Happy From The Inside Out | Jud Wilhite

Wow what an amazing time of worship. It truly is a blessing to me when we get this chance to worship each and every weekend. Yes guys I want to give a big shout out to all the men and women watching with our partnership with God Behind Bars. Can we please clap it up for them? We love you guys and we are just so so thankful for you. Well if you want to follow along with the teaching notes you can find all of that in the Central Church app or you can open up your phone and you can find the back of the seat the QR code. Tap that and you will can find all the notes along right there. But guys let's give it up big for Pastor Judd as we continue in our series, Surprised by Happiness. All right all right good to see you guys today. I want to not only welcome you I want to welcome all of our Central family locations that are joining us. Central Kingman and Central Aliante, Central Sunrise Mountain and Summerland. Let's put our hands together for these guys. Good to have you guys with us today. All right who like me really enjoys snacks? Who are my snacks people? All right I'm a snacks person. Now we could like we could like categorize snacks in a few different categories right? You got your cravings for like salty snacks you know chips, popcorn, nachos. Who are my salty snacks people? That's kind of me anytime there's a salty snack I'm in for that. Then we got sweet tooths right? Who are my sweet tooths? Candy, cookies, chocolate. You're all about it. Yes aren't you glad you came to church? Some of you are already hungry. Then there's a whole other category that I haven't personally experienced but I have witnessed and that would be like pregnancy cravings for snacks. And that's just a whole other weird thing all on its own. I remember one night Lori looked at me and she's like I need green bean casserole. And it was like super late and I'm like what? She's like no right now I need green bean casserole. And I learned real quick and husbands you're gonna thank me someday. I learned real quick don't question the craving try to make the craving happen. You know and I'm like all right. Anyway we didn't have all the ingredients it was too late to get them and so she actually just ate green beans. I'm like whatever whatever floats your boat. She was all about it. I read about Elvis he had a craving for this sandwich

it was called the Fool's Gold Loaf. And they made this in Denver Colorado at this one particular shop. It was a full loaf of sourdough bread with a can of peanut butter, a can of grape jelly, and a pound of bacon. 8,000 calories. And he would send his private plane to fly from Graceland Tennessee to Denver Colorado to get this sandwich. One time they got 22 of them and brought them back. That'll pop a rhinestone off your jacket's what I'm saying. You know like wow. That's a craving and and whether you've had whether you're a salty person or a chocolate person or whether you're pregnant right now or whether you've ever had a Fool's Gold Loaf. We all know what it is to crave things in our lives. We all know what it is to have those cravings. We all crave like you know purpose and and meaning and love and and joy and you know we we pleasure we have these cravings the Bible might call it the desires of our heart. And the question is like what do we do with these cravings? Because so much of the pain and heartache that happens in our world happens when we pursue these cravings without restraint. And then we find ourselves potentially in self-destructive behavior, in sinful behavior, in self-sabotaging kinds of behavior. And today I want to talk about how Jesus is going to challenge us not to deny that these things exist but to channel them in our lives and to channel them to God and to put him first. In putting him first that's where you can find lasting happiness, lasting joy, a lasting sense of peace. And he's going to challenge us in this as we look at the Sermon on the Mount. So we've been in this teaching series called Surprised by Happiness. We started this last week and and we said look we're kicking off in Matthew chapter 5 where Jesus gives his longest recorded sermon. Matthew chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7. We're gonna actually follow this section by section all the way through the summer in a few different like teaching chunks. But right now we're looking at the Beatitudes, the beginning of this message. Now the Beatitudes that's just a Latin word for bliss. And the idea with the Beatitudes is Jesus nine different times starts his message by saying blessed or blessed are. And that word blessed could literally be translated happy or happy are. And he's basically starting his

message with the greatest felt need like people have in their lives which is to have a sense of happiness and peace and joy grounding their lives. Jesus starts right there with people. Like if you want this in your life, but then he begins to break it down. Last week we looked at three of the Beatitudes. We talked about the poor in spirit, those who mourn, and those who are humble. And we noted that this is a very counterintuitive kind of approach to how we might experience happiness. But the promise of the Beatitudes is what God does in response to our heart. In other words, we come to God and recognize our spiritual poverty, and God provides for us. We come to God and mourn our sin and our past and our failures, and God himself comforts us. We come to God and we acknowledge that he's the king and we're the servant. We humble ourselves and he raises us up. And so God is the one, we said, who provides happiness. I said last week, happiness, I don't think it's so much about found and just seeking it. I think it's found in seeking God. It's a byproduct of seeking God in your life. And so Jesus is gonna go on in Matthew chapter five, and he's gonna give us four more Beatitudes, if you will, and four more sort of characteristics.

