GLP-0: Paul's Rx For The Good Life

The fountain of youth, the lost city of gold, the genie's lamp. Throughout history, people have searched for something to transform their everyday lives into something spectacular. Not many of us today are traveling the world looking for a literal fountain of youth, but we're still all searching. We sense, deep down, that there's got to be more to life than what we're living. We feel, in our bones, that even though it's elusive, the good life is out there. Centuries ago, an old man with scars on his back, sitting alone in a prison cell, claimed to have finally found it, the secret to the good life. And lucky for us, he wrote it down in a letter to his friends and to us. That letter is the Book of Philippians. Philippians chapter 1, I'm going to read through the first 11 verses. You listen as I read. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. Saints, for Paul, was not a special category of super-Christians. It was everybody who names the name of Jesus. With the overseers and the deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart for you all are partakers with me of grace, grace both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and with all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent.

And so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit and the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and the praise of God. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Philippians is a letter that Paul wrote to a little church that he loved. The first church, in fact, he had planted in Europe, the first ever church in Europe. And the story of that little church's founding is recorded in Acts 16. It's the one where Paul gets unexpectedly redirected into Philippi. And there Paul sees three people come to faith in Christ. The first is Lydia. She's a young up-and-coming female entrepreneur, a businesswoman. The second is a demon-possessed slave girl. And the third is a Roman jailer. I've told you how odd it was that the first worship service in Philippi consisted, the first one in Europe, consisted of a young female entrepreneur, a slave girl, a Roman jailer, and Paul, a former Jewish rabbi. That sounds like the prologue to a joke, but it wasn't. It was the first church service in Europe. It was an odd group, to be sure, but that's just the miracle of the gospel. As I mentioned, Paul loved this little church. They had supported Paul financially when nobody else did. In fact, thanking them for their financial gift was the primary catalyst for Paul writing this letter. The city of Philippi, where this church was located, was a young, happening city. It had grown really, really quickly because it sat right at the crossroads of a couple of major Roman trade routes. And in recent years, they discovered gold in the nearby hills. And so young, ambitious people from all over the Roman empire were moving there to Philippi to find love and to make their fortune.

And so lurking in the back of everybody's mind there in Philippi, especially people in their 20s and 30s and 40s, was this question. What is the good life and can I find it in Philippi? I think that's a pretty big question for people here in the triangle also. We have all kinds of answers that we supply to that question. Some say that the good life is found in success, right? Move here, get a degree from that institution, that great school, and then build the right career, gain influence, make money. Find a job that unlocks your inner potential. Others say, no, the good life consists of freedom, getting to a place where you don't have to work anymore anyway. And you can fill your schedule with creature comforts and leisure activities and golf and beach trips and vacation houses. Others would say, no, the good life consists of finding a job that unlocks your inner potential. They know the good life is authenticity, being true to yourself, unlocking your potential, becoming the best possible version of you. Still others think the good life consists of maximized health, fitness, and supplements, and cold plunges. Others say the good life is all about relationships, by finding the one, romance, and friendship, and family. You know, just out of curiosity, if I asked you to rank these, don't raise your hand or anything, but just there silently in your seat, how would you rank these? Which one of these would you make number one? People today are making literal billions of dollars, offering answers to this question.

The self-improvement industry in America alone is worth about $23 billion right now. And get this, the global wellness market is approaching eight trillion. Millions of people in our country wake up every single morning asking, what do I need to do today to become happier, healthier, calmer, richer, more fulfilled, more authentic, and more at peace? In other words, they're asking, how do I find the good life? And can I find it in the triangle? Studies would suggest that we're not doing a great job answering this question. I say that because antidepressants are now among the most commonly prescribed drugs in America. And listen, I understand, I get it, I really do. There can be times when these drugs are helpful, even necessary, but still, America is the most prosperous nation on earth with more of these things, more books about these things, more podcasts about these things than any nation in human history. And yet some of our most prescribed drugs, the market in the drug market that is growing the fastest is antidepressants. It seems like the more focus we put on pursuing those things, the more books we write, the more those prescriptions go up. So I would say that this is a pretty relevant question

