The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: Now God made us emotional beings. And emotions are good. They serve a purpose. But it's not the emotion, listen, it's how we handle the emotion.

Guest (Male): We all have emotions, which can be simply defined as a state of mind influenced by circumstances, moods, or relationships with others. Jesus Himself displayed a wide array of emotions during His ministry on Earth. And you might be surprised to know that you have more control over your emotions than you think. Let's join Pastor Jack Morris now for the message, "Then Comes Joy," as he explores the subject from a biblical perspective.

Pastor Jack Morris: Now God is emotional. The scripture tells us in the Old Testament there are times that God loved. He always loved, but the love is pointed out, it's classified. There are times it talks about His joy. There are times that the Old Testament talks about the anger of God, or the jealousy of God because God is a jealous God and He doesn't want any other gods before us. He wants us to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and spirit, and He's jealous when we love another and put another on the throne of our heart. And there's a temptation to do that all the time.

So God is an emotional God and guess what? You have been made in the image of God, which makes you an emotional creature. How about Jesus in the New Testament? We see His emotions. He wept at Lazarus' tomb. He had compassion. He had joy. He had anger. Remember when He went into the temple and threw out the money changers because they were making it a den of thieves and how angry He was? So friend, every person has emotions and right now those emotions are beginning to work in every one of us. But we're emotional creatures because God and Jesus are emotional and we're made in the likeness and the image of God.

It was August 31st that I broke through a victory in my own emotions. I briefly referred to it last week. That week prior to August 31st, I was working for the Lord, studying, praying, getting sermons, worshipping, praising, but I was burdened and didn't know just exactly why I felt so down. Do you ever feel down, not knowing why you felt down? You mean some of you people have never been sad or felt down? We all have those down times, don't we?

I just felt down and I couldn't get over it. And I thought, if I praise the Lord, and if I study, if I pray, if I sing, and come August 31st, that was Saturday. And I knew, tomorrow is Sunday. I'm the pastor. I've got to have a breakthrough. I've got to get over this. Friend, you can do more with your emotions than what you think. But most of us have a tendency, and I think I'm correct, to give in. I just don't feel like reading the Word today, so I'm not going to. I just don't feel like this is Sunday, so I'm just going to stay home and rest. We just give in.

I knew I couldn't give in. I had to have help. So I went to my favorite devotional book. I opened it up and I began to read. And when I began to read, the writer in that little book directed me to John chapter 15, verse 11. Do you have your Bibles open to John 15, verse 11? Look at it. These are the words of Jesus: "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." Now if you're looking at it, I want you to maybe in your mind at least, I took a red pencil and I underscored "my joy" and "your joy."

I paused. I looked at that. Jesus, my joy, your joy. Not just your joy, Jack Morris. You have no joy but His joy brings you joy. My joy. Say that. My joy. Your joy. Okay, there it is on the screen. Read it together. "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." Complete joy. Fullness of joy. That my joy can only make your joy complete and bring fullness of joy. Now I have to say this because it's so very, very important. In Galatians chapter five, there are listed the fruits of the Spirit.

And one of them is joy. Fruits of the Spirit, not your fruits, but His fruits, His manifestation, His demonstration, His joy. It's Him and somehow it gets over to me and it gets over to you. When I read that scripture, "my joy," I thought, Jack Morris, you've been working on it all week long and you've been trying to produce something that you can't produce because joy is divine. It's the fruit of the Spirit. It comes from Heaven and you're an earth being. You've got to reach out beyond yourself and receive that joy and open your heart and allow it to come in.

Now turn over to John chapter 7, verse 37. Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, sometimes Jesus has to holler at us to get our attention, a loud voice. He said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." Streams of living water. Well, my emotions had been dammed up like a river with a dam and I couldn't get the flow going again.

What was going on, I look back and now I know, there was so many activities that I was involved in, so many things, and I was trying to take care of all of these things and do a good job. And then I would look back and see, did I do a good job in taking care of that? I kept trying to do it and then I would question whether I did it right. Well, my mind became clogged with all of that. And I was trying to be perfect and only one is perfect. And my spirit got dammed up.

But when I read that verse of scripture, "my joy," I thought, I know that! I've known that for years. Isn't that something, you can know something and it can just sort of get away from you and then you have to be reminded all over again? My joy. I thought, what am I trying to do here? I'm trying to do something that only God can do. And when I read that, what happened is described in John chapter 7. The dam broke, the stream began to flow again. I came to church Saturday morning, Minister Hooper preached a great sermon, my soul was fed, and I was lifted into the heavenlies.

