assigned to me, but just some stuff is evil against my purpose. Don't give yourself too much credit, because a lot of us like to think that the devil had nothing better to do than give us a flat tire. And I think the devil is much busier than that. I think a lot of it comes down to distinguishing the type of trial that I'm in. Which helps me to understand the distinctions between joy and pleasure. Oh, you know those little church signs that they do? I think we should get one, by the way, at elevation.

The church signs where they change the letters and they put up little quotes. Yeah, I like those. I think we should get one. How many vote we get a church sign? Let's have our first ever church vote at elevation. Church vote, we should get a church sign. And we could put stuff up there like this. I saw this one day.

It said, no Jesus, no joy. But it was spelled K-N-O-W Jesus. So the first one was, no Jesus, you don't have Jesus, you don't have joy. K-N-O-Jesus, K-N-O-W Jesus, K-N-O-W, joy. And I thought, it's cute, but it's not true. No Jesus, no joy. There's a lot of things you can enjoy without Jesus. Cream tastes good, whether you're saved or not.

These bloods didn't get saved. It's fun to talk bad about people whether you're saved or not. Only differences, and this is important, is that the quality of the joy becomes more important than the quantity of the joy. You also hear preachers say stuff like this. God doesn't care if you're happy. He just wants to make you holy. And I can't believe how many people will say amen to some business like that that you would

never feel about your own kid. How many parents do we have in the house? And how many of you don't care if your kid is ever happy in life at all? I'm going to call Child Protective Services on y'all. I ain't no good, good father. No, he's a good father, good gifts, so I never got that. And I never really understood the distinction between joy and happiness. Because there's not a difference in the biblical language.

It's not difference like in English. We have like Pharrell happy, which is like dancing happy. And then in Hebrew, they had happy. It's the same word as blessed. It's the same word is joy. When James says, count it joy, he means, consider yourself supremely happy. Literal translation. So we need to make the distinction, I guess, between generic joy and Jesus' joy.

Because he said, verse 2, consider it pure joy. The way my mind works, if there's such a thing as pure joy, there must be another kind of joy. I kind of cheated that a little bit. It's more a grammar issue because the literal translation is count at all joy. So he doesn't say pure joy. I got a verse for this, though. Let me do it from Hebrews chapter 12. I've always loved this picture of joy because it helps me to make a distinction between joy and pleasure.

Pleasure can be associated with joy, but joy is not dependent on pleasure. This is the second thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about the direction of joy. The direction of joy. We're talking about backseat DJs, right? We're talking about how sometimes we find our joy controlled by circumstances and situations, but Jesus gives us a picture that stands contrary to the cultural expectation of joy. And I promise I'll read the scripture in a minute, but I just want to tell you so much,

and I just don't know where to start, where to stop. It's just all in me today. There seems to be right now more than there was, like when my grandparents were 30 and 40. There seems to be a pressure for us to always feel pleasure. It's no longer just a desire that we have that we want to feel good. It's almost like the way that social media has constructed our viewing experiences of other people's lives through the filters of their most desirable moments. There is something wrong with me if I am not constantly happy all the time. That's a problem with me because I am not genetically predisposed to be happy.

I'm just not. I found that out about myself early in life. I am not like one of you who just finds reasons to smell roses, who just finds reasons to be happy. Some of y'all appreciate the rain, appreciate the sunshine. The rain makes you feel relaxed. The sunshine makes you feel active. You can find the joy in everything. I am not of your species, and frankly, you make me sick.

But joy is something different. Because the pressure to feel pleasure is part of the reason why we feel so miserable. And now we are living in the midst of a generation that thinks that joy is associated with a feeling in your flesh. And it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It's important that I say it can bring a feeling, but it doesn't start with the feeling. This is where we flip the flow. Can we flip the flow? If anybody flipped the flow, it was Jesus.

Here he is up on a cross. Here he is mock and his reputation is beyond repair. Here he is being spat on and condescended to by the ones that he created. And the writer of Hebrews, whoever he was, says, we need to fix Hebrews 12 to our eyes on Jesus. The pioneer and perfector or the author and finisher, either translation is acceptable of our faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Now, this is where my message really happens, okay? What have you set before you?

That is what your joy is connected to. What you have set before you. And I'll break that down the best that I can. Joy is a point of view. Joy is a way of looking at things. This helps me. I don't know about you, but it sets me free from feeling the need to feel a certain way. We've got so many people quitting their jobs because they're unhappy and not really understanding that sometimes joy is not.

the absence of sadness or the presence of the spectacular and all we need to look at is that one verse where it says that Jesus for the joy that was set before him. I want to use that as a picture for a moment. He set joy before him. So in order to endure the cross, that's the next part, enduring the cross, scorning the cross, scorning his shame, he didn't find joy in the event. He found joy in the guaranteed outcome of the event. He did not find joy in the feeling of hanging on the cross. It wasn't like because he was the Son of God that the nails transcended the laws of pain

and the material laws of the universe. It was just this painful. Because of purpose, you understand it's very different to go through pain with purpose than pain without purpose. It's the difference between Graham jumping on my back. He's only 90 pounds and me not knowing that he's going to jump on my back and me feeling like every disc just slipped like I'm 73 years old in my lower back and the difference between me putting 90 pounds on a bar to squat it. If I do it on purpose, it's a warm.

up weight. If I don't expect it, it might take me down to the ground. Same weight, but one I was ready for. When Jesus hung on the cross, he wasn't surprised by the shame. He wasn't surprised by the suffering. He wasn't surprised by the pain. He wasn't surprised by the jeering. He wasn't surprised by their saliva. He wasn't surprised by the blood. Joy is a focus before it's a feeling. If you came to church just to hear that, I promise you've got your gas money's worth. Joy is a focus before it's a feeling. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.