How Can I Find Joy in this Life: Theology in Action

Levi: welcome back to theology in action. I'm here again with Dr. Tony Caffey. Dr. Caffey, how are you today?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Hey Levi, good to see you my friend, yeah

Levi: Yeah, this last quarter of the year is always one of my favorites. I do however know and I also have in the past struggled with with having maybe the right mindset and just depression or loneliness or just being happy finding finding joy in any time of the year. But this time of the year I think it can be elevated and more of a struggle. So that is what I'd like to talk about today. I'd like to talk about as a believer, uh, joy and how do we how do we approach how do we go about finding joy and happiness in in the day-to-day? Really, we'll start there

Dr. Tony Caffey: It's ironic because it's happy holidays is what we say now right, and yet it can be an unhappy time for people, a lonely time. And some of it I think revolves around, you know, that whole fear of missing out, that FOMO, and everybody seems so happy especially on social media, everybody seems to be having a good time with family. And yet a lot of us experience at Christmas time, Thanksgiving, stress with family and it's not it's more like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation than it is like you know somebody's Christmas card. But uh there's other things too. I mean there's issues if if people are isolated from family or um you know people are dealing with with death this time of year, the loss of loved ones, it can be a sad time. There's also I think a letdown, you get to maybe Thanksgiving and you get to Christmas Day and then there's kind of the inevitability of okay now it's back to the normal routines of life and maybe Christmas wasn't as enjoyable as you experienced in the past or as you thought it would be. Um so there's a lot of emotions that we process this time of year and for some people it can be a battle with uh I think you were alluding to this you know sadness or depression. And it's it's a good time to just remember that our uh Anchorage needs to be in the Lord not, which is ironic too because it's Christmas and yet Christ is often the last real consideration at that time with all the other things going on. Um but yeah to realize that through this season with all the ups and downs of, you know, family and and busyness and parties, you know, Christ does need to be the anchor for our soul where our identity is found and that's the secret to to Joy which is the Christian term. So you alluded to maybe two different concepts, we have happiness which um is not a negative word necessarily. There's actually an argument to be made that blessed, this uh Greek word macarios, has that built into it, "Blessed are the uh you know the the Beatitudes of of Matthew 5 I think it is, The Sermon on the Mount". So there's a happiness concept or a a um let's just say we share in the joy of the Lord as we Embrace that Christ-like ethos of of Matthew 5, those Beatitudes. But there is a difference I think between kind of the superficial uh happiness that derives from, "oh my favorite football team won this year so I'm happy" or, "you know I have a good relationship with all of my family members and so I'm satisfied in that way". So there's happiness which that can be derailed if your favorite team loses or if maybe you do have a relationship in your family that's on the rocks that eliminates your happiness. Whereas in terms of the Christian Anchorage of Christ in our heart, we can have a joy that can weather all of that even if your best, your favorite team loses, even if you do have stress and relational conflict and you lose your job or uh in the case of even more serious persecution as we see in the New Testament, you can still have a deep abiding joy that comes from the Lord. So that's our goal in the Christian Life