And I think part of what we're gonna see in these Beatitudes is that happiness is really an inside job. It's not something you can just purchase. It's not something that comes from the outside in. It comes from the inside out as you dedicate your heart and your focus to God. So let's check it out. We'll read through these, then we'll take them one by one. But Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse six. Help me out on the red word if you'll say that out loud here with me. But Jesus says, God blesses, or you could say happy are, those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be what? Satisfied. Satisfied. God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy. God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God. God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God. And so he starts to break it down and give us this powerful insight into how we can be surprised by happiness. The first beatitude, the first principle is simply this. If you're gonna be surprised by happiness, you gotta feed your spiritual hunger.

You gotta feed your spiritual hunger. You know, when I think about like hunger, physical hunger, one of the first things that comes to my mind is like middle school boys. I mean, I don't know about you, but like middle school boys are the hungriest creatures I've ever encountered in my life. Our son about ate us through house and home, man. He was just hungry all the time. And one of my favorite stories was when he came in, I think it was about 11 or 12, he came in and he said, hey, dad, would you make some tortellini for me? He was in this whole phase where he just loved tortellini. He wanted it all the time. And I've made tortellini for him a couple nights before, and I didn't wanna do the pots and the pans and the dishes and all that. And I'm like, no, man, not making tortellini for you. Like, just go, you know, make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You're good, right? Just take care of yourself tonight. I don't know where Lori was. Lori usually took care of all this, but anyway, there I was. And so he's like, no, please, dad, come on, tortellini. I'm like, I'm not making you tortellini. It's not gonna happen. Go away, remove your body.

Right? Come on, every parent knows what I'm talking about. Right? And so then, you know, like, you know, eventually, you know, he calls me on my phone and he's in the other room, but I answer the phone. I'm like, hello. He goes, tortellini, tortellini. I'm like, bro, no, I'm not doing the tortellini. Go get something else. Then he comes crawling into the room, tortellini, tortellini. And I'm just like, all right, I'll make you tortellini if you'll just be quiet, right? He just wore me down. Anybody been there? Like, just wore me down to the point that I'm like, whatever will make this stop and go away, I will do it. So I made him tortellini. But here's the deal. Like, hunger can make you do a lot of things. It can make you do some powerful things when you're hungry. And it can also make you hangry. Anybody ever get like hangry, get like, you're hungry and then you start to get angry and irritable? Like, I don't understand. My wife, Lori, sometimes at night, no lie, she'll be standing there and she'll go, oh my goodness, I forgot to eat. Is anybody like this? Are any of you like this?

That's just amazing to me. Because the moment I opened my eyes, my first thought is food. I want it. And if I could, I would just eat all day, every day, right? But she's just like, oh, I forgot to eat. I'll go ahead and make something. I'm like, I so don't. I would be so thin and in shape if I lived, if I was wired that way. But anyway, what's my point? My point is when I don't eat, I get angry. I get upset, I get jittery, I get short. I kind of lose perspective. And I think Jesus is gonna challenge us to realize, and I've seen this in my own life, the same is true in our lives spiritually. So if you get hangry, you've learned to eat. and to have snacks along the way. You've learned to take breaks and eat. You've kind of paced yourself throughout the day. But have you ever thought about doing this spiritually? Because I think the challenge for us is we've gotta keep sort of centering ourselves with God's word, with scripture, with prayer, with pausing, with just taking in nature, with just remembering that we're in God's world to help ground us and it can help stave off some of those things that creep into our lives. And Jesus kind of gets at this.

Matthew chapter five, verse six. Let's look at it in the New International Version translation. This is what he says. He says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be what? They will be filled. They hunger and thirst for righteousness. The New Living Translation said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. It can be a tricky word to translate, but the idea is they're hungering to be right. First of all, to be right with God, to be right with others, for the world to be put right. And I think part of what Jesus is getting at here is if we have a spiritual appetite for God, if we hunger for him, if we thirst for him and his righteousness and his goodness, then we will be filled. That's part of the promise. God himself is the one who fills us here, right? He's the one who fills us from the inside out. Psalm 34, eight says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste and see he's good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him. And it's true, the more you seek God, the more you're gonna experience his goodness, the more you're gonna lean into him, the more you're gonna feel his presence, the more you have confidence knowing

that no matter what you're facing, God is your refuge and he will see you through it. He can literally fill you with the righteousness of Christ. He can fill you with his love. He can fill you with his spirit. He can fill you with his peace, with his purpose, with his joy. He can fill you with laughter. He can fill you with contentment. He can fill you with all the things that money can't buy. He can give you strength. He can give you a sense of purpose and meaning and devotion in your life. He can ground you even when things are crazy and out of control. If you put him first and seek him, if you have spiritual hunger and go after him, he can fill that for you in your life. So happiness is an inside job. It starts as we seek God in our lives and we feed our spiritual appetite. And I tell you, for me, that means every morning, almost without fail, I like to start my day just with some quiet time before God, just remembering who he is. Now don't worry if you're a night person, you can do this at night. You don't have to do it in the morning, but it's powerful. You can open up the Bible app. It's free.