for us right here in the triangle, what is the good life? And how do you go about obtaining it? Now, at first glance, you might think that Paul is not in a very good spot to answer this question. I mean, Paul is writing this letter while literally chained to a guard in a Roman prison, unsure if he's gonna live or die. His career is in shambles. He's got no food, he's got no job, his head's are falling off. How sad is it that people just don't get Dumb and Dumber references anymore? A lot of his core relationships have fallen through. Friends have betrayed him. Some of the churches he's planted have abandoned him. His health and exercise regimen are, shall we say, poor. Roman prisons did not offer a wellness track. And yet the word joy appears no less than 16 times in this letter. This is arguably the most joy-filled book in the Bible. So in this series, we are going to give you Paul's prescription for the good life. And this morning, I'm gonna give you the first three elements of Dr. Paul's prescription. Believe it or not, Paul says the secret to the good life is a GLP, but not the GLP that you're thinking about, not the glucagon-like peptide, whatever you pronounce it. Paul gives us the OG GLP, so we'll call it GLP zero. And his GLP is gratitude, verses three through five, love, verses seven and eight,

and then trust in God's promises, that's verses six and seven. Those are the first three elements of Dr. Paul's prescription for the good life. And in the first 11 verses of Philippians, Dr. Paul gives you a big old injection of them. We're gonna spend the vast majority of our time this morning on this first one, gratitude. Spend most of our time here. And then toward the end, we'll only cover the last two really briefly. Basically, just so I can introduce them to you so we can pick them up again in later messages, okay? Here we go. The first element in Paul's good life compound is gratitude, gratitude. Literally the first words out of Paul's mouth after some obligatory salutations, verse three, I thank God, which is honestly not how I would have opened this letter. In fact, if you will let me borrow a little bit from our friend, Kyle Eidelman, and I will tell you how I would have opened this letter if after I had planted you as a church, I had ended up in the place that Paul is and I've been in his position. Let me tell you how the book of Philippians, how it would have opened. It would have said, Paul, if I were Paul, a prisoner, wrongly accused and unjustly sentenced and honestly over it.

I hope this letter finds you well. I wish I could say the same for myself, but I'm writing to you from a Roman prison cell, which in case you're wondering, is exactly as miserable as it sounds. Zero stars, would not recommend. even ranks it below Spirit Airlines, which is really saying something. I'm currently chained to a guard named Brutus. The man has not bathed since the reign of Augustus and his breath smells like the inside of Lazarus's tomb on day four. My back aches from this stone floor. I haven't had a decent meal in weeks. I think about you sometimes when I'm not thinking about how my life has been completely fallen apart. I gave up everything for this mission and look where it's gotten me. Arrested, beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, and now I sit rotting in a cell while the churches I planted argue about circumcision and whether or not I'm a real apostle. I hear some of you are doing well. That's nice, really. I hope you're enjoying your church potlucks and your small group socials. At any rate, if you could send warm clothes and prayers and maybe some incense to cover the smell of Brutus, that would be awesome. That is how I would have opened the letter of Philippians

if I wrote it. And yet the apostle Paul opens verse three with, I thank God for this and for that in my life. Paul opens this letter overflowing with gratitude. It is arguably the biggest key to his joy. Did you know psychologists have concluded that gratitude is the single most reliable predictor of human wellbeing. A psychologist named Robert Emmons, Dr. Robert Emmons from the University of California. This is not a preacher trying to make a point. This is a secular sociologist who's just studied a ton of people. He published a number of studies a few years ago showing that grateful people have higher energy, lower blood pressure, experience less frustration, sleep better, live with more peace and less stress, have better relationships and stronger immune systems than ungrateful people. Dr. Emmons says the single most reliable predictor of any that we've ever studied of overall wellbeing is gratitude. So the million dollar question is how could Paul feel gratitude in a moment like this? How can you feel gratitude when there's so many things in your life that are going wrong and so many things that you wanna change? And that leads us to our first insight on gratitude from Paul.