Levi: Yeah, I I some of the examples you give and something that comes to mind is it's a lot of it is temporary. A lot my team wins, there's that high that day, that week, whatever, but The Season's going to end, even if they end on top, the season's going to end, that's there's a temporary aspect to that. Whereas what you're saying with the joy is much in in the Lord is much more consistent uh and and that was there was a series uh a season of my life that that was a struggle to find and I knew it was the right answer. Uh and people would would tell me you know, "count it all joy," they would go to James and I would say, "well it says count it all joy and trial, how do I do that? What is that what does that look like?" And it would it would almost be more discouraging to me than anything because in my mind I'm trying like, "Lord, I'm seeking you, I'm after you, but I'm not I'm not getting there." What am I missing? So can you maybe dig a little deeper or point out a little more points of things that can be done in that situation?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah, good. So I think the best example in Scripture that I can draw from would be Philippians, okay? So if there's an Epistle of joy in the New Testament, it's Philippians and the irony in that is Paul's writing in chains, literal chains. He's imprisoned, he's I'm sure suffering, maybe even dealing with malnutrition and other I mean this was not a cushy prison like what we would have maybe in the North American world in a federal penitentiary. But I mean this is this is a tough go and yet throughout that book there's reference to the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord and sometimes that's manifested in these commands, "rejoice in the lord always, Rejoice," you know, Paul says. Um so what does that mean? That means I think so let's say your your favorite team does lose, that seems kind of silly doesn't it, but sure. Let's say you are going through a relational conflict with your kids or with your parents or with you know your job loss. I mean people have layoffs at Christmas time, they do. I mean as uh bottom lines are evaluated in corporations and so there there are struggles, there are things that are are pulling against what you might call the natural happiness that we experience in life. And so we've got to in those moments activate our our inner reasoning to think through what we truly are thankful for and to rejoice in the fact that we have life and the the fact that in the Christian sense we have eternal life, salvation. So you know our job may disappear, our relationships may disappear, we may lose those things that are most valuable to us but we can't lose that most valuable thing in the world and in that we can rejoice. Yeah, even if everything else is taken away from us, you know, if you've got Christ, you've got everything you need, even if you've got nothing else and if you don't have that you don't have anything even if you have everything else. So that just kind of emotionally but also logically walking through that in the midst of despair is good um and it's helpful to to do that in a corporate setting. So there's you know I can be a very introspective person, sounds like you are too Levi, and we can kind of isolate ourselves with the Lord and try to kind of pull ourselves out. Um and we we see even examples of that in scripture where isolation with the Lord is valuable but I I want to also emphasize the the value of corporate um identity in the body of Christ. So you know maybe things are a mess with your family because you know a lot of families don't have believers and you know as parents or even children or siblings but we come to church, we gather with the Saints, we celebrate it at Christmas Eve, we have a Christmas Eve service going on this year and we disclose you know we pray with one another, we we seek the Lord. You don't have to do this in isolation, there is an opportunity to rejoice corporately and that is there is an uplift that comes from that in our souls. It's interesting you know to look at Paul because you know he was in isolation forcibly so and still had joy and yet he's writing to a church and he's writing to a church this corporate command Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice to find even in the midst of of whatever trials they're going through and it wasn't I mean they weren't absent of trials in Philippi but they weren't dealing with what Paul was dealing with. Um he can still command them and challenge them to go after this thing. Now I do want to talk theologically about this for a second because joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit right? Okay, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and Paul talks about that in Galatians. So there is a sense in which it it has to be not mustered up inside of our flesh like, "I'm I'm just going to sit here quietly and I'm going to I'm going to force myself to be joyful". Um I mean that's tough, yeah that's a tough go but there the the fruit of the spirit is such a it it's this thing that operates you know inside of us that the Lord is is maneuvering. And so as we Galatians 5 put to death the Deeds of our flesh, as we put down maybe the the sourness and the the malice and the depression that comes over us and we seek the Lord and we pray to the Lord and we ask God to surface something that's outside of our flesh. I've experienced in my own life that God is is faithful in the way that he he helps me to be joyful when I don't have a reason to be joyful. And to go back to Philippians you know there is this this great statement, one of the ones that uh has been most valuable in my life, you know, "Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving present your requests to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding". I know that's that's peace language, not joy language, but oftentimes I see those two things are as related. You know there is a surfacing of something Supernatural that I don't produce in myself and I love that that passage in Philippians too because it's it's almost counter-intuitive, you know that surpasses understanding, it doesn't make sense. I shouldn't be joyful, why is Paul joyful in this prison as he's in chains? I don't know, it's it's a supernatural Holy Spirit, God orchestrated thing and we've we've got to keep that in mind as we're maybe struggling with this battle between our flesh and our spirit allowing the spirit to produce that inside of us