You could just download it. You hear me talk about it a lot. You open it up. There's a verse of the day you could check out. You can, I try to take a psalm almost every day unless it's a really long psalm and then I'll break it up. But the psalms are like the prayer and songbook of ancient Israel. And so every day I go to a different psalm. I just work my way through the psalms and I sort of pray through the psalm and worship and take time to honor God and center myself. And I've been doing that for many, many years. But find something that works for you to feed your spiritual appetite because that will help you be filled and you may be surprised by happiness that God can bring into your life. Now here's another principle and that is show mercy. Show mercy. In other words, there is a way that happy people, blessed people interact with other people. And Jesus is gonna challenge us with this. And it doesn't have to be big acts of mercy. Even small acts can go a long way. I saw this on social media. I thought it was powerful. Look at this. Somebody wrote, if you were ever a lunch lady

in a small public elementary school in East Orange, New Jersey in the early 80s, and you snuck a small, shy girl with blue eyes and bangs, a peanut butter sandwich on the day she had no lunch money, know that I have loved you my entire life and hope that you've been happy and healthy. It can be the smallest acts and they can make a huge difference. And so Jesus says this in Matthew chapter five, verse seven, the next beatitude. God blesses those who are merciful for they will be what? Shown mercy. When you're merciful, you will be shown mercy. And so there's a promise kind of built into this statement. Those who show mercy are shown mercy. The more you give, the more you tend to get back. Mercy from God, mercy from others, mercy from your own critical spirit, mercy from all kinds of different situations and things in your heart and life. Showing mercy positions you to be surprised by happiness. merciful. See, when you, when you forgive an offense rather than attack a person right back, mercy is coming back to you, right? When you show kindness to others, even when they don't owe you, mercy is coming back to you. Look, when you listen to somebody who doesn't have a lot of people to talk to, right? Even if you don't have a lot in common with them, mercy is coming back to you. When you serve around the church, when you greet people or care for children or invest in students or help out with events, mercy is coming back to you. When you link up and serve with the ministry like God Behind Bars or 24 Hour Church, mercy is coming back to you. When you give regularly and sacrificially to advance the work of God through your church, mercy is coming back

to you. When you hold your tongue and your temper on the way to church, because come on, some of the biggest blowouts happen on the way to church. You know what I'm talking about, right? Mercy is coming back to you. It's a show mercy. The actual Greek term for mercy could be to act with compassion. And the implication is we don't just look around at people and say, well, you deserve to be in that situation or, or whatever. Instead, we look at people and we think, how can I help? How can I show mercy? How can I show kindness in this situation? People who do that, Jesus is saying, are going to live a blessed life. They're going to be surprised by happiness. It's going to creep in from all different angles as they show mercy to others. Here's a third thought, and that is, if you want to be surprised by happiness, guard your heart. Guard your heart. Now, I'm about to gross some of you out. Forgive me. I'm going to ask for forgiveness in advance. I don't know if you've ever, like, looked up the Food and Drug Administration purity standards for food, but it's, um, it's eye-opening. I'll say that. Here's a few examples. For instance, we've got apple butter here. We'll bring it up. Apple butter. Up to 11% mold count, apple butter is good to go. You can sell it. No problem. Let's keep going. Up to three rodent hairs per 100 grams. Good to go. No problem. You can sell it. Keep going. Up to four insects per 100 grams. What? Four insects? I mean, come on, man. Up to four. Now, if you have five, we pull it, but if you have four, we put it right there, right on that English muffin. No problem. Coffee. Who are my coffee people? Up to 10% insect infested. It's still good to go. Not, you know, up to 10%. Still good to go. Let's go to the next one. Let's go back one, because this one will go. Up to 10 grams of animal waste per pound. Coffee's still good to go. Kind of messes with the morning, the morning brew, doesn't it? All right, let's go. Mushrooms. One more. Up to 19 maggots per 100 grams. Good to go. No problem. All right, hot dogs. No, I'm just kidding. We're not doing hot dogs. Come on, man. We don't even want to know. Somebody's like, I don't want to know that. Give me my cappuccino. I'm good. I say all this and gross you out just because, hey, purity standards do matter. It is important, and Jesus is going to tell us when it comes to, like, happiness and joy and the blessed life, it is the pure in heart that will see God. Look at what he says. Let's look at it. Matthew chapter 5, verse 8. Help me out on these last two words when we get there. He says, God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will what? They will see God. Now, it doesn't say God blesses those whose hearts are perfect, because none of our hearts are perfect, right? Like, we all make mistakes. We all have challenges. We all have issues. But he does say God blesses those whose

