Community // Joy and Sorrow

Key Scripture

• Acts 2:42 – The early church devoted themselves to:
• The apostles’ teaching
• Fellowship
• Breaking bread
• Prayer
• Pastor Jonathan explained that community is not optional for spiritual growth—it is a spiritual practice.

Why Community Matters

• God designed people to:
• Know God
• Love others
• Be known and loved by others
• Healthy relationships include different levels of conversation:
• Shallow – everyday topics (like the weather).
• Middle – interests and life updates.
• Deep – vulnerability about life, faith, struggles, and joys.
• True spiritual community moves relationships from shallow to deep connection.

The Biblical Pattern: Meals & Fellowship

• Jesus frequently shared meals with people.
• The Last Supper shows how community and meals were central to the early church.
• Early Christians gathered in homes where people of different ages, backgrounds, and status ate together.
• Meals create space for:
• Connection
• Conversation
• Spiritual growth

The Two Things That Deepen Relationships

1. Sharing Joy

• Joy is a central theme in Scripture:
• Jesus was “anointed with the oil of joy.”
• Galatians 5:22 lists joy as a fruit of the Spirit.
• Pastor Jonathan explained how:
• Humans tend toward negative thinking (14 negative thoughts for every positive one).
• Culture often pursues pleasure (dopamine) rather than true joy (serotonin/contentment).
• Joy grows through practices such as:
• Gratitude
• Celebration
• Time with people we love
• Sharing meals together
• Recognizing God’s goodness
• Practicing celebration helps retrain our hearts to focus on God’s work in our lives.

2. Sharing Sorrow

• Deep relationships require honesty about pain.
• Pastor Jonathan referenced Jesus in Gethsemane:
• Jesus told His closest friends:
• “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”
• He asked them to stay with Him in His suffering.
• The church has sometimes taught people to hide negative emotions, but Jesus modeled:
• Vulnerability
• Honesty
• Seeking support from trusted friends

The Power of Community in Hard Times

• Scripture teaches believers to “carry each other’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).
• True community means:
• Celebrating together
• Crying together
• Encouraging one another
• Pastor Jonathan shared personally that the support of his wife and close friends helped him endure difficult seasons of ministry.

Encouragement Through the Holy Spirit

• Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Helper (Paraclete).
• Believers are called to encourage one another, partnering with the Spirit.
• Church gatherings are not just for teaching or worship but for mutual encouragement and support.

Community Helps People Heal

• Research on trauma shows that recovery often depends on having close relationships to process pain.
• When people face hardship alone, trauma often lingers.
• When people have community, they grow stronger.

Application: Building Real Community

• Pastor Jonathan challenged the church to intentionally create space for relationships:
• Share joys and struggles with trusted people.
• Eat meals together.
• Meet regularly with a small circle of close friends.
• Allow vulnerability to grow gradually and safely.
• Even small steps—like telling someone “I had a bad day”—can begin healing and connection.

Closing Encouragement

• Christians are not meant to suffer alone.
• God designed people for relationships where burdens are shared.
• As believers practice community, vulnerability, and encouragement:
• Joy grows
• Healing happens
• God transforms lives from the inside out.

Only in Oklahoma can we start off with our ACs on, short-sleeve shirts on. By this afternoon, I'll need my parka, and the heater will be on.

This is just, we experience everything.

Hey, before we get into today's message, what I'm really excited about, I mentioned last week that we were gonna pick a date to have a business meeting. For those of you who are so inclined and wanna learn a little bit more about some of the details and help with some of the plans and different things, which a lot of you reached out with a lot of encouraging stuff, it's awesome. So we did pick a date. It's gonna be Sunday, April 12th, after church. So we'll send more reminders out as we get a little closer, but I just wanted to put that on your calendar. So we have that going on.

The other thing I just wanted to kind of put in your awareness is we are entering into the Easter season. Easter here at Destiny is gonna be amazing, as always. I always look forward to celebrating the resurrection of Jesus with all of you. And the thing that I ask you, two things, two things, if you consider this your church home, and this is who most of you are: one is to begin to pray that the people who walk through our doors just because it's a special religious holiday, or they're dragged there by their mom, or whatever their situation may be, that those people have an encounter with a living Savior who transforms their hearts and their minds in that moment.

And two, be thinking about who you can invite to come with you to Easter. Easter is the one time of the year, Easter and Christmas, that someone is looking for an invitation, and if you make the invitation, they will say yes. Like, if you invited someone to church this weekend and they said no, it's spring break. That was on you, bro. Like, you don't invite someone to church spring break weekend. They got plans. But I mean, that is the time to be able to do it. So be thinking about that, be praying about that, and it's gonna be a really, really great service.

Hey, do this, stand with me to your feet and let me read this scripture verse too.

Our key verse for today is found in Acts chapter 2, verse 42, and it says this, and it says, “And they,” speaking of the church, the disciples of Jesus, this is post-resurrection, it says, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

Father God, we just thank you for today. Lord, as we study your word, as we look at your messages, we think about how to live in community, Father God, and maybe shift some of our mindset, Father God, that you would be here in the midst, that your Spirit would be moving, Father God. It's in your holy name we pray, amen and amen.