I'm gonna give you four of them. Here's the first one, letter A. Gratitude is not in fact a feeling. Gratitude is a practice. Look closely at what Paul says in verse three and I want you to notice the intentionality in his words. I thank God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer, thanking God for you. Paul thanked God every time he thought of the Philippians, not occasionally or only when he was in the mood. In verse four, Paul says he is making his prayer with joy. Making is the language of choice. Paul says, I am choosing to be thankful. You see, a practice is something you do regularly and intentionally, whether you feel like it or not. You say, well, wait a minute, JD. Isn't it inauthentic to act grateful if you don't feel grateful? Isn't that hypocritical? That's a great question. One of the most insightful and yet least appreciated chapters in C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity is a little one that's tucked right in the middle called Let's Pretend. In that chapter, C.S. Lewis says there are times when we must choose to act in certain ways even when we don't feel like it because God uses our obedience as a way of cultivating the right attitudes in us.

For example, if you know you should be friendly towards somebody but you just don't feel friendly toward them, you thinking of somebody right now? C.S. Lewis says, if you choose to act friendly toward that person anyway, you will usually find that after a few minutes, your feelings toward them get friendlier. This is good hypocrisy, Lewis says. Bad hypocrisy is when you act in a way contrary to the truth. Good hypocrisy is when you act in a way in pursuit of the truth. If you choose to act grateful, soon you will feel grateful. In fact, to go back to psychologist Robert Emmons, he says that those who simply start doing intentional things to practice gratefulness begin to immediately reap the positive benefits of less anxiety and better sleep and a stronger immune system. So let me suggest that you find ways in your life to intentionally practice gratitude, practices that will train your heart in a posture of gratitude. One of my daughters, Raya, who just stood up here on the stage with me a moment ago because we were commissioning her, you know, to go off to college. She keeps a list on her phone in Apple Notes of things that she is thankful for. By the way, the way we discovered that

is we were having a family discussion about pet peeves and Raya pulls out her phone and says, oh, I got a whole file full of pet peeves, things that me and other family members have done that just don't make sense. Get on her nerves. And I said, well, Ryan, this is a pretty dark thing to have on your phone. She says, oh, but I have a gratitude list too. And that list was way longer. Some families keep a gratitude jar where you write things down and you drop them in and you read them at dinner. A couple of our pastors here came up with a thing called the Gratitude Cube. The Gratitude Cube used for families to use around the dinner table that makes gratitude fun. I know a couple of people on our team here who use a thing called a five-year journal that has space each day for super short daily entries. And I mean, super, super short. Where you only got space to write down a couple of things that you're thankful for. But one of them told me recently that it helps him stay more present in the good things of his life. Here's a challenge for the next 21 days. Send one text a day to somebody you're thankful for just to say thank you. My point here is not that you gotta do

all of these things all the time. Rather, the point is that gratitude is a practice that you have to intentionally cultivate like Paul was doing. Our family, the Greer family has adopted five family values that we work to cultivate. This is our five-string guitar, so to speak. We try to talk about them all the time. My kids mercilessly make fun of me for these. They're like, oh, dad, is it time for another lesson on the Greer family values? Even now, I know they're sitting out there rolling their eyes. I think deep down though, they really like them, okay? The five Greer family values, faith, family, integrity, gratitude, generosity. Faith, family, integrity, gratitude, generosity. Five things we are trying to cultivate and the one that takes the most work in our home, starting with me, is gratitude. Gratitude is not a feeling, it is a practice. But there's more Paul has to teach us. Paul also shows us, letter B, that gratitude sees the world through the lens of grace. Notice Paul opens this letter, verse two, by saying, grace to you. He closes Philippians with the same sentiment. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. These were not just little throwaway lines for Paul. Grace was the atmosphere in which he started