hearts are pure. And I think there's two ways we can receive this. On the one hand, when we place our faith and trust in Jesus as Christians, we believe that the righteousness, the goodness of Jesus gets transferred to our account, that it's not up to us to earn our salvation, that Jesus does it for us, and we receive it freely as a gift, that it's God's work, right? It's an amazing, amazing work. It's God's work. And on the other hand, we are responsible as we grow in our faith to check our heart. Our heart gets to what drives us, what motivates us. Who do I turn to when I have a problem? What's underlying the things that I'm doing and the decisions that I'm making? Am I keeping my heart pure? Guard your heart, because the pure in heart, Jesus says, will see God. In fact, look at what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 6, a little later, verse 33. He says, sink the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you what? Everything you need. How many of you wouldn't mind having everything you need? I'm down for that. I wouldn't mind having everything. everything you need. Now I kind of feel like in life you have a couple choices. One choice is you can try to get everything by chasing everything and you'll be running around like a chicken with your head cut off your whole life, right? Or you can stop and seek God and put him first for everything and he provides everything you need as you follow him in your life. So purity of heart doesn't mean I'm perfect. It doesn't mean I have everything worked out. It means I'm seeking God above all else. I'm trying to honor him. Yeah, I got some rodent hairs going on. You know what I mean? Yeah, there might be some maggots creeping in. I'm just saying, right? There might be some issues, right?

But I love God and I'm seeking him and the goodness of Christ is transferred to my account and I'm trusting God for my salvation and my life. And it also points to this promise that one day you will see him. Says you will see God. One day you'll see him fully. In fact, when you stop and think about it, if you really kind of pull away all of the images of heaven, it really comes down to seeing God and being in his presence, right? Heaven is about his power, his love, his beauty, his goodness. And one day we're gonna be filled with great joy because we're gonna see him as he truly is. In the meantime, we can see him move and work in our lives. We can see him make a way when there is no way. We can see him provide. We can see him show up and work and move. We can see him protect and guide. We can see him break down barriers and break down strongholds. We get to see him move and one day we will get to see him fully. So guard your heart if you wanna be surprised by happiness. Try to keep your heart pure. Try to keep it centered on God and who he is. And then the fourth idea,

the next beatitude Jesus is gonna give us is this, work for peace. Work for peace. Look at what Jesus says, Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse nine. He says, God blesses those who work for peace for they will be called the what? The children of God. Work for, and it's interesting that when he talks about peace, he says it's work. You see that? They work for peace. Peace is work. Listen, it's not work to just get offended. Come on, somebody. It's not work to just get angry. It's not work to just sort of shut down and get bitter and turn your back on somebody, but it's work to forgive. It's work to hold your tongue. It's work to give somebody space to grow and mature. That's work, right? That's a challenge. And Jesus says, if you'll brace that challenge, if you'll work for peace in your life, man, you will be blessed because of that. And theologians have noted that Jesus kind of secured three kinds of peace for us. First of all, Jesus secured for us peace with God, right? When he died on the cross for our sins,

he made peace with God for our past failures and mistakes, and that is secured for us. He also secured for us peace with ourselves and ultimately peace with others. And those last two involve our work, our effort, right? The first one, peace with God, well, you know, that's based on God's work alone. And it's what gives us the power and the strength to make peace with others and with ourselves. And when we do, we're blessed. We are literally called children of God. What does it mean to be a child of God? It means God's face is turned towards you. It means his favor falls on your life. It means his plans include you. It means his name is upon you. His love and affection are flowing in your direction. It means his mighty right hand is lifted high to protect you. It means that when somebody messes with you, come on, they're messing with their heavenly father. And your father is powerful, and your father's in control, and your father owns the cattle on a thousand hills and commands the angel armies. Listen, your father will never abandon you. He will never fail you. And he literally brings all things together for the good of those who are called according to his purpose. Your father is preparing a place for you in heaven