All right, you may be seated. You may be seated.

All right, well, we're continuing our series on community, and we've been looking at community in a little bit of a different way because we are looking at community as an actual spiritual practice or a spiritual discipline that we get to participate in. And that's maybe different than what you thought about community before. And this just goes to show, I didn't tell Vivi at all what I'm talking about today. Like, I didn't tell her at all. I kept it secret, like a man of mystery.

Actually, we've just been busy and we didn't get to talk. But so, I didn't know, but literally, the things that she shared for offering is actually reinforcing, hitting on the head what we are talking about today. Because here's what we're trying to land at, right? Here's the end goal and the reason that we want to have community and that we need community in our lives, is that we need to have people and space in which we can be known and that we can know others.

As a believer, we're called to know God, and we're called to have a relationship with Him and know that in our understanding of who He is, that we are also fully known and loved by Him. But just like Jesus says, the greatest command is to love God and love others, there's this other side of the coin, that we're supposed to love and know God. But the thing is, in our relationships, we are called to know and to love other people and also be known and be loved by other people.

And that is both the family that we have, that's like our blood family, like the people that we're related to, the people that are in your home, but also the family that we choose for ourselves, whether that be in our church community, our long-time relationships, that we have this close intimate circle and intimate relationship with. And we need those things because when we go through life, there are times in which we need the encouragement and the love and the support of close intimate friends who can be around with us.

And you guys all know this. In our context of our relationships and people, there's all sorts of different titles and labels and system theories that you can talk about, but we all know when it comes to conversations, there's kind of three levels of conversations, right? There's the shallows, a real shallow conversation, typically in Oklahoma that's always around the weather.

That is what universally we can talk about at a very shallow level, and everyone knows what we're talking about, and everyone's a meteorologist, and we can all just kind of share in that thing. But also, we don't have to get too serious.

Like, if I'm ever wanting to have a conversation but just keep a distance, I just keep the weather in there because it makes you feel like I really am there, but really it's a distant conversation. No one's life's being changed by the fact that it started 73 degrees today, it's gonna be 23 tonight. Like, no one cares. But your body will care, your energy bill will care, but it's not a deep conversation. It's this shallow thing, and you have shallow conversations all the time. And to be fair, most interactions that you have in your life, the thing that should be happening is a shallow conversation.

You don't need to go up to your favorite coffee shop, and they say, “What do you need?” and you're like, “Well, I'd like a double latte, and also let me tell you about this breakup that I just went through.” That is not the time to do it, okay? That's not the place. Some of these things just need to be a shallow-level conversation.

And then we know that we kind of have these midlands or middle-type conversations, that you talk about certain things, you talk about different interests, it's a little bit more in depth, but there's still a part of you that is guarded, right? And again, there's plenty of relationships that are in that level, that you need to have these certain conversations, but you're still withholding certain things.

But we know at the end of the day that there are a certain group of people that hopefully we have in our life, and if not, that's gonna be the goal, that we can actually have deep conversations with. Like, the place in which we can be fully vulnerable and transparent and honest with people who are around us, that we can also listen to other people, that we can share in highs and lows and the good and the bad and the hard and the fun. Like, we can share in all those things. Like, we have these people. We can talk about deep things, deep things spiritually, deep things personally, share things about what's going on in your health, things that are going on in your marriage, struggles you're having with your children, that you have a place in which you can go and talk and have these deep connections.

And so hopefully you've experienced all three of these levels of conversation. But the question that always remains is, how do I build my relationships so that we can go from maybe shallow conversations or mid-conversations and move them into deep, spiritual conversations and relationships in which we can have a healthy place that we can grow and I can learn to grow and be known and loved and know and love someone else, right?

And I wanna look at a story because Jesus kind of sets up this precedent and kind of talk about it because in Mark chapter 14, verse 22, this is a famous section of scripture because this is Mark’s account of the Last Supper, right? The Last Supper that he shares this Passover meal with his disciples. And it says this in verse 22, it says, “While they were eating, Jesus took some bread and when he gave thanks, he broke it and he gave it to his disciples saying, ‘Take it, this is my body.’ And then he took his cup and he gave thanks and he gave it to them and they drank from it. He said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many.’”

And then in Luke’s account, he said this, he said, “This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

In Mark’s gospel and Luke’s gospel and every account that we have of this communion moment or the Lord’s Supper moment, we see Jesus celebrating Passover, which is a traditional Jewish feast festival, with his disciples. He even says in one account that he had been eagerly anticipating the sharing of that meal with them and that he came together to celebrate and to sit around the table. And the thing that he commanded the church to do is he said, “Do this often to remember me.”

Now, we as a church take communion on a regular basis. We usually do it during worship. We have those little cups and we tear it and we do it. And it's like the communion moment that is really profound and really powerful, but it is different than the communion moment or the Lord’s Supper moment that was with the original church. You see, the original church, and we actually read it in Acts chapter 2, when the original church used to gather, we have to remember they didn't have buildings, they didn't have churches, they didn't even have liturgy, they didn't even have the New Testament.

