Whatever is lovely…

Well good morning everybody my name is René another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Who is stoked to be a church today? I am so happy to be here. How cool is this? I mean look around this is one of four services this weekend including the Spanish service and it just blesses me to see all of you here to fellowship with each other and to worship God together and to learn more about His word together. How fun is this? Isn't this fun? I just it's fun to do this together.

Hey grab your message notes that look like this so you can follow along. How joyful people think is the name of the series that we are launching the new year with. We just took a break last weekend for World Outreach Week which was amazing and can we just thank Paul and Robin Spurlock and their whole team for putting that together. Fantastic. And now we're going to dive back into this series and I just want to clear something up because you may be thinking especially if you're joining us for the first time today how joyful people think that's that's kind of a lightweight topic right. It's kind of like here's how to be happy for people who are already pretty happy middle class Christians in the middle class world you know just positive thinking not that at all.

This right here learning how joyful people think this is a life skill that will get you through the darkest valleys and it has it is a skill that has that has strengthened people in their darkest times including Victor Frankel. You may recognize his face or be familiar with the story. Victor Frankel was a psychotherapist and a professor and an author who was born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria and that meant he was a young man in the 1930s when Nazi Germany through the Anschluss got control over Vienna, Austria where he lived. Unfortunately Victor was also a Jewish man I mean unfortunately for him in those circumstances because as you know tens of thousands of Jews in Vienna were rounded up and deported to concentration camps including Victor and his young wife Tilly.

They were sent to separate camps Victor was sent to three different camps including the notorious Auschwitz and it was there while he was walking along a path on the way to a work detail with another fellow concentration camp victim that Victor found himself just slipping into despair in this horribly dark place and then seemingly randomly his friend that he was walking with said, "Huh if only our wives could see us now." And that sparked Victor's imagination and he thought of his wife. He pictured his wife and later in a book he wrote called Man's Search for Meaning after he was liberated from the concentration camp at the end of the war he wrote about what happened to him in that moment.

He said, "My mind clung to my wife's image imagining it with an uncanny acuteness." He said, "I heard her answering me saw her smile her franket encouraging look real or not her look was then more luminous than the sun which was just beginning to rise." He says, "I didn't know whether or not my wife was alive and I had no means of fighting out but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved." In that moment on that day he discovered the secret for him to find the stamina and the strength to keep going in that dark time.

He would think of the beauty of his wife and feel the love for his wife and that's what drew him further with every step every day. Now as a trained psychotherapist and professor of psychology he started to analyze why am I finding hope here and why do some of my fellow concentration camp victims seem to just fall off the cliff into despair and hopelessness while others in the same dire set of circumstances keep going with hope and meaning and he noticed all of the latter group had something in common. Here's what he wrote, "Some were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom through thoughts." Say thoughts, "Thoughts of loved ones, thoughts of the beauty of nature, thoughts observing the most minimal expressions of art, and even a faint trace of humor."

In the worst possible situation they were liberated spiritually by what they chose to think about and Viktor Frankl was not the first prisoner to discover this key to joy in dark times. Nineteen centuries earlier in Rome the Apostle Paul penned a letter to some friends up in Philippi, a city in northern Macedonia. It's in our Bibles as the book of Philippians in the New Testament. Now he wrote this in prison in Rome. I've been able to visit the Mamertine prison which historians say was likely the spot where Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians. Here's a picture of it. I mean even today it's depressing. It's a museum now, it's still depressing. There's no windows, it's cold, it's dark and it was there that Paul wrote a little letter of the Bible that's just suffused with joy and positivity.

How is that even possible? Well he gives the Philippians his secret. In the verse that's become the key to this series, Philippians 4:8. And what I'd love to do is for us to say this together, we're doing this every weekend together, because what we're hoping to do is to memorize this verse. So let's read this together, church. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

Here is the big picture of this whole series, the big idea. Your life always moves in the direction of your strongest thoughts, inevitably. Now, I do not mean by this that somehow you magically manifest whatever it is that you're thinking about. Not at all. What I mean is you, it's just common sense. You are going to become like what you think about. Now, here is the challenge for us as believers. You might think, well, I'm thinking, you know, positive God thoughts and loving thoughts when I come to church and in my daily devotions, but what are you doing the whole rest of the time? You will move in the direction of those thoughts.