that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind can conceive. And that's the motivating power for you to make peace with others. It's the motivating power for you to let go of some things, to release some things, and to say, I'm gonna work for peace. God's got my back. I'm gonna let go of some of these things I'm carrying around. Can I tell you that I think some of you right now today, you would have so much more happiness, so much more joy, so much more meaning and laughter in your life if you would just forgive that person. Come on. If you would just let it go. I know they don't deserve it. I know, I understand that you don't feel like you can. Look, you've become so comfortable in your hurt and in your bitterness, some of you, that you can't imagine a life without that rock. But I am telling you, if you can lay it down, not for their sake, for your sake, if you can lay it down for Jesus' sake, if you can lay it down because of what He did, if you can surrender them to God and turn them over to God, you're not saying nothing happened. You're not saying they didn't hurt you. You're not saying they didn't violate things in your life. You're not saying that they made the right decisions in their life. You're not even saying that they've changed anything. You're laying down your right to get even. You're laying down your perceived right to lash back. And you're just saying, God, I entrust them to you. Listen, it doesn't mean the legal system can't still play out. It doesn't mean laws that were broken, there are certain consequences for that.

But it means you're releasing them. You're no longer carrying the weight and the burden of that in your life. And the benefit is, you're going to start smiling a lot more. The benefit is, happiness will start surprising you in your life. The benefit is, man, you don't have to carry that weight around all the time. You can let it go and be free if you're willing to work for peace in your life. Jesus says, listen, if we will show mercy, and if we will guard our heart and have a pure heart, and if we'll engage our spiritual appetite and hunger and thirst after God, and if we'll follow Him in faith, if we'll work for peace, what's going to happen? You're going to be surprised by happiness. You're going to find yourself living in the blessed life. It's an inside job that God does as we seek Him and as we follow Him. And it's available to all of us. So I don't know if you saw a couple weeks ago that the actor and martial arts expert, Chuck Norris, passed away. And there were a lot of memes out there about Chuck Norris, you know, because there's always been a lot of memes floating around, funny stuff about Chuck Norris. But one thing that I thought was interesting is a while back he was interviewed about some of these memes. And one of the memes they brought up was this meme that said, Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he never cries. And Norris responded in this interview, and he says, you know, there was a man whose tears could cure cancer or any other disease, including the real cause of all diseases. He said, sin. His name was Jesus. And he said this, if your soul needs healing, the prescription you need is not Chuck Norris's tears. It's Jesus' blood. I know that Chuck Norris was a committed follower of Jesus for many years because I'm good friends with his pastor. And for years he would tell me stories of his faith and things that he did behind the scenes that nobody necessarily knew about. But I'm sure he wasn't perfect. The thing is, he followed a perfect savior.

None of us are perfect. But if we'll seek God and we'll put him first, he could do such a powerful work in our lives. And I think if Chuck Norris was here today, he would say this. He would say, real men and real women, powerful men and powerful women live for Christ and they surrender to him. Make your peace with him. Make your peace with him. And that will empower you to make peace with others. And you're going to find yourself surprised by happiness. I mean, we all want to be happy. Everybody wants to get their needs and their cravings met. But happiness, it's an inside job. So you feed your spiritual appetite. You taste and see that the Lord is good. You show mercy to others and that mercy comes back to you in your life. You work on your own heart and seek God first and you find that you have everything that you need. And you make peace with others and with yourself. And you accept the peace that God has already worked to give you in Jesus Christ. And today I want to give some of you that opportunity just to reach out to God and to place your faith and your trust in him. All of you bow your heads and close your eyes. If you'd like to become a follower of Jesus today, you can take that step. It's by repeating a simple prayer after me to just open your heart, to take a step towards him. Just say, dear God, I thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus into the world. I believe he died on the cross. Forgive me for my sins, I believe you rose again. Forgive me for my sins, give me the gift of eternal life. Help me face the challenges that I'm up against. God, I surrender my life to you in Christ's name. And friends, with every head bowed and every eye closed, if that's your prayer today, if it's your commitment,

I wanna ask you to just slip your hand in the air. Whatever location you may be at, if you're watching at home, just slip your hand in the air and acknowledge you're gonna trust him, you're gonna follow him, you're gonna seek him first. And friends, when you do, God gives you everything that you need. God, I thank you for each person reaching out to you today. I pray you fill them with your peace, your joy, your presence, your goodness. Help them make connections even today that will help them grow in their faith and take important steps as they follow you. And so we commit them to you and we thank you for them. We ask these things in Christ's name, amen. Amen, let's put our hands together for those who made spiritual commitments in their life today. And listen, across our locations, if you made a spiritual commitment, we wanna connect with you right after service. Just swing out into our lobby area, our Next Step area, and let us know you made that commitment and we've got some great tools and resources we'd love to point you to. Let's put our hands together for each of our locations and if you'd all stand together with me, our location pastors will come out and close out those experiences.

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