Friend, God's going to lift some of you up today because some of you are down and your river of living water has dammed up because you've been too busy, too focused, too observing, too taken up with all of these earthly things. But God has joy, real joy, wonderful joy. You know there's a little song that says, "If you want joy, real joy, wonderful joy, let Jesus come into your heart." Now we usually think about that as a sinner getting Jesus, but Christians need Jesus to flow back into their heart, into their home, into their finances, into their attitude, and into their emotions.

You need help today? Well, you're at a spiritual hospital and there is hope here for you. God is here to bless and to help you. You know, for several weeks now, I've been preaching about seeing Jesus in the worship service. Looking beyond the singing, oh, it's wonderful to see the notes and the words, but to go beyond to see Jesus. To hear the sermon and the stories and the ministry of the Word, but to see Jesus beyond the printed page, beyond the ink and the parchment. To see a person, to see a man, to see a physician, the doctor of the soul.

Like Moses at the burning bush, he heard the voice like you're hearing God's Word today, but he looked beyond and he saw God. Friend, if you don't see God today, you have missed the gift that God wants to give to you. And He has a gift for you because you're His child and He loves you and He wants to help you and that gift is joy. Now trials can begin to dam up the river, the streams of living water. Persecution, abuse, suffering, and pain. Friend, you can't be happy and giggling when you're in pain and you're taking medication to take care of the pain.

You can't be happy and giggling when the doctor says you have cancer, you have a heart condition, or you are seriously ill. You don't dance on your tiptoes and laugh like you got a new car. But even then there can be joy. Jesus says so. Jesus said in John chapter 16, "Let no one take away your joy." Don't let a trial or a difficulty. Friend, when the trial comes and it's like looking beyond the hymn, the sermon, and seeing Jesus, when the trial comes we look at the trial and we wonder how I can get things fixed so the trial will go away and we get involved, like I was doing just a few weeks ago.

Or persecution or abuse or suffering or a death comes into the family. We want to move beyond it, we don't want to recognize it, we want to say something funny at the funeral so everybody will laugh. I do that. But there are things today that are blocking your vision of Jesus and if you don't see Jesus, Jesus said, "my joy, your joy." Get that in your mind. My joy, your joy. I have to see the joy-maker. Joy is created in the heart of Jesus. He's the fount of life and that river must start flowing, that stream from Him to me.

But when my vision becomes blocked and I try to fix everything and I try to get out of something and I try to move into something else and I become so down here conscious, friend, it gets old after a while. It gets very tiring. Distractions. Now distractions sometimes can be good distractions. But the enemy doesn't always come to distract you with a trial, with a persecution, or with a death in the family. He comes along, he is subtle. You know the devil is smart and he's had a lot of experience at what he does and he's good at what he does.

I pray that God will help me to be good at believing Jesus and being the Christian man that I'm supposed to be. But good distractions. How many of you heard of Reverend Max Lucado or read one of his books? Max Lucado is a great prolific writer, great pastor, and a great minister. Max Lucado tells this story about himself. He said he became a cyclist on a bicycle and he enjoyed it so very much. He said he started buying all the equipment. He bought the shorts and the helmet and the clip-in shoes. He just bought all these gadgets and something that would monitor his pulse rate.

He said there was a man in his church, weren't these men up here good today? They were absolutely phenomenal. He said this man in his church loved bicycling also and was telling Pastor Lucado all of these gadgets that he needed and something that would monitor the height or the descent of a hill. And then this man told and Max went out and bought all of that stuff. And he said he even began to compete. He said, I got so good at what I was doing. He said, now I'm pastoring, but I got so good at what I was doing as a cyclist, I began to enter competitions.

And then my friend in the church told me, he said, what you really need is some music to go along, some rock music. And this will help you. And so he said, I got all that rock music. And he said, I was out there going. And he said, and one day I wrecked my bike. Well, see, his happiness was gone. And he said he wasn't hurt, so he borrowed a friend's bike that didn't have any gadgets whatsoever. And he said, I just went out for a bike ride and guess what? I enjoyed myself.

No gadgets, just a bike ride. He said, but during that time, I got caught up with buying gadgets, out there competing, I got taken up with something good and healthy for me physically, bicycling. Friend, the devil doesn't care how he gets your attention off of Jesus just as long as he gets your attention off of Jesus. He's not trying to get his attention on himself. We're not going to look at the devil. We're going to look at what the devil puts before us. It might be a trial, it might be something good, but watch out for those things that really entertain you.