When they gathered together, it says just like in Acts, they devoted themselves to four things: to the apostles’ teachings. So that's where we started to get these letters. Like, remember all the New Testament letters like 1 and 2 Peter, 1 and 2 and 3 John, Hebrews, Romans, Galatians, those were all letters that were written to church communities so that they could have the apostles’ teachings. And then it says, “and the fellowship,” which just means the community together. We’re coming together just to be with each other.

And by the way, this fellowship was completely radical. It was a cultural revolution because what blew people’s mind about the Christian fellowship was when they walked into these homes where Christians were gathering, they had men and women, old and young, all different socioeconomic status. You had slave and free, rich and poor. They had different ethnicities. They had everything mixed and they were in one place and they were doing something that blew people's mind, which it says, “the breaking of bread,” which is just like a little catch-all for sharing a meal together.

You see, the original Lord’s Supper, the communion, was an actual full meal that the church ate together. Now the reason in church history we shifted from everyone coming together on a Sunday and eating a full meal together as part of the experience is because as the church grew, it became harder and harder. Like, if you got like six people showing up at your church, we can have a meal, right? If six of you come into my house, I’m cooking for you and it’s gonna be good. And you're gonna be like, “Wow, John, you're the best cook in the world.” Be like, “Hey, listen, you know, praise God.”

But tell me more.

But if all of you came, now we're like, at best we’re ordering Domino’s. Like, it’s not, like we can’t do it. Scalability becomes a problem, right? And so what they ended up doing was they took the two core elements, the bread and the cup, and they said, “We’re gonna keep doing this because we can scale this into a bigger number as the church is growing.” And the meal became a special thing.

And we as a church, that’s why we like to have special meals. That’s why at the end of this month, on the fifth Sunday when we celebrate baptism, we have a church-wide meal. Why? Because we think it’s important for us to come together and to celebrate and to eat together because it matters. That builds community, it builds fellowship, it builds relationship. That's why we host things like what we've got coming up here in just a few weeks on Wednesday night, the actual Seder dinner, the Passover dinner, where we get to explore a little bit about the Bible and we get to eat together and we get to have this moment that we get to learn and grow. If you've never been to one, man, I encourage you, this year’s is gonna be absolutely awesome.

For the first time, I get the opportunity to teach and I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to just like, man, I can’t, I just can’t even use the words. I’m excited about it. And if you've been before, come again, because these types of community meals are the moments in which we get to have our minds open and fellowship and our hearts get to be connected because something happens when we sit around a table with food and eat.

And so I say all that and I give you this because Jesus is painting a picture of something that he expected all of his followers to do moving forward, which he expected his community of believers, because he demonstrated this his whole ministry career, to have their relationships surrounded by community and specifically surrounded by opportunities to sit down at a table and share meals together.

If you look at Jesus in the story, almost every single story, either Jesus is going to, at, or coming from a meal every time. Like, read it in context. It’s like, and he was on the way to this meal and he got stopped, or he was sitting at the table and this happened, or he had just left the thing and that happened. Jesus was always eating. He was. In fact, he made friends with rich people and then invited himself over to their house and told them to cook for him. That’s what I’m talking about.

Like, that’s a method right there.

Like, you guys need to say, like, take that from the playbook. Like, “Hey, I like you. You know what? I’m coming over to your house. You’re gonna make me some dinner. What do you think about that?” Like, “Oh, okay.” You never know what may happen.

But here’s the thing. If we just sit down and we eat, that’s one thing. We’re gonna talk a little bit about this. We’re gonna get a little neuro-nerdy here in a minute. But listen, if you sit down and you eat together, that’s one thing.

But there’s something that happens when, in the moment of community, in the moment of eating, in that conversation, that it’s an opportunity for relationships to grow.

And there’s two things that can be shared in these community moments that will take relationships from just a very surface-level relationship and create opportunity to expand and to grow deeper in relationships. And it’s sharing two things. And we’re gonna look at both of them. It’s when you can share in your joy and when you can share in your sorrow.

When you create opportunity to share those two things, you are opening up an entire new world of depth within your relationships.

Sometimes when we do it in youth, we talk about it a different way because we do this very regularly in youth small groups. We talk about what were your highs and what were your lows. What were the things that went really good this week, and what were the things that were really hard this week?

And in the opportunity of doing that regularly, you are able to create a sense of intimacy and a sense of purpose over time in which people can feel safe to share and to listen and to pray. It's a really beautiful thing. But here’s what we can do. Here’s why.

Here’s why I wanna talk about it.

We know that God created joy as an incredible powerful tool for us, for human beings. And Jesus, it says in Hebrews, that he was anointed with the oil of joy. And in John chapter 15, verse 11, this is what Jesus says. He said, “I told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

And Galatians 5:22, it says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love,” and the thing only secondary to love is joy.