Levi: Yeah and I'll uh touch on something and let you elaborate it as well and you've you began to touch on it. Um I think that there is an aspect as a Christian and at some level sometimes a struggling Christian or someone who may not fully understand it's some of uh my background there were some teachings that were incorrect of the kind of the "fake it to you make it" aspect of, "well just act happy and you'll end up becoming happy". And the thing and it wasn't working and we get into it. Exactly, exactly. And it what it was causing was it was causing me to feel felt like a failure because I wasn't able, I wasn't happy and I wasn't able to get myself happy but I had this wall up of that I thought they could people couldn't see through. Obviously it's it's much more evident than I think people realize that they people can tell that you're not truly happy, that something else is going on but I've got this wall up and and I'm denying what's really going on and I think that there there's a concern and a a risk in that that it isolates in the wrong way uh The Believer from from the congregation. Any thoughts on that?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah, I think going back to the the distinction between happiness and joy, which is a helpful distinction, that the happiness paradigm is going to ebb and flow

. No no Christian is going to be happy when they're dealing with the death of a child let's say, I mean that that would be cruel to expect that of somebody. Or you know corporately even as a nation, I mean we have ups and downs that cause us to to to despair or lament. We have natural natural disasters, we have people that are dying, we have political, back to politics our first one right, we have political policies that are passed that we all grieve like, "how can this happen, this is a travesty". So that happiness you know paradigm is going to go up and down depending on our circumstances but I will tell you and I've seen this, I'm a pastor, I've done a lot of funerals, you know in Christian circles you can see those individuals that have a deep abiding sense of joy even as they grieve even as they hurt, even as they go through you know the the Valley of the shadow of death. And I think there there is a place for lament in the Christian life. I've been talking about this with with my students at Moody, you know, should we lament like David laments in the Old Testament? Yeah, I mean there's moments where he's crying out to the Lord, there's a sadness, he's pouring out. But one of the things you'll notice if you read through the laments and the Psalms is there's it's usually like three-quarter lament and at the end he transitions, yeah. And it's like, "Lord, I'm I'm suffering, I'm going through this hardship, I'm being persecuted you know for in David's case I literally have these people that are after me trying to kill me and yet I'm going to praise you, I'm going to worship you, you're still my God, I still love you". We see that actually in the book of Habakkuk a similar kind of of pattern where he's lamenting, lamenting, lamenting and at the end he's like, "Lord, I don't have all the answers, I don't know what's going on but I'm going to trust you and you're my God and I love you and even if you take away everything from me I'm still going to serve you". So I I think that's a good pattern for address as well as we we um you know we process our sadness, we process our lack of happiness, we process even the grief that we have through loss and at the same time we acknowledge God's goodness in the midst of it. We we articulate even the deep abiding joy that's inside of us that's a Holy Spirit thing and articulate that before the Lord, that's that gives great health to our our bodies, our lives and to our communities as we we can strike that right balance. The fake happiness stuff yeah that that doesn't work and people see through that so easily for sure

Levi: I the founder of this church before and I think you say it you may say it a little bit differently differently but really helped my perspective in in the eyes for eternity and keeping that the focus in with your day-to-day life, your relationship with the Lord but looking beyond at what we really have to come is and that does you do find peace in that and you do absolutely you find joy in that

. So looking at the the other side of the coin if there were times that I feel that many tried to reach out and tried to help me that their approach may have been obviously somewhere inaccurate until the fake it to make it aspect but they may have said it in a way that they intended well may have said it wrong or uh just for whatever reasons it was not received well. How would you coach or suggest someone who it does have empathy or does someone has been presented in their life that they can help that they see they're struggling, they're going through something, what would you suggest to them, what would they say, what scriptures would you tell them to give?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Well you mentioned empathy and and I think that's good. It's hard to empathize with somebody if you haven't been what they've been through