You're checking the newspaper for the next event, you're watching the television for the next event, you're just getting caught up, sucked into that particular situation and your joy meter is starting to go down. And spiritual things don't have the interest that you had one time wanted it to have. Now it was read a moment ago, we have to abide. "If you abide in me," and that is a big if. If you abide in me. A lot of God's people are not abiding in Him, but if you do, then you can ask what you will and it'll be done.

If you abide in me, like the branch abides in the vine. You take a branch, you sever it from the vine, it falls on the ground, you go back and look at it in a few days and it begins to wither and shrivel up. I don't want to be a shriveled up, withered Christian. I can be very easily and so can any of us. But remember this: my joy, your joy. It's only your joy if you know His joy. If you know His joy, then joy comes to you regardless of what's going on and how deep the trial and whatever the entertainment or whatever it is that the devil is trying to capture your attention with.

You keep your focus on Jesus, you'll be happy, you'll celebrate, and you will experience great joy. Abiding in Jesus. Yes, there's a trial, but there's Jesus. He's greater than the trial. The trials come and the trials go, but Jesus abides forever. There's enjoyment in the world, there's vacations and new cars and new homes and new clothes and new this and new that. Those new things become old things after a while. But Jesus is always new and He's always fresh. If you abide in me, and that is a big if, if you abide in me.

Now there's a joy meter in every one of our hearts and I want you to think closely now because I'm headed right to the end of this sermon because you've heard enough today to know where you need to go to drink at that well of living water. You know now, I've already told you. But there's a joy meter. We have a generator at our house for when the current goes out. The current went out one time and different neighbors came in and took showers and we all were getting together and they were enjoying my generator and I wanted them to enjoy my generator.

But boy was I glad when the current came back on again and the neighborhood settled out. But what was I going to say? Well, it wasn't long ago the generator went out and the current went out and the generator didn't come on. Lloyd Tucker, he's the man back there. You call him if you need help. Well, before I called him, and I should have called him first, before I called him I called the generator people and they came out. Do you know the very first thing the generator man did? What do you think he did?

He went over and looked at the tank where the propane was and he says, you're out of fuel. Christian, are you out of fuel? Your fuel is the joy of the Lord. For the joy of the Lord is your strength. Isn't that Bible? He went over and he looked at it, he said there's nothing wrong, he said, look, hey, come here. I walked over, he said, look where that needle is. Friend, if your needle is on empty today, go to the one that makes joy and creates joy.

Well, when they filled the tank, that's when I got a hold of Tucker and we got that thing going again and it's working now. Friend, your Christian life may not be working for you well. There may not be a thing wrong only that you just allowed good things or sometimes things not so good to come into your life. A number of years ago during the Vietnam War, I know most of you have heard of Bill and Gloria Gaither, we have some of their songs in our hymnal and we sing some of their praise choruses. They've written some of the most beautiful songs.

Well, America was depressed. It was a sad time for America during the Vietnam War. And Bill Gaither and Gloria also got caught up in politics. Do you ever talk politics to anybody? Do you ever talk Jesus to anybody? Friend, come on, encourage yourself in the Lord. The scripture tells us about how David, the psalmist of the Old Testament, his congregation became so angry at him that they literally picked up stones and were going to stone him to death because he lost a war.

And the scripture says he encouraged himself in the Lord. Friend, you don't need anybody to encourage you. You have Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit, and you have the Word of God. Come on, wise up, turn to the Lord with all your heart and experience that joy that will cause the rivers of living water to begin to flow. You can begin to drink at the fount of living water. Let your financial condition go. The pain is there, but beyond the pain somehow in God's miraculous divine way you can still see Jesus.

Beyond the difficulty in your home or where you work, it's there. The difficulty may not go, you've been praying that it'll go, but the important thing is you can have joy in tribulation. Jesus says so and I believe, as you believe, the Word of God is true.

Guest (Male): As Pastor Morris just explained moments ago, you have the power to overcome any difficulty in your life and turn the worst of situations into victories through the power of the Holy Spirit leading and working in your life. I invite you to go to God in prayer today and seek His overcoming power that will bring true joy into your daily walk. If today's message strengthened your faith, we invite you to stand with The Healing Word through your prayers and your generous support. Every gift helps us take the Gospel to more people who desperately need to hear that Jesus still saves. Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message. Until then, blessings on you.