And this is why Paul is horrible. Listen, this is not just kind of lightweight advice here. Like how to like be marginally happier. Remember, Paul is writing this in a prison and if you know anything about the Apostle Paul's life, it was one horrible, unjust, unfair circumstance after the next. So many times he was beaten for his faith and left for dead for his faith and unjustly imprisoned for his faith and people betrayed him, people slandered him, and yet he went on to change the world and had a positive attitude through it all. How? Amazing story. He did it this way.

In this series, we've already talked about four of these words, whatever's true, whatever's noble, whatever's right, whatever's pure. These are the things that he chose to frame his reality through. And today we're going to dive in on the next word, whatever is lovely. Say lovely with me. Lovely. Now that does sound like a lightweight word, doesn't it? Lovely. Sounds like it should be said in like this posh British accent. Lovely. Say that like that. Lovely. Right? But what does it actually mean? Well, I think you'll be surprised because this is a key, listen, this is a key to joy that you're going to discover today that I believe even most Christians don't realize is recommended in Scripture.

So open your mind, open your heart to this because you may have never heard this emphasized in a Bible study before. What is the actual word here? Well, the word is the Greek word prosphileis, which is kind of a compound word. First pros, which is the Greek word for toured, like going forward. And phileis, which is one of the Greek words, phileo, for love or to like. And it's often translated in other documents as appealing, enjoyable, delightful. This is the kind of thing it means. And this has come into English as the suffix p-h-i-l-e. We talk about somebody's a bibliophile, that means they what? Love books. If somebody's a cinephile, they love what? Movies. If somebody's a francophile, they love what? France. If somebody's an enophile, they love wine.

Now, if somebody's a heliophile, what are they? How many of you are sun lovers? Can I see that show of hands? What about if somebody is a pluviophile? What are they? That's right. They love rain. How many of you are rain lovers? How many of you both love the rain and the sun? Can I see your show of hands? Now, if you are a book-loving, movie-loving, French-loving, wine-loving person who enjoys sun in the morning and rain in the afternoon, you have to move to Paris. But the rest of you, probably there's like one thing that you're focused on. And this is the kind of thing that is in this verse. This is what Paul's recommending that you... I mean, frankly, to put it bluntly, he's saying, "Think about stuff you like." Isn't that awesome?

The NRSV, the New Revised Standard Version, translates this verse, "Whatever is appealing, think about such things." Now, just let that soak in. Unfortunately, when a lot of Christians go, "Well, you can't tell people to think about whatever's appealing, whatever makes them like... whatever they're drawn to?" Because that could be sinful. So often we associate pleasure with sin, but God created pleasure. It's when pleasure is corrupted that it becomes sinful. And remember, in this verse, Paul's already given us the guardrails of whatever's true and noble and right and pure before he gets to lovely. And so he's saying, "Within kind of that parameter, within those guardrails, think about whatever..." Remember all the times he repeats that word, "Whatever is appealing to you." Within those guardrails, just think about stuff you like. And that's gonna get you through the tough time.

So I wanna give you a thought audit challenge this week. First, just ask yourself, what makes me happy just to think about? What falls into that category for you? And make this a point of conversation. If you're in a family, talk to your kids, talk to your spouse about this. What makes you happy just to think about? First, do that, just kinda write down a dozen of those things or more. And then notice your thoughts and ask yourself, what am I actually thinking about? Am I ever thinking about stuff that I like? Or am I mostly thinking about my to-do list, the stuff that makes me mad, the stuff that ticks me off that's in the news?

So I did this this week. I practiced what I preached. I did both of these things for me. So the first thing I thought of is, what just makes me smile to think about? And the first four just popped into my head instantly. My wife and my kids and grandkids, mostly my grandkids and my, no, no, all of them. And the beauty of the redwood forests around here and stand up paddle boarding. So those four just popped right into my head. Those are the things that I just, oh yeah, I just love to just think about that stuff. But after four, there was kind of a pause. It's like, hmm, what else falls into this category for me? I gotta think about this.