Levi: What they've been through, yeah

Dr. Tony Caffey: So but uh biblically speaking we do have commands to weep with those who weep, yeah. So we need to be careful as Christians, you know, Romans 8:28 is a great verse but you know when people are going through the valley of the shadow of death to kind of you know um quickly throw out all things work for the good of those who, you know that that can um that'll come, you'll have an opportunity for that but maybe maybe you need to weep with those who weep first in order to walk them to a place where they can receive Romans 8:28 and even theologize that for what they're going through. Um so and there's some temperament wrapped up in this. I mean some people are more naturally positive, some people are more naturally uh even in the way that God created them happy go lucky. There's an elder on our Elder board you probably know who I'm referring to and I told them the other day, "you're just so stinking positive all the time, why don't you you know why are you why are you so positive?" And but it I mean that's infectious. I appreciate that about him. And then there's other folks that um maybe in the way that they're wired have a little more of a uh you know a tendency towards negativity for for good and for bad because they can contemplate in in deep ways. God God uses that as maybe an aspect of their personality to in some instances historically right poetry or write music, some of the people that have been wired that way have been prone to depression um you know the one that comes to some of the hymn writers like William Cowper were and dealt with that at uh high levels even Charles Spurgeon as a preacher dealt with that quite a bit so yeah. So to answer your question in terms of how do we approach as we're sympathizing or trying to help somebody through that, weep with those who weep, you know, grieve with those who grieve, uh be there for them and the depths of their despair and then you can also I think earn the right to to walk them to a place of perspective that will help them. And and be ready because the tables will be turned, you'll be the person at some point in the future who needs help, you need somebody to agree with you and then walk you to a place of uh of acceptance and then also rejoicing. Kind of dial in the scope a little bit here uh talking about James comes to mind the considerable joy in trials uh where there were some struggle and this obviously is not the case across the board this is a little more focal but how can one differentiate between is this a trial I'm going through or is this discipline I'm going through or where where is this coming from do you have any insight for that?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah, the I mean the here's one thing that I had a professor at Moody that would communicated this and this was helpful that he would say that the devil deals in generalities in terms of accusation, the Holy Spirit deals in terms of specifics. So in terms of conviction, you know, when when there's something in our life that the Lord is trying to change and he's disciplining us that comes with specifics. You know this is how I've experienced it in terms of the Holy Spirit showing me you know this aspect of your life needs to change, there's a sin here, conviction, conviction, conviction. Whereas when I when I do sense it's kind of like a like a general, I'm not really sure, I just feel sad, I just feel guilty for some reason, a lot of times that's just accusation from the enemy. And that um what I need to do in those moments is go back to the gospel and and in some ways agree with the devil, you know, "yeah I am a lousy sinner who is Unworthy of Jesus but Jesus in his goodness loved me and saved me and so take that devil". You know if I go Martin Luther on on on Satan in that moment, you know there is um there is a reality to that that I need to embrace and that's the way forward in terms of of acceptance and and identity. So I'm a sinner, yes, saved by grace. What how did Luther say it, Simul Justus et Simul Peccator, where at the same time simultaneously a Justified follower of Jesus and also a sinner. So we Embrace that that reality in terms of our nature, we're Sinners saved by grace, that's who I am, praise the Lord, let's move forward

Levi: Do you have any takeaways or anything did any other thoughts that I haven't brought up on the topic that you might want to share with people at home?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Get to church, rejoice. Absolutely, tell you what there's something uh celebrative every Sunday, there's something invigorating to gather with the body of Christ and sing praises to the Lord. You know, I have I'm 44 years old, I've let I've yet to go to a service and not had my spirit uplifted and joy come over me uh in the midst of a setting like that. So that's that's the best medicine for a heart that's hurting

Levi: And I can personally contest and we've talked about this, it may have been in the politics one, one of the previous ones we've done, was that that was the devil was absolutely trying to isolate me and that is a tactic of his and he did a good job of it for a period of time. But seeing the fruit in getting in a body and being involved and allow and being vulnerable and open with them not just being there and faking being happy but actually being a part of that family and allowing them to mentor and guide through that it makes all the difference in the world

Dr. Tony Caffey: Great

Levi: Thank you for your time, I appreciate it. For those of you at home, if you are interested in other Theology and Actions, you can find them on YouTube. If you're interested in other resources that we have as a church, check out our website at bbvf.org. We live stream every Sunday and Wednesday evening. Until next time, God bless