and finished his life. He lived his whole life in the context of grace and that is another key to his gratitude and his joy. Cornelius Plantinga, who was a Christian philosopher who wrote one of the best little books on gratitude I've ever read, very creatively called Gratitude, okay? Said that the primary enemy of gratitude is entitlement. You see, entitlement looks at every good thing in your life and it says, I deserve this. God owes me, people owe me, you owe me, life owes me. Entitlement looks at the world and it says, I am the source of all the goodness in my life. I've either produced the good in my life through my own strength because I was good enough and strong enough and worked hard enough or I've received it because I deserved it. Gratitude by contrast recognizes that the primary source of goodness is God, not us. And so gratitude looks at the world and says, the beauties of creation are a gift. Warm sunshine on your face, a great cup of coffee in the morning. God didn't have to make it good, right? Food could have basically been like a fiber pill that you just take and that's how you stay alive and instead God created spicy Chick-fil-A sandwiches with pepper jack cheese and extra pickles. Or when I'm sitting at Waffle House and I order hash browns scattered, smothered, covered, chunked up, diced and peppered that is a worship experience for me

because God did not have to make food that good but he did because it's a gift. Salvation is a gift, forgiveness is a gift, daily bread is a gift, friendship is a gift. The difference between these two perspectives, listen, is whether you think the primary source of goodness and sufficiently comes from you or it comes from God. By the way, did you know, Paul lists, listen to this, Paul lists the root sin of humanity. Romans 1, the root sin of humanity is ungratefulness. Paul summarizes fallen humanity like this, Romans 1 21, although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God or gave thanks to him. I've always wondered of all the sins that Paul could have mentioned right there, why would Paul list ungratefulness as the root sin of humanity? I mean, most of us parents, right, we see ingratitude as something impolite to correct in our kids. But Paul says ingratitude is not just rude, it's the root of all the other sins. Now you're like, well, how so? It's because ingratitude, listen, ingratitude is a kind of idolatry. Because you believe the source of goodness is from inside you. You've either produced good things through your own strength or you've earned them instead of recognizing that all goodness comes as an undeserved gift from God. So many times in Paul's letter, he goes to attack.

This mentality, like 1 Corinthians 4, 7, the book we studied last year. Paul says, what do you have that is good that you actually did not receive as a gift? Where do good things come from? They come from God. Or Romans chapter 11, verses 35 and 36, who is given a gift to God that he might be repaid? For from God and through God and to God are all good things. The source of goodness is not us to God, it is God to us. Goodness comes from God. But she said, whoa, whoa, hold on, I am a good person. I've worked hard for the things that I have and I deserve good things. That's what Oprah told me. Listen, this whole Oprah inspired, I'm good and I deserve good things, that mentality sounds so healthy, but it is the gateway to unhappiness. You see, even in those places where you are good, where does that capacity for good come from? Paul answers that right here in Philippians. If you let me jump ahead to chapter two real quick, Paul said, it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. By the way, most Christians understand that it's God, the Holy Spirit, he gives you the strength to obey him after you've decided to obey him. But according to that verse, it's God who gives you the initial desire to obey him too.

That moment in your life where you were like, I think I should please God and seek God, that seems like it makes a lot more sense in the way I'm living. Yeah, God says, that thought was for me. God is the one who puts desires for good in you. The point is even those places where we are good ultimately come from him. No one's ever given a gift to God where they're like, God now owes me from God and through God and to God are all good things. I could go on and on with verses like this. Entitlement says, I earned this. Grace says, what do you have that you did not receive? Gratitude is what grows in you when you finally realize the answer to this question right here is nothing. Verse seven, Paul shows us a third thing about gratitude. Letter C, gratitude, trust God's good providence in everything. Gratitude, trust God's good providence in everything. Look at verse seven. I want you to notice the word both in verse seven. The Philippians, Paul says, are partakers with me, watch this, of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense of the gospel. Paul saw both his ministry, the defense of the gospel, and his imprisonment as both gifts of his grace. You see, most people would see being unjustly imprisoned as evidence that God had forgotten them. Or at the very least,

