Joy in the Journey - Jeremy Thom

While it may not seem very Christmas-y, stay with me. I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the life of Joseph (Genesis 37-50) this Fall. This is mainly because Joseph has been our focus at Men’s Community, but it has also been fun to revisit this amazing story of trust and God’s providence with its many implications for our lives today.

This week we spent time discussing a moment in Joseph’s life in which he finally had clarification of God’s plan. This is interesting because throughout Joseph’s life, God was revealing parts of His plan, and Joseph understood that God was at work. But I don’t think it was until this particular moment (Genesis 45:1ff) that he realized the significance of this plan for himself and his family and maybe even his people. In this revelation, he was brought to a place of “weeping for joy” (Gen. 45:14; NLT). He wept for his family, he wept for the circumstances, and I think he wept because he saw confirmation of God’s plan in his life.

Fast forward to Mary, the mother of Jesus. This past Sunday we talked about the journey she went on to discover joy (Luke 1:26-56). She made decisions to trust the Lord, she surrendered to the Lord in humility, and she traveled to get confirmation that the Lord’s plan was actually happening. Mary found herself in a place of joy, not weeping (as far as we know), but responding through the writing of a song. A song of rejoicing in God’s plan, a song that she couldn’t contain within her. A song that she would have only written at the end of this particular journey.

Whether it’s Joseph in the Old Testament, Mary in the New Testament, or any number of Bible characters, we see that joy is coming for those who follow and seek Jesus. There are reminders all over Scripture, and that’s what the Advent season is supposed to remind us about: trusting that God is working out his plan in our lives and that good news of great joy is on the way.

This past week I was in eastern Oregon with a couple of my sons. One morning we got up early. It was cold, the hiking we were doing was tough, and just as the sun was rising over the horizon, my youngest son was asking about… lunch. His questions about lunch continued for a while, descriptions of his potential lunch kept changing, and as a parent, I finally had to “gently ask” him to stop talking about lunch. BUT I didn’t want him to forget about lunch. I encouraged him to keep thinking about lunch; it was coming soon. The cold and hunger he was feeling would only last for a short time, and I wanted him to be in the moment and see what was around him while also keeping his sights on the good thing that was to come, the ‘lunch’ that would help him push through these hard hours.

Life is often like this. It can feel cold and dark, like there is no end to the hardships we all experience. We can quickly begin to focus on what we think the outcome should be. We tell God what we think we should be experiencing. Then we gripe about it when it doesn’t happen the way we want it, or when we want it. But God is trying to use hard days, impossible days, in our lives to remind us that he is at work, and that the impossible is possible, that joy will be known.

This Advent Season, and in whatever season of life you find yourself in, remember that joy is coming and has, in fact, already come through Jesus. Lean into Jesus, pursue him, and trust that God has a plan for you to experience a depth of joy that can only come through the journey. And while I do believe that God will give you glimpses of his joy in moments as simple as lunch, I also have a hunch that the joy he will reveal to you will be much greater than anything you expected because, with our God, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37).

 

Jeremy Thom 
Campus Pastor | Hope City Church