And after I pondered, like seriously, like whatever, what else comes to my mind? The first thing, and maybe this is kind of weird, but the first thing that came into my mind is the feel of tree bark. Maybe I'm all alone on this, but when I'm on a hike and nobody else is looking, I like to go over to trees and just feel them, feel the texture. And when I think about the feel of a redwood tree or the feel of any kind of a tree or a birch tree or whatever, it makes me smile when I think about it. You know what else makes me smile when I think about it? Train travel. I love train travel. Makes me smile. You know what else makes me smile? The beauty of vineyards. They are so beautiful just to look at and think about.

Something else that makes me smile is the way pelicans fly. They're like pterodactyls. It's amazing. Also, whenever I think of palm trees, I smile. Also, my grandkids, I don't know if I brought that up yet. When I'm out there on my paddleboard, I see marine mammals, especially dolphins. They always make me smile. Makes me smile just to think about dolphins. Another thing that makes me smile is a good pen. And writing on good paper with a good pen, I just smile thinking about it. Here's another thing. I'm on a roll now. Apricots. Oh, yeah. Thinking about tasting a good apricot, I'm salivating right now. Oh, yeah. Thinking about Disneyland makes me smile. Thinking about being in a symphony orchestra performance in person just makes me smile. Also, thinking about my grandchildren. I don't know if I mentioned that. And also, thinking about my grandchildren also.

So, those are some of the things that make me smile. So, do your own thought audit challenge. What makes me happy to think about what am I actually thinking about? You see, that's what Paul's saying. Just like Viktor Frankl thought about his wife. And notice that the other guys who kind of made it with their sanity intact were thinking about loved ones. What else did he say? Beauty? Art? Even jokes that made them smile drew them through. Think about stuff you like. Now, let's go to the next slide because what I really want to emphasize is that this is not just like it's going to make you happy. There's a lot of other benefits of thinking about people and things that you love.

There's been so many studies done about this. So let me just kind of put up a reader's digest chart about some of the key benefits of thinking about stuff you love. And I learned this personally because this last week I was freaking out about all the stuff that I had to do. And I was thinking about it unproductively and repetitively to the point where it was waking me up at night and keeping me up at night so I wasn't getting out of sleep. And so, my brain wasn't functioning as well when I had to think about this stuff and I'd sit and look at my computer at my to-do list for like 20 minutes in the morning before I actually did anything. I was thinking about the overwhelmingness of it all and then I stopped and thought, "Wait a minute. What am I preaching about this weekend? I'm going to practice what I actually preach."

On Thursday morning, I took 10 minutes just to think about the stuff I like. My grandkids and redwoods and dolphins and my grandkids in the redwood trees and my grandkids riding dolphins and I just kind of thought about this. It made me so happy and guess what? I was also more productive. And that is totally in line with what scientists say. When you think about stuff you like, it reduces your stress. It improves your mood. It increases your motivation and drive. It enhances your creativity. It satisfies you in your life and also it improves your resilience when you go through tough times. There's so many great research studies done on this.

Let me just give you two really quick. They took a bunch of four-year-olds and over several studies divided them into two groups. They gave both groups a pile of Legos and some instructions. They told group one, "Just build as fast as you can." They told group two, "First, for one minute, think about something that makes you happy." Now, I don't even know what a four-year-old would think about. Running around and screaming. But whatever they thought about, when they said go, group two significantly outdid the other groups building faster and with fewer errors. They took a group of college students, divided them into two. One group was told, "Think about the happiest day of your life before a standardized math test." They far outperformed their peers.

There are so many examples of how thinking about something that you like, I mean that's a good and godly desire of course, lifts your mood. It improves your performance. This is... Research is just catching up with what Paul already told us in the Bible. The benefits of thinking about pros-fives, something you're drawn to or something you find appealing, something that you like. But you really need to cultivate it intentionally because there's some detours from delight in our culture. And one of them is this, the path of least resistance. Even when we have the time to think about something that we like, usually we don't because I mean the iPhone's right in our hands or the remote controller's right in our hands.