they would see being unjustly imprisoned as the result of living in a messed up world and God doesn't always deliver us from all the pain. But Paul called his unjust imprisonment grace. Because, and here's the key, Paul trusted God's promise that he was at work in all things using even the bad things in Paul's life for good. For example, verse 12, Paul says that God is using my imprisonment as a part of his good purposes. Look at verse 12 real quick. He says, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. And in that, I rejoice. And then Paul throws in a little humorous aside in verse 13, just to tell you what he's talking about. You see, it's become known throughout the whole imperial guard and all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. In other words, Paul was like, yeah, my imprisonment, it's resulted in the whole Roman army here in the gospel. Bet they weren't factoring that in. Poor Brutus, the soldier I mentioned at the beginning, chained up next to Paul in the prison with literally nowhere to go. As Paul explains the gospel to him for hours, and every few hours, a captain would send a new soldier to sit with Paul, and that was another one Paul got to evangelize. Paul was like, God has literally given me

a captive audience, except I'm the captive and they're the audience. In fact, the end of the book of Philippians, Paul concludes the book by saying, rather cheekily, I might add, all the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household, which is a total flex. Paul's like, yeah, all your new Roman soldier brothers who've gotten saved because they got chained up next to me, they wanted to say hi. By the way, if you study church history, you learn that in those first couple centuries, an unusually high percentage of the new converts to Christianity were Roman soldiers. And it goes back to seeds that Paul planted in that army when he was unjustly imprisoned. Here's my question. Do you trust that God is working that way in your unjust imprisonment? You see, this kind of assurance wasn't just a special privilege for Paul and the apostles. Paul says it is true for all. It's one of Paul's most famous teachings, Romans 8, 28. And we, not I, Paul says, we know that for those who love God, all of us, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, if you were called according to God's purpose, this promise is for you. All things, all things, not some things, all things.

God uses all things in your life, which includes a bunch of bad things for good. Now, let me be clear. Paul is not saying here that God is the one doing the bad things to you, or that God is rejoicing in those bad things. Paul is simply saying that God is using them for good. God is overriding them for good. Somebody else may have meant evil for you in that thing, but God commandeers it and transforms it into good. Listen, there is not one maverick molecule in the entire universe, not one. Every molecule gets superintended by our loving providential God for his good and his glory. I've always loved the story of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who was put into a German concentration camp because she got caught helping Jews try to escape the SS. Corrie ten Boom wrote a great biography called The Hiding Place. And she said that one of the things she hated the most about her time in the camp, she says, I know it sounds silly. One of the things I hated most about my time in the concentration camp were all the fleas in the barracks because the German soldiers made us live in filth. So, but one day her sister Betsy, who was there in the camp with her

and unfortunately did not survive the concentration camp. So one day my sister Betsy said to me, she said, you know, God says that we must thank him in all things, which means that we should thank God even for the fleas. And Corrie said, I was like, no way. There's no possible way I can thank God for the fleas. That's a bridge too far. But then a few days later, she said, they were having a secret worship service in their barracks. Some German soldiers suddenly came right up next to their window. Had those soldiers discovered what they were doing in there, the girls would have been beaten. But Corrie overheard one of the guards say that he wasn't going in those barracks because last time he did, his wife would not let him back in the house because of the fleas that he got when he was in the barracks. And so she said in her autobiography, The Hiding Place. And so I begrudgingly acknowledged that even in those cursed fleas, God was at work. So can you thank God for the fleas in your life? Who is a flea in your life? No, I didn't say point at them. I didn't say say their name out loud, okay? Stop that. But thank God for them. Listen, y'all, I'm not telling you to put on rose colored glasses

and pretend that things that are painful in your life are not really that painful. Gratitude never closes its eyes to the pain in the world. Gratitude just perceives good things that God is doing and the painful things. If I think of gratitude like one of those, oh, there's night vision scopes. How many of you hunters out there have ever used a night vision scope? Raise your hand. Gotta be careful. I think they're illegal. So just maybe raise it like this, but a night vision scope doesn't change what's actually in the field. It just allows you to see things that you couldn't otherwise see in the darkness. Gratitude does not close its eyes to the bad things. Gratitude simply opens your eyes to God's good purposes, even in the bad things. And that leads me to the last observation. Gratitude celebrates the gain, not mourns the gap. When you see your world through the lens of grace, and, that was B, and you trust God's good hand of providence in everything, that was letter C, then you will celebrate the gain in your life rather than mourn the gap. Now, I know for some of you, those terms may not be familiar to you,