Joy is this critical component that we have, that we need in our lives for us to be able to move forward, to expand this. But here’s what’s amazing about joy.

Joy is this concept that it’s one of those words that you understand it, but then when you try to define it, you’re like, “Ugh, I get a little fuzzy.” And there’s a reason you get fuzzy.

First of all, your brain has a specific joy center, like a section that is dedicated to joy.

And it is actually, for those of you who really wanna know, it is in the right orbital prefrontal cortex, right orbital prefrontal cortex. And here’s what’s amazing about this little section, this little joy section. It’s, and people argue it, because neuroscientists are nerds, so they argue. It is arguably the only part of your brain that can continue to grow for your entire life. The capacity that God gave you in this area is that it doesn’t just stop where you're at. It has the capacity and the ability to grow forever, which is why sometimes you go and you meet an older person and they’re the most joyful, happy person that you’ve ever met in your life. And you’re like, “I don’t know how they’re so full of joy.” It’s because they’ve had a lifetime of joyful encounters, which has caused their brains to continue to grow and joy has expanded. And the result is they look more like Jesus, who was joyful no matter what he was facing.

Even in the midst of facing death, he chose joy. And so here’s what’s really wild about this joy center. Even though that is how you would think, well, we should all just be joyful all the time.

Sin has done damage to everything around us.

Sin has done damage to our body. Sin has done damage to our brains. Sin has done damage to our atmosphere around us. And by sin, I mean things that were done by us, that were done to us, and that were done around us. Like, sin has caused brokenness in our world. And here’s what else scientists will say about you. It says that we have a 14-to-1 ratio of negative thoughts to positive thoughts. That’s the average person, 14-to-1 ratio. So for every one positive thought, 14 negative thoughts.

One scientist said that brains are flypaper for negativity and Teflon for positivity. That’s like how you work. And maybe you’ve experienced that. Maybe you’ve experienced that either in like you’re trying to say something positive and they don’t hear it, or you’re on the receiving end. Like, we experience this in relationships. You can say a lot of really good positive things to your spouse, to your children, to your coworkers. But if you slip up and say one negative thing, that’s the thing that’ll latch on. That’s just like how it works, right? And there’s this whole idea of this thing.

And here’s another wild thing. Eighty percent of thoughts are negative and 95 percent of our thoughts are repetitive. So that means if 80 percent of your thoughts are negative and 95 percent are repetitive, you start putting yourself on this negativity loop, which you can’t escape from.

And so instead of being a person who’s fed by joy, we’re fed by negativity and grief and fear and hurt and all sorts of stuff. And that leads to anxiety. And yet we have verses where it says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”

But what we see is when people are lacking joy, they’re more prone to sin.

Relationships that don’t have joy are more prone to fracture. And even communities that have no joy in the community, they are destined to fall apart.

Because joy is something that binds us together and it binds us to God.

But joy, and our joy, Christian joy, is not based on our circumstances.

Christian joy is based on the person of Jesus Christ and what he’s done for us. Christian joy is based on the fact that we have something that’s different than what the world has and that we have an assurance of being loved by our heavenly Father. But what has happened over time is God’s way has always been that joy, that is something that is a result of understanding joy, produces happiness, or another word for it would be contentment. And that’s the way that God wants us to. Like, we have contentment because we have the joy that God has, which is why Paul can be in prison and can be talking about how joyful he is even though he’s chained up in jail.

So why can he be joyful? Because his circumstances don’t dictate his joy. His relationship with God dictates his joy. So even in hard situations he can be joyful.

But here’s what has happened in our world.

Big business, marketing, they’ve confused us, they’ve tricked us. And they’ve replaced joy producing happiness with pleasure produces happiness.

An experience will produce happiness.

That new car will get you happiness.

If you could just eat that meal tonight, you’d be happy.

You get this much dollars in your bank account. And what they’ve done on a neurological level, what they’ve changed is they’ve confused serotonin, which is the thing that produces contentment and joy, it’s associated with joy and happiness, they’ve changed it with dopamine, which is an experience that you will never be satisfied by. And so what happens is it keeps telling you, this is what you want, this is what you want, this is what you want, this is what you want, this is what you want, this is what you want. Why do they do that? Because that’s how they make money.

And you are nothing but just a walking piece of change for them. And so they want you to keep coming to this idea that I will find happiness by finding pleasure, but pleasure is fleeting. That’s what the entire book of Ecclesiastes is about. I tried it all and guess what? None of it lasts very long.

But notice what he said did last.

Have joy with friends sitting around a table eating food.

Because that’s a good thing that God has for you.

So here’s what’s wild.

Serotonin, the chemical in your brain that’s produced when we experience things like joy, and we’ll talk about what brings that here in just a second, that has to do with being content in your well-being. Whereas that dopamine is like this pleasure, reward, motivation, which by the way, both are needed. Dopamine has its purpose and its place. It has a good place when it’s used correctly and when it has the right context, right? But what serotonin produces is satisfaction with what you have.