And so we let ourselves be mildly amused by things that we don't super love and we end up feeling dry and drained because we're not putting down those things and focusing on something that actually brings us joy. And then there's the path of distraction. I've got so much to do and so I'm constantly focused on my to-do list or the path of negative emotion. Courage is more mesmerizing than calmness and peace. It's more contagious. It's more addictive and so we let it capture our attention and hypnotize us. That's why we have to be very intentional. This is why this command is in the Bible. If it was normal for you and me to just automatically just think about stuff that we like when we're stressed, the Bible wouldn't have to command it.

If the Bible doesn't say, "Thou shalt breathe," because that comes naturally. Apparently even though this is good for us, we still have to be reminded to do this. Now, you might be saying, "Well, this sounds kind of like pop psychology or just mindfulness." Is there more to it than these research studies in the Bible? Is there actually more than just this one verse that recommends delight, recommends thinking about appealing things, joyful things? No, let's close in a word of prayer. No, there is. There's three things I want to look at real quick. First, delight is essential. It's essential to your spiritual growth.

For example, in 2 Corinthians 1, Paul says, "We work together with you so you will be full of joy." Not just full of doctrine, not just full of the right answers, but full of joy. Or he says to the Philippians that he's going to stay with them, that he is not afraid of death, but he wants to stay with them to help them in their spiritual growth. He says, "Convinced of this, I know that I will remain. I will continue with all of you for your progress and your joy in the faith." If you start looking for these kinds of verses, you'll see them everywhere. The Bible sees joy as the best sort of lure toward progress in the faith.

When I grew up in church, often the way I perceived what I was supposed to do was be motivated by a sense of duty or guilt or obligation or just learning doctrine. And listen, there are circumstances where these are good things. But if you want to look at Scripture and notice what does Scripture see as catalyzing spiritual growth as kind of like the magnet that pulls you deeper and further, it's always things like beauty, joy, affection for Jesus, and also mystery, right? Mystery intrigues you, pulls you in so you want to learn more. And even Jesus was motivated this way, was motivated by joy. In Hebrews 12 it says, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the," what? "Joy set before him, endured the cross, the joy of being together with us in his Father's presence."

So joy is such a powerful motivator that it even pulled Jesus through the agonies of the cross. So joy, delight, happiness, thinking about these things, and I use those terms synonymously here today. It's essential to your spiritual progress and growth. And also delight is holy. It's actually endorsed by God. Sometimes we can come across like fun is bad. No, God made fun. He says things like this in Ecclesiastes 9:7, "Go ahead, eat your food with joy. Drink your wine with a happy heart." For God approves of this. That's in the Bible? Yes! Now of course this is not talking about alcoholism. It's not talking about binging. This is not talking about gluttony, because there are verses in the Bible against all that stuff. But this is like, let's be reasonable here. Take a common sense attitude toward these things, and there's a godly way that you can joyfully engage with these beautiful gifts from God.

Look at this 2 Timothy 4:5. Paul says, "Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer. Within the parameters of the word of God and what you discern to be the will of God and what you can be grateful for, listen, everything God created is good within its context, and it can be appropriately enjoyed." Later in the same letter, Paul says, "Tell the rich people in your church, Timothy, to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our nourishment, for our, you know, strength to strengthen us so that we can be joyless puritans." No, he richly provides us with everything for our what? Enjoyment.

I don't know where people get the killjoy, God, they talk about sometimes, but he's not in my Bible. How about Psalm 37:4, "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Listen, delight is essential to your spiritual growth. Delight is holy. It's endorsed by God. And the good news is if you're looking for things to delight in, delight is everywhere. The Bible says in Psalm 65:8, "The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders, where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy." In Psalm 111:2, "Great are the works of the Lord, they are pondered by all who delight in them." Somebody said, "Awe right sizes you." Don't you love that?