but I take them from a really popular leadership psychology book out there called The Gap and the Gain. I mean, if you've read that book, set a curiosity. All right, two of you, okay. The book talks about two different kinds of people and how they see the world. Gap people are always looking forward, always measuring the world in terms of what they don't have yet and what they have not yet achieved. So they see the gap. Gain people, however, look backwards, recognizing how far they've come and how much they've received. The authors, who are not Christians, they're just sociologists studying things, show that people living in the gap are chronically dissatisfied. They're always restless. They're unhappy. They're always comparing themselves to other people. They're jealous. While people who live in the gain are consistently grateful. Paul was a gain person, right? All people who understand God's grace are gain people because Paul saw everything in his life, even his imprisonment, through the lens of undeserved grace. Old Testament Jews had a very interesting way

of teaching themselves to see the world this way. In fact, think of this as their way of practicing gain before the book was written, showing that there were gain people, not gap people, right? Jewish celebration of Passover always began with something called the Seder, a ritual feast with a lot of ritual prayers. One of those prayers was called the Dayenu, which literally means in Hebrew, it would have been enough. In the liturgy, the leader, the dad, would stand up and he would read through 15 acts of God's mighty acts of rescue in the Old Testament. And after each one, the family would say in unison, Dayenu, it would have been enough. In fact, I want you to do it with me, you want to? We won't do all 15, but I'll give you the kind of things that the dad would have said. And when I point to you, your part will be to say, Dayenu, it would have been enough. You want to practice? Okay, Dayenu, it would have been enough. All right, it would go like this. The dad would stand up and say, if God had only rescued us from the Egyptians and not also given us the Egyptians' wealth, if God had given us their wealth and had not split the Red Sea for us, if he had split the Red Sea for us and not taken us through it on dry land, if he had brought us before Mount Sinai

and had not given us the Torah, Dayenu, it would have been enough. If he had given us the Torah and had not brought us into the land of Israel that overflows with milk and honey, it would have been enough, but God has just kept doing more and more and more for us. He could have simply died to forgive our sins and saved us from the wrath of God, and Dayenu, it would have been enough. But he also resurrected from the dead so he could one day restore all things and then wipe away every tear from our eyes and make all the sad things come untrue. Dayenu, it would have been enough. But then he also put his Holy Spirit in us to abide with us forever and to empower us for ministry. Dayenu, that would have been enough. But then he poured out grace in our families, and Dayenu, that would have been enough. And then he gave us blessings like this great church where we get to celebrate his goodness every single week. And Dayenu, it would have been enough. And then he answered our prayers. For some of us, he worked in the lives of our kids. For some of us, he healed our bodies or he provided a job for us or a friend for us when we asked him. And Dayenu, it would have been enough,

but he just keeps pouring out more and more. And more. And more. And more. And more. And more. And more. Gratitude is what wells up in your heart when you realize you deserve none of this and you acknowledge all of it as gifts of God's grace. Gratitude celebrates the gain, not mourns the gap. So ask God to open your eyes to his grace in your life. And trust that even when it doesn't seem like he's working all things for good, that he is. And when you don't feel this way, make gratitude a practice in your life to teach your heart to feel this way because a spirit of gratitude enables you to rejoice even when life stinks and you're chained up in a Roman prison next to a smelly guy named Brutus. Gratitude is Paul's first secret to the good life. I told you that was the main point of the message, but let me briefly introduce to you the other two things Paul lists out as the good life because you're gonna see them surface again and again throughout this book. We'll be much, much shorter on these. I'll mention them just briefly, give you a little bit of commentary on them and then we'll be done, okay?