You experience joy and it produces satisfaction with what you have. Whereas dopamine is always excited about something you’re about to get. It’s always future-facing, it’s always this exciting. The serotonin lasts for a long time, whereas dopamine is really short bursts.

Serotonin will produce a presence and gratitude, whereas dopamine will just pursue more and more achievement.

Wherever we experience this joy, we have experienced calm and peace and security,

whereas dopamine always leads to this excited craving of what’s the next thing.

And here’s what happens. When dopamine spikes, it’s certain things like the experience of winning a competition or certain food or scrolling through social media or having someone like your post or making that impulse purchase, that’s where those things really spike.

But serotonin spikes in moments of gratitude,

of connection with other people,

oddly enough, and it shouldn’t surprise us, being outside in sunlight.

Your serotonin just spikes.

And low serotonin is what leads to depression and anxiety, whereas dopamine-chasing leads to addiction and burnout.

Which is why when you’re just constantly scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, you’re like, “Oh, I’m so tired. I’m gonna sit down and rest on my phone for the next five hours.” And you just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. And then after five hours, you're like, “I’m actually more tired.”

This is no guilt or condemnation, right? This is one of those takes-one-to-know-one kind of moments, you know what I’m saying?

But we sit there and we’re like, I should be so rested. I didn’t move anything but my finger for five hours.

And yet I’m burned out.

And yet you can go outside and walk around your block for 15, 20, 30 minutes, and you come back in and you’re like, “Wow, I’m refreshed.”

It’s a switch. But the problem is because you’ve been told that happiness will come from pleasure, and pleasure will not bring happiness.

Joy will bring happiness.

But how do we do that? Like, how do we get joy?

There’s physical things, like I said, sunlight, exercise, deep relationships produce joy.

Gratitude. One sign says, “The most joyful experience you can have as a human being is to be seated at a table eating a meal with people that you love outside.” And if you do that, like your brain is just like on overload of feeling like this is the greatest thing in my life. Now in Oklahoma, I think we get two days a year that we can do that, right? Two days a year. And on those two magical days, you better be outside with family. You should be like, “Cut work.” Just get out there and be like, we’re eating outside and we’re living it up.

Because there’s something that happens. It’s like in this contentment moment that I can experience joy.

But what Bible tells us is that joy, and we see it all the time, Philippians talks about choose joy.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.”

And there’s this wild idea, and this is what’s crazy, there’s this practice or this discipline of celebration.

And what I mean by that is remember, any spiritual practice is us doing the things that we can do so that God can do the things that we can’t do. And so can I always be in a good mood? No. Can I always feel like I’m just so happy? Just so happy to be here?

No.

At least not me. Maybe some of you can.

But there are certain things in my life that I can institute that are mandatory moments of celebration that put me in a place where I’m forcing myself to say, in this moment, I’m gonna force myself to settle down and to choose joy

and to see what’s going on. And so it’s things like this. Like I can take a moment, we do this with my family every week at our Sabbath dinner, as we share our highlights for the week.

What were my highlights for the week? And listen, you know how it is with kids, you know how it is with adults. It’s like, “Hey, did anything good happen today?” “Nope.”

Nothing good the whole day. “Nope, it was awful. Everything about it was terrible. And I got homework and I hate it.” And it’s like, well, let’s walk through the day. Could anything good have happened?

And you know, as you start talking through it, it’s like, “Well, this thing happened. Oh yeah, and this thing happened. Oh yeah, and that thing happened. And then that thing happened, and that thing happened.” And that’s how it goes. Listen, I don’t care how old you are, how young you are, you can sit there and be like, “How was your week?” And this happens here at church. “How was your week?” “It was awful.”

And it’s like, let’s talk through it day by day. And most of the time, it’s not that there wasn’t something awful that happened, there was, but it was like one awful thing happened and that tinted your whole week. Why? Because of 14-to-1 negative bias.

And when you actually start talking it through, you’re like, actually, a lot of really good things happened this week.

Like, a lot of good things happened this week.

And when we do that, when we force ourselves into these moments of sharing these joys, we can do it. So we can share highlights from the week. We can practice gratitude. We can eat meals together. We can throw a birthday party. We can look for an excuse to celebrate. We can actually discipline ourselves to celebrate because it’s in those moments that we’re opening ourselves up to the Holy Spirit to say, “Hey, can you grow joy inside of me?” Because I know my joy is not based on the fact that I had a rough week at work or someone cut me off or my favorite sports team lost. Those things are just like, whatever.

I can choose joy because I can actually practice the things that allow me to focus on what God is actually doing in my life. And as we do that, it actually begins to rewire your brain so you’re not so negative-focused. In fact, you start to have a more positivity-focused idea. And this isn’t like a “turn that smile upside down” because we’re gonna talk about sorrow in a minute. And it’s really important.

Understanding sorrow and expressing sorrow is equally as important as joy. Just like understanding that fasting is a powerful thing that we can do in our lives to be able to step forward and to trust God’s promises, feasting with friends and sitting down in community is just as important because it creates an opportunity for joy to reign and for us to be open and vulnerable and in these intimate relationships and moments with people.