And you've probably felt it walking through our beautiful redwood forests and seeing these giant trees that are 2,000 years old. These are living things that were alive when Jesus Christ was born. These are living things that are taller than the Statue of Liberty. "Awe right sizes you." Or you feel it when you go out to Wilder Ranch or when you take a drive up to Yosemite this time of year. "Awe puts your own problems and even just your own personal ego in really the right perspective, doesn't it? And the whole world is filled with this. You don't have to drive up to Yosemite. You don't even have to take a walk in the redwoods. All around you every day the whole world, your whole world, even Viktor Frankl's world at Auschwitz, there were places that he and his fellow prisoners found things to delight in.

Really, as somebody put it, the fight for delight is a fight to see. It's a fight to see those wonders. I was thinking little kids often see wonder better than us, don't they? Here's another thought experiment for you. Think back to when you were a little kid. How would you answer the question, "What thoughts make you smile? What do you find appealing?" I was thinking of growing up in suburban San Jose. What would I have said, "This is really cool." I would have said, "My sidewalk." We knew our sidewalks like the back of our hands. And we loved them so much. Like, what is this? To an adult, this is a trip hazard. What is this to a kid? That's a bike ramp. Exactly. And we knew where they all were. Puddles. Man, we love playing in puddles. Anything on bikes, sticking a card on your spokes so it sounds like a motorcycle, you know? Oh, man, that was awesome. And this is also why people who didn't do this now are rich because we ruined all of our cards.

You and I always put a smile on my face as a kid. Jello. The cheapest thing on the planet. Oh, jello, man. That's kids. The fight for delight is a fight to see. I love Christmas Carol, the story by Charles Dickens. And I really love the way he describes the end of the story. When Scrooge is redeemed, here's the way he describes it. He went to church and he walked about the streets. And he watched the people hurrying to and fro and patted children on the head and questioned beggars and looked down into the kitchens of houses and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness. And just reading that is inspiring, isn't it?

You know, this is why God gave us art. Because art helps us in the fight for delight. Because art helps us see the art of a wordsmith like Dickens, the art of physical artists. That's one of the reasons I use a lot of art in my sermons. Think of Salvador Dali. This is a famous painting of his called "Christ on the Cross." It's in the Cathedral of Church of St. John in Spain. So he painted this in 1951. He was just coming out of a phase of radical atheism and moving back into the faith in Jesus that he had as a child. Now Dali is of course famous for all the surrealistic paintings that look like acid trips, melting clocks, and all this kind of stuff. But then he's moving into this phase where he starts painting a lot about Jesus. And it's very profound.

Art helps us see things. It engages us in a dialogue. Like look a little bit closer. This is a unique perspective of "Christ on the Cross," isn't it? It's a God's eye view, looking down on Jesus, and it's a Jesus eye view too, looking down on the people for whom he was giving his life. Look even closer. Well look at first like nails. Those are shadows. There is nothing nailing Jesus' hand to the cross. What's keeping him there? Love. Nobody put him on the cross. It was his will to die on the cross for our sins. And look at what he's looking down on. It's fishermen who are abandoning their boats and nets. So maybe he's thinking back on how it all started on the Sea of Galilee. Perhaps, but you know what? This is an accurate representation of the village harbor where Dali himself grew up. And these are people that he knew.

And so Jesus is looking not only to how it all started but looking to what was then when Dali painted it in 1951. It was today. And so he's saying, "I'm still calling people today." And he's not looking at thousands of people. He's looking at just a few because he died on the cross for us individually. He sees us as individuals. And he says, "I called people then, and I'm still calling you today to receive my sacrifice on the cross, given out of pure love for you. And I'm calling you to leave your distractions and follow me. You." You see, art helps us see the things we delight in like the sacrifice of Jesus for us.