Here's the second element, it's love. Part of Paul's happiness flows from the fact that he is genuinely in love with this church. I mean, I don't know how you could read verses seven and eight and not see that, right? Verse seven, I hold you in my heart. Watch this, for God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. Y'all, that's a pretty big boast right there. I'm close to loving you as much as Jesus does. And just so you think I'm not exaggerating, Paul says, God is my witness, which means I'm not exaggerating. God will tell you this is true in my heart. I'm not exaggerating. Sitting here in prison, he says, my heart is filled with delight in thinking about you. Genuine love for others always puts a joy in your heart that nothing else can. I've sometimes joked with you that after we had our fourth kid, Veronica and I concluded that we would never be happy again. Because as a parent, you parents know this, you can never be happier than your least happy kid. And with four kids, just the odds say that at any given point, one of our kids is not gonna be doing well, which means that our happiness is always struggling. And there is some truth in that, but the deeper truth, listen,

is that the greatest joys in life come through love, even when love brings pain and hurt into your life. C.S. Lewis said, there's a way of living where you shut off your heart from love and you focus only on yourself, which feels safe, because now you can't be hurt or disappointed, but that produces the most unhappiness in your life. unhappy, miserable people on earth, even when they overflow with success and health and freedom. And that is because God created us in his image and we are most like him, not when we are rich, but when we love. When you love somebody, even when it's painful, even when it causes you great suffering and sacrifice, you taste and you touch the very heart of God. Hebrews 12 too says that joy was most manifested in Jesus when he went to the cross. There was nothing joyful about that cross. The cross is painful. Jesus did not love going to the cross, but Hebrew says that joy carried him through it because what drove him to the cross was love and love by its very nature feels joy, even when it's embracing a cross. When you love, you participate in that joy. First John four says that when we love, we literally participate in the nature of God or to use the words from the final song in Victor Hugo's Les Mis, to love another person is to see the face of God.

I'm saying whether you're a Christian or not, when you begin to act in ways where you love somebody, the reason it feels divine is because it is divine. You are acting in accordance with the way God made you. It's a testimony that God gives you of saying, this is what I'm like. In fact, I saw an atheist recently who said that his path to God started when he recognized that he had a greater love in his heart for his kids than survival of the fittest could account for. The amount of love in your heart is directly equal to the happiness in your heart. It's like my Sunday school teacher taught me, fourth grade, joy is spelled, Jesus, others, you. Keep the affections of your heart in that order and you will have joy. Get any of those letters out of order and your joy quotient goes down. Now you're like, but JD, wait a minute. This is the problem. I just don't have that much love for Jesus or other people. I mean, I really would like to, but I mainly love me. Now I wanna love Jesus, I wanna love others, but I'm into me. In conversation, sometimes I wanna say, look, I'm tired of talking about me so much. Why don't you talk about me for a while, okay? I love me some me, okay? Me and Terrell Owens, we both love me some me.

That's the kind of honesty that will get you somewhere in the Christian life, by the way. Remember what Paul says in Philippians 2.13? It is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. That means love in your heart has to come from God. Love for God comes from God, so ask him for it. Instead of sitting here beating yourself up because you don't have it and thinking, I stink as a human being, you do stink as a human being, which is why Jesus had to die for you. You were so bad that it took the death of the son of God to save you, but you were so loved that he gladly did it for you. The gospel is that God will give these things to you as free gifts of his grace on Jesus' behalf if you will just ask him for them in faith. So finally, it is time for somebody to admit, I'm not a person with love in his heart, God save me. That's a prayer God loves to answer, I'm telling you. So ask him to put love in your heart because love is the absolutely essential second element of the good life. Your happiness quotient is directly proportionate to the love quotient of your heart. And that brings us to our final element, promises. Now this last element, I'm just gonna touch on because I've already covered it a good bit. But Paul's joy came from his confidence that God had promised good to him

and God would keep his promises. He says, verse six, I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in me and in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. I'm sure that what God started, he's gonna finish. Listen, if something good is happening in you, that's from God. It may feel overwhelming. It may feel impossible for you to think about how you're ever gonna be what God wants you to be in life. But I'm telling you, if God started it, he's gonna complete it because God doesn't write checks and he doesn't have funds in the accounts to cash. Which means if he started a work in you, that's him writing the check. He's not gonna get halfway in and go like, oh my, oh my me, oh my me. I had no idea. I had no idea how screwed up this guy actually was. I forgot how bad his friends were, how deep those habits went. And OMG, his family of origin. How did I overlook his family of origin? I'm not sure this is gonna be possible. God has never said that ever. I was gonna evangelize the world, but Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Il, where did that come from? Now I'm not gonna be able to do, no, that's never happened with God.