Community is the moment that we get to come together and share joy. Because if we really look around,

if you go on social media or you turn on the news or you just look around, joy is not the thing that sells.

What is outside and when you look around are things like fear and anger and outbursts of belief and different things. That is what we see everywhere we go.

It is so unusual to meet someone who is happy. When it happens, you’re like, wow, that person was actually happy.

Because what we experience is the opposite of that.

Because the world is a broken place.

And so in community, we get to have this opportunity in which we get to share our joys with people in the context of relationships.

Maybe it’s over a meal, maybe it’s over a coffee,

maybe it’s at a small group, maybe it’s at a Bible study. Here’s what’s really wild. Here’s what’s really wild. We can be in a group, a small group, a Bible study, whatever it may be, and we can have really deep theological discussions and we can talk about a lot of different things, and you’ll never actually build personal intimacy because having conversations about the Bible, that is incredible, that is not what builds interpersonal intimacy.

It’s stimulating, it’s fun, but you and I could sit down at coffee and we could talk about as many theological things as you want. And you could hear all my beliefs about theology and you would know nothing about me.

You’d know nothing about my heart, you’d know nothing about what makes me happy, you’d know nothing about what makes me sad, and I would know nothing about you.

We would have a great experience. And listen, those things are great. I’m always down to sit down, have a cup of coffee, and talk about the book of Job. Like, I’m ready for it.

But if you think like, “Yeah, we had just this real intimate moment,”

we had a spiritual moment, yes. And those can help lead to intimacy, but if we don’t ever share about ourselves,

then we’re not building intimacy.

Jesus shared all of himself with his disciples.

He shared the highs and he shared the lows.

He was with them for three years and they were involved in everything, and we don’t get it all recorded, but we see everything. But listen to this, at the end, this is picking up in that Mark chapter 14 story, verse 26, after they just had this meal, Jesus is leaving because they’re gonna go to the garden here to pray because he knows he’s about to be betrayed, and he knows he’s about to be hung on the cross.

Again, that’s not a good day.

And what it says was in verse 26, it says, “When they had sung a hymn,”

this is the only time that it records Jesus singing,

was when he was on his way to go get betrayed.

Because he chose joy.

In the midst of tribulation, he sang

with his fellow believers,

with those who were close, his 12.

And then a couple verses later, it says, “They went to the place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’” So he had his 12, so think about this, he took them to this place, and they’re in this garden, and he took the 12, and he says, you 12, which there’s only 11, sit here.

And then he took the three,

his most intimate friends, the ones who were with him on that mountain of transfiguration, the ones who he had experienced many things with, he took Peter, James, and John, and he said, “Now you guys come over here with me.”

Because in your deepest, hardest moments, even close friends are not what you need. You need the most intimate, personal group.

And this is what he told them. He said, “He began to be deeply distressed and troubled.”

And this is what he said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow

to the point of death.”

Say, “Can you stay here and be with me?”

Can you be with me?

Jesus just told his closest friends

that his soul was so sorrowful

that he felt like he was going to die,

and he wanted them to be next to him.

The vulnerability in this moment is mind-blowing.

This is not like a leader-of-a-religious-movement move

because the religious leader is not supposed to die

and they’re definitely not supposed to admit that they’re sorrowful to the point of death.

But Jesus in this moment says, “This is where I’m at.”

And he called his closest three,

said, “This is what I’m dealing with. Can you be with me?

Can you stand next to me in this moment and help me get through this sorrow?”

And here’s the thing, church. The church has a history of what I would call teachings on negative-feeling repression,

which means joy is great. Tell everyone about your joy. But if you’re hurting, if you’re sorrowful, if you’re anxious, if you’re depressed, if you’re sad, if you’re dealing with anything like that, don’t talk about it. And don’t tell anyone about it because that’s negative and that’s negative faith. Just pray and it’ll go away.

But that’s not what Jesus did.

Did he pray? Absolutely he did. He prayed so hard that he began to sweat blood.

He wept before his Father and begged him, “Can you please take this away from me?” But he didn’t do that until after he went to his friends and he said, “I’m really struggling. Will you please just be with me?”

And we’ve taught generations of church people that you should just keep that in and not tell anyone what you’re dealing with. And then we wonder why there’s no intimacy in the church, because we’re fake.

We’re fake because you were told to be fake. You were told you had no faith if you said you have sorrow, but I’m pretty sure Jesus had faith. He knew he was gonna be resurrected from the dead. And yet he was so sorrowful that he said that he felt like he was gonna die before he even got there.

Most of you can say like, “Yeah, I could get together and tell people about some joys.”

“I could get together and I could tell them about the promotion I got, or when my kids drew me that great picture, or that cool butterfly I saw, or that great Oklahoma sunset we had last night. I can talk about joy. I can do that.” And then I say, “Hey, can you talk about your sorrow?”

That’s where a lot of you are like, “Nah, I’m out.”

Because I don’t wanna actually be viewed as negative.