God inspires artists in the Bible. In Exodus 35, it talks about Bezalel, who was filled with the Spirit of God. God gave him great artistic ability to do artistic designs and artistic crafts. And God still does that for us today in our fight to see delight. I want to introduce you to a person who comes to church here at Twin Lakes Church, Aaron Muehlenga. Aaron, I love Aaron. He's great. He's here today. Aaron and his wife and their kids attend here at Twin Lakes Church. Aaron is getting his PhD in art up at UC Santa Cruz. And he just closed a month-long exhibit up there that I got a chance to visit a week ago. And watch how he is helping UCSC students, I mean, some of whom would see Christianity as a colonial European faith, but he's giving them eyes to see. Watch this.

When I was younger, I thought I would go into ministry. I thought I would become a preacher, a pastor. It's something that I had grown up seeing, grew up in a Christian home. When I brought this idea up to my dad, he didn't find anything wrong with it, but he knew that I had a passion for something else. And so he told me, in order to share the gospel, you don't need to be behind a pulpit. You know, you can share the gospel in whatever you do. And so he gave me the freedom and the courage to be able to pursue art. I think the job of the artist is to start a conversation. I think art is the best conversation starter.

My grandfather had this huge family Bible, and that Bible had so many pictures, and so I started to flip through it. But the more I flipped, the more I started to realize I don't see myself in this Bible. And so I started to ask, why? Why are there no depictions of Black people in this Bible? So that was something that was actually the impetus for me to want to see myself represented in these kinds of spiritual drawings or images, paintings. I know that Christ was from the Middle East, from Israel, but how do you connect this story when Christianity has spread around the world? How do you make it relevant to your particular culture and your space of origin? I think that for me is what this work is doing.

The base of the piece is a coffee filter, and I paint with coffee and acrylic. And to layer that onto an image of Christ, I'm trying to root this story in Zambia and show relationship to the narrative of Christ and where he's coming from. If there's one thing I've seen in the people's faces that have come to see this show, the people that have engaged ask questions, there's a curiosity. And I feel like art and beauty contribute to a spiritual elevation because there's a sense of wonder and the art becomes the medium through which God can work. I say can because I think there needs to be an interaction from the viewer's point. If the viewer comes, looks at the work and steps away, chooses not to engage, nothing happens. The same way that you can be hearing the message of God consistently and choose not to engage, nothing happens. You are unchanged.

But the moment that you decide and say, "Hey, I hear that this resonates, I want to connect," something's happening. Your image begins to transform. My physical family is back in Zambia, but when I come here, you know I'm connected to a church family. And the way those connections become more deeply rooted in that you're never alone because we share this faith. And so the point of connection comes through, you know, our connectedness to Christ. It doesn't matter which geography you're in or where you're coming from, the connectedness is through Christ.

Hey, Aaron, why don't you stand up? Where are you right now? There he is. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you. You know what I think you're doing, Aaron? I think what Aaron is doing through that painting and what he did for me when I visited it, he's leading us from the delight of art to the ultimate delight, to which all true delight leads. And that's our Savior. That's the Lord. I love Psalm 27:4, "One thing I ask from the Lord, 'This only do I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple.'

When I delight in Jesus, when I see Him in His love and His grace, that becomes so appealing that I'm drawn to Him. And as Aaron said, "That's when we begin to be transformed." I started with Victor Frankl, so I'll close with him. He said this, "I learned that everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." What set of circumstances are you in? Pretty bad? Well, so was the Apostle Paul, so was Victor Frankl. You can still choose your attitude. He said, "I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss be it only for a brief moment in the contemplation of his beloved. I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart. The salvation of man is through love." I mean, what a great summary, really, of the gospel.

It's in the contemplation of our beloved Jesus and His love for us that we are transformed. And so I want to wrap up our time together by contemplating Jesus the way Christians have done it for 2,000 years through communion. So would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, thank You for this reminder that beauty is transformative. And God, forgive us for falling into the trap of distraction and busyness and even negative emotions. And help us in these moments to be transfixed by the beauty of the powerful sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us. And I pray that in these moments, if there are some who maybe for the first time want to turn to you or as a recommitment that they'd pray something like this, "Jesus, I am drawn to You, drawn to the beauty of this. I don't understand it all, but I'm drawn to it. I'm even drawn to the mystery of it. And so I open my heart to receive You as my Lord and Savior today." In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.