Not one time in all of history, if God started a good work in you, he intends to complete it and he will complete it. And that means everything in your life, listen, that looks like a setback, is actually in advance if you'll trust him. Even your time in prison will lead to the evangelization of the whole Roman guard. Do you believe that God is working that way in your life? Again, church, that promise that God is working in all things for good, meaning he's using all things good, bad, and indifferent to form Christ in you. and show off Christ through you, that's not just a special privilege for Paul or for super Christians. Paul says it's true for all believers. Some of you may have seen the story recently of Ben Sass, former Senator of Nebraska. He's a very, very committed believer, has been for years. Father of four. Recently he was diagnosed this past year with stage four pancreatic cancer that had already spread to his liver, his lungs, his vascular system. Doctors initially gave him only a couple months to live, but through what he calls providence prayer and a miracle drug, Senator Sass has been able to stay alive for a few more months than they were expecting.

And that, he says, has allowed him an opportunity to be interviewed by outlets like 60 Minutes and the New York Times and People Magazine, outlets that don't typically run pro-Jesus pieces. And y'all, it's been incredible. In fact, if you haven't looked at some of these, you definitely should. 60 Minutes, if you're gonna watch one interview, watch the 60 Minutes interview. He said to literally tens of millions of people in this interview, I hate cancer, but I'm also deeply grateful for it because it exposed the illusion to me and my family that I was in control. He said, my diagnosis forced me to tell the truth about my life, that I am not the center of the universe. It also allowed me a chance, he said, to testify to my family that we got problems bigger than anything the world can fix. We got a disease that no medicine can treat. We got a brokenness that only Jesus can atone for and only the resurrection can fix. He was asked in that interview about the prospects of leaving his wife and kids behind. He said, yeah, honestly, the thought of not walking my daughter down the aisle, the thought of never getting to meet my grandchildren, the thought of not being there for my teenage son and some of his crucial moments, he says, those are deeply grieving to me.

He said, but I trust God with what I can't control and I know that God will take care of them. And he says, I rejoice that my cancer has given me the chance to testify the truth to them, that Jesus has given me something better than the cure for cancer. He said, and I quote, when God smashes idols in our lives, ultimately it turns out to be a blessing. My cancer has shown us that even family cannot be ultimate. This cancer has clarified my dependence on Christ. Y'all, that is a modern day version of Philippians 1. Paul says, you see prison, I see grace. You see chains, I see God advancing the gospel. Ben says, yeah, you see cancer, I see testimony. You see disappointment, I see God creating a platform for me to tell people that in Jesus, I now possess something better than anything else this world can give and something even cancer can't take away from me. What's your story? Where do you need to trust God's promises and just embrace gratitude? Y'all, that's it. That's Paul's GLP zero, gratitude, love, and promises. Paul's first three secrets to the good life. Which of those three do you feel like you're the weakest in? What if you just ask God to cultivate all three in you throughout this series? In fact, I'm gonna leave these up here for just a moment. Worship teams, they're gonna delay just a little bit.

They'll be up here in a minute or two. They're gonna lead us in a song, the goodness of God, but I just want you to spend some time with the Holy Spirit and ask him for these things if you don't have them. It's okay, just admit, I don't have them, I need them. By the way, if you don't have a relationship with Jesus, that's where these start. If you've never received Jesus as your Savior, received his forgiveness of sins and asked him to bring the transformation into your heart, you can do that right now. I'm gonna leave you for just a moment. Nobody will be up here, I just want you to, at our campuses here, I just want you to sit with the Holy Spirit, let him minister to your heart and ask him for whichever of these three you feel like you're the weakest in.