Or I don’t wanna be viewed as someone who needs pity. Or I don’t wanna be viewed as someone who’s weak, or vulnerable, or needs help. I don’t want to look like that.

And sometimes I know, especially in the masculine culture, it’s like, I’m never gonna admit to having any feelings or weakness. Like, that’s not who I am, bro.

And you’re not like Jesus, and I don’t know what else to tell you.

Jesus never had a problem expressing joy, or sadness, or gladness, being overwhelmed with emotion,

crying. All those things he experienced.

My Savior experienced those things.

And then he went to the cross and experienced a death that no one in this room could handle.

No one’s gonna call Jesus weak or soft.

This is the one who stood up to groups who were trying to stone people to death and said, “Go ahead and throw the first stone if you think you have no sin.”

He’s the one who had whole groups of people say, “We’re going to kill you,” and then he just walked away.

Nothing about Jesus was weak or soft. And yet, Jesus understood how to process feelings in the group, in the context of emotion. And not only did he do it for himself, but he did it to be an example to his followers.

If Jesus needed his closest three people to be able to bear the burden of the cross, how much more do you and I need close people in our lives to bear the crosses that we carry?

I can’t do it alone.

I can’t do it alone.

I can tell you, if I didn’t have my wife and some of my best friends and people who are close to me, I would have quit working here probably seven years ago.

Because I couldn’t have done it.

I was broken by the burden

of what I thought was mine to carry.

And it’s community and friends and loved ones, to be able to be there and to hear my sorrow and my shame and my failure, to be able to pick me up and say, “Jesus is with you. You can do this. You don’t have to carry this on your own.” And all of a sudden, little by little, not only did intimacy and relationships grow and trust grow, my belief that God is able to do the impossible, and that he has called me for a purpose and for a time, and that I can trust in him.

And even when I look at circumstances and say, “There’s nothing that I can do,” or “my soul is so sorrowful that I feel like I can’t go on,” I can turn to him and he will meet me in that place, and he will give me the oil of joy that comes from being in relationship with him. And the fruit of the Spirit that is not mine to produce, but simply to be abiding in the vine, begins to dwell up inside of me, and love and joy and peace and patience begin to reign, and I begin to look at my world different. And I say, “Even though nothing in my circumstances looks different, my body feels the same, my relationships look the same, the bank account still says the same, I am different because the very Spirit of God is moving inside of me and changing me from the inside out,” which is what he promised to do from the very beginning.

We are never called to be alone in pain and suffering.

God said it wasn’t good for man to be alone before sin ever entered.

Think about that. It wasn’t good for man to be alone in paradise.

How much more so when we’re dealing with death and violence and destruction and decay.

We cannot avoid hard times.

Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I’ve overcome the world.”

Galatians 6:2 says, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ, to love God and love others.”

Carry each other’s burdens. How can you carry another person’s burden if you never are in a place or a situation to know their burden?

Or to have your burden be known?

We must create more opportunity for us to be in relationships in which we can share joys and sorrows,

in which we can be open and vulnerable to the people around us.

Hebrews 10:24, this is a famous one. Pastors use it all the time to make sure that you come to church. It says, “And let us consider how we may spur one another towards love and good deeds, not giving up on meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.”

That’s where you feel the guilt and condemnation and make sure you come every Sunday.

And a lot of times they stop right there. “As some are in the habit of doing, Brother Greg.”

But let somebody keep saying, it says, “but encouraging one another.”

And all the more as you see the day approaching.

We’re supposed to gather together not so that we can sing songs together, although that’s really great, not so that we can hear a great teaching, although that’s really great, that we are called to gather together so that we can be encouraging to one another.

Be encouraging to one another.

Here’s what’s wild. Jesus called the Holy Spirit, he called him the helper, right? Or sometimes they call it the advocate or the counselor, it’s translated a different place. It’s called the Paraclete in Greek.

That’s what he’s called, the Paraclete.

And what’s wild is this one who comes alongside, or this advocate, that’s who Jesus said the Holy Spirit is. And then we are called to encourage each other. It’s the same root word, it’s called the parakaleo, which is to encourage. Your role on earth in partnership with the Holy Spirit is to encourage your fellow believers in the same way that the Holy Spirit is encouraging them. And so they are getting encouraged both from the inside and the outside, that you are partnering with the Holy Spirit who has come alongside you to be able to come alongside your brother and sister to be able to encourage them at the same moment that the Holy Spirit is encouraging them from the inside out, that his grace and his mercy are good enough and that they can walk through that moment.

That is the type of community that we get to be in, that I have a mission and the reason I come to church on Sunday is because it’s important for me to gather together with brothers and sisters because there may be someone who needs to be encouraged and the Holy Spirit will move through me to do it. And at the same time, I may need encouragement and the Holy Spirit will partner with someone else to move inside of them to come and encourage me. That is what we get to do in these relationships.

That the Holy Spirit is powerful.

That when we experience hard things,

we can have the relationships around us to help us process those, to help us talk through those, to be encouraged.

The last thing I’ll share and then we’ll wrap it up.

You know, there’s this word that’s become real popular, and it’s because it’s a real issue,

but it’s the idea of trauma.

And the trauma is like things that were done to us. Occasionally it can be done by us, and how our body responds to those things.

Right? How we process those things. And there was this really long study that a group did and they wanted to see why, and you maybe had the same question, why two people can go through like the exact same thing and one person is very traumatized by it and has issues with it, and then another person seemingly is fine. And maybe even some examples, like they actually seem stronger as a result of that same trauma.

And they were trying to figure out why does that happen. And their original hypothesis, where they thought, well, if there’s like a stigma around it, then maybe that’s what makes it more traumatic or less traumatic. So they were trying to study and they did all sorts of different things. But the thing that they actually found, and the end result, and they tested this multiple times and other people tested it, the thing that they ended up finding out was actually the stigma was not the thing that made something a traumatic event or affected people negatively as a result of it. The thing that made a person recover from a traumatic event positively versus negatively was: did they have a community or a group of people that they were close enough with to process that trauma with?

And when they had people who were close, they ended up growing through it and they were fine. And when they had no one close and they had to bottle that up and repress all that stuff and they didn’t have either a friend or a counselor or a therapist, they had no place to express that, the internalization of that trauma is what wounded them for the rest of their life until it’s ever been processed or dealt with because it is something that has to be expressed at some point through relationship.

It will not go away.

Your brain holds onto it until it is processed.

And we are called to be a community of life-giving believers that are led by the great Counselor, the Holy Spirit, so that we can come alongside with the Holy Spirit to encourage people in the truth.

And so as we walk through this community idea, church,

we’re gonna be talking about, and if you choose to come to the formation class that we do later, there’ll be exercises around

how am I intentionally creating moments in my schedule?

And I don’t do this very well,

where I can be around people

and have moments where we can have shared intimacy and real space, like real talk.

And if the talk is joyful, then awesome.

But if the talk is sorrowful or hard,

then that’s great too.

That I can have those moments

where we can say, hey, we need to regularly meet together so that we have space for everything that comes.

And it won’t be you meeting with everyone, it won’t be everybody meeting with us. That’s not how it works. That’s not how relationship works. We can only scale these things so big. But each person here has the opportunity to create a community

where you can sit down and break bread over a simple meal and share the goodness of God and choose to share your highlights of that week and also choose to share the lows of that week, to be encouraged by others, to encourage others, to celebrate with others, to cry with others. Like, that is the reality of those things. And over time, intimacy grows.

And that whole concept, for some of you, is like, sign me up, I’m ready for it right now. And for others of you, it’s petrifying.

Because you’ve been hurt,

because you were wounded,

even things that maybe go all the way back to your childhood,

that you never felt safe and you’ve thought the only way to keep my heart safe and from being hurt by others is to wall it off and never let those feelings out.

The more you share your heart, the more it is open to healing. And it starts small.

It’s progressive.

Maybe the first thing you have to do is just say, “I had a bad day,” and that’s all I’m gonna say. And that’s a good step in the right direction.

Because you know what happens when someone says, “I had a bad day”? When you’re around people who love you, it’s like, “Ooh, I’m praying for you.”

I’m praying for you, man.

You don’t have to tell me anything else. I don’t need to know anything else. Because you know who knows?

The Holy Spirit.

He knows what your bad day was. I’m praying.

I’m praying, I’m praying. And the power of prayer and the Holy Spirit and relationship and community, it begins to transform us from the inside out. Hey, stand with me and let me pray for you.

Lord Jesus, you are good and your mercy endures forever. Thank you for sending the Holy Spirit as our great helper. Thank you for Jesus who displayed so honestly and transparently what it means to be human, to experience the great highs of joy, the great lows of sorrow, to be able to express and invite people into relationship, Father God. Lord, help us learn to choose to be in community, to be vulnerable with those around us who you’ve called us to be in intimate and personal relationship with, so that we can express your love and your goodness, so that in carrying each other’s burdens, we can fulfill the law of Christ, to love God and love those around us, Father God, that we can be fully known by you and that we can fully know those around us and we can be fully loved by those around us and love them as well.

Lord, that this interpersonal connection that is modeled and displayed through the person of the Holy Spirit and the Son and the Father, Lord, I thank you, Lord, that we can repeat those in our lives and see what intimacy looks like. And for those of us who deal with heartache

and hurt and broken relationships and betrayal and wounding and trauma,

we give those things to you. And if you supernaturally wanna do a work in those things, Lord, then supernaturally do a work. And if you’re calling us to begin to bring some of those things to community and to trusted friends, Father God, then allow us to speak those things out bravely and openly and experience what overwhelming love and compassion looks like.

Jesus, we love you, we praise you. It’s in your holy name we pray, amen and amen.

All right, church, we love you. Have a great Sunday. Those on spring break, enjoy it. We’ll see you next Sunday. Be hot, be cold, and everything in between. Goodbye.

If you want, I can also put this into a cleaner sermon-transcript layout with speaker-style paragraph breaks for easier reading.