Whatever is true...

God is good. Would you pray with me right now? Let's thank God for his blessings and ask for his blessings as we move ahead. Heavenly Father, as we look back on 2024, on this first weekend of the new year, we thank you so much that you were with us, all of us, in all of it, in the mountaintops and in the valleys. And so we thank you for last year. Help us to face the challenges of the new year too, God. As a church, we're looking for the next leadership in TLC and Espanyol, and we're looking for your blessings on the construction of the Hope Center, long awaited as that begins groundbreaking this spring, Lord willing. And so we ask for your guidance and blessing on all those things. And specifically, I want to pray for those who've had a tough year personally, who are with us right now, watching online or here in person. Give them faith that you are working right now, even if they can't see it, and that better times are ahead. And so we move ahead into the new year, trusting you, loving you, surrendering to your will, and it's in your name we pray, Jesus. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is René, another one of the pastors here, super stoked that you all decided to spend your Sunday morning with us. Listen, I read this past week an amazing study, or at least it was amazing to me, it was called "When Less Is More Satisfaction Among Olympic Metallists." So here's what this was about. Some psychologists decided, you know, let's study high achieving people and see whether they're happy, what makes them happy, what motivates them. And there was a lot of interesting stuff that they discovered, but their working hypothesis was this: the higher the medal, the higher the achievement, the happier you'd be, right? I mean, that makes sense to me. I would anticipate that the gold medalist would be the happiest, the silver medalist would be the second happiest, and the bronze medalist would be the least happy, right? Guess what they actually found? The bronze medalists are, quote, "Significantly happier than the silver medalists." From the silver medalists, they saw a lot of this, misery. And from the bronze, they saw a lot of this, pure joy. But why? Why are bronze medalists significantly happier than the silver medalists? The silver medalists did better than the bronze medalists. Really, it boils down to one word, perspective.

Watch this. They said bronze medalists imagine failing to medal at all as the alternative to their result, while silver medalists imagine winning gold as the alternative. Even though they, by every measure, did better than the bronze, they were less happy. And so one of the many things this study suggests is actually a key to happiness in all of life. My perspective makes all the difference to my joy. And this is really the big idea for this series, so let's say this sentence out loud together, because I want you to remember this. Let me hear you. My perspective makes all the difference to my joy. How I frame what happens to me. You can actually, like the silver medalists, be doing by all objective analysis, better than somebody else, yet be less happy than them, because of the way you frame your circumstances.

In other words, I can have a soul that looks like this, or I can have a soul that looks like this. Which would you rather have? Well, let's launch a new series for the new year all about it. I call it How Joyful People Think. Grab your message notes. The sermon notes are on the inside. It looks like this, along with some discussion questions. And if you're following online, you can grab those at tlc.org/notes. Listen, I am really personally looking forward to this series because I personally really need it. Just true confessions here. I feel like I have become addicted to the news. Now, a couple of years ago, I deleted all the social media apps. I'm not saying you've got to do it just personally. I felt like they were a time waster for me and doing all kinds of negative stuff. So I just like deleted those apps and I haven't missed them. But what's filled the vacuum for me is it's like Bible study. What's filled the vacuum for me now is I just endlessly scroll the news, often for like an hour every morning on my phone. I used to not do that. And it's become this negative addiction.

And like most people, I tend to, research shows, most people tend to click on headlines that are scary and alarming. I'm no different. And so the little algorithms, you know, the machines that determine what headlines to send you next, look at that and they go, "Oh, René Schlappfer likes alarming news. So let's send him more alarming news." And pretty soon all I'm seeing are stories about killer weather, stupid politicians, crumbling cities and predictions of collapse. All the reasons San Francisco is getting bad, all the reasons that the politicians on this party or that party are morons, right? That's all being forwarded to my phone. Somebody came up with a word for what this feels like, "Perma-crisis." In one magazine, that was the word of the year because it sums up this feeling of lurching from crisis to crisis. And this puts you in a state of perpetual fear and anxiety.

Let me tell you a story of kind of like how this works. So before I was married, my roommate was a guy named Rich Henderson. Great guy. We were friends up in Portland, Oregon, roommates down in San Diego, California. So we'd known each other for years. Wonderful man, but an elaborate practical joker. I mean elaborate lengths he would go to. Just one example. One time he went to a portrait studio in the mall. Remember when they used to have like those Olin Mills portrait studios? And somebody gave him a gift certificate or something and he didn't know what to do with it. So here's what he did. He got the largest possible portrait made of himself, kind of smiling goofily at the camera. And I mean when I say it was big, I'm talking, imagine this screen turned 45 degrees. That was just a gigantic picture of Rich Henderson. He got it framed in a real cheap plastic frame, comes to our apartment and puts it up on the living room wall. And with a completely straight face informs me that he thinks it looks great, knowing it would drive me crazy.

Because he had observed to his own amusement that I was going through my interior decorator phase, like a lot of young people, and I was very picky about what colors and all this kind of stuff. And so he decided to name this gigantic portrait and he knew I was too polite to say anything. And so every time I had a friend over, or a girlfriend over, this presidential sized portrait of Rich just loomed over us. Every morning I got up to eat breakfast and this Soviet era propaganda poster of Rich was smiling down at me. And this drove me crazy day after day. And after a couple of months he finally broke down and laughed when he saw me looking at it again out of the corner of my eye. And I said, "What are you laughing about?" And he confessed that it was all just an elaborate joke and he took it down.

When Laurie and I got married, our honeymoon, we go into our honeymoon suite and hanging above the bed is the massive portrait of Rich Henderson. He'd somehow gotten in there. Ten years later, Christmas, we get a present from Rich. I open it up. It's the same gigantic portrait of him. So this is a guy who puts some thought into practical jokes. Well, all that to set up. One April Fool's Day, early morning, I open up the door to get the paper that we were having delivered to us in those days. And I find a note from Rich taped to my front door. Oh, it's from Rich. Now, I thought it was a birthday note because my birthday is the day before, but I open it up. René, hope we can still be friends at the end of this day. Remember, it's April Fool's Day, so it's all in fun. That's all he said.

So I spent the rest of my day like whipping open every door and then stepping back just in case it was booby trap. I mean, this is Rich Henderson. We're talking world class practical joker peering around every corner. I got to the point where I was putting up mirrors, like who's waiting to ambush me? Every phone call, I wouldn't believe who was there. By the end of the day, I was a nervous wreck waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know what his joke was? That there was no joke. That note was his entire April Fool's joke on me, knowing that I would become a nervous wreck just by my anticipation. I can tell you this. Nothing really happened but my emotions, my mental state, my blood pressure, my ability to focus and concentrate were all actually affected in real life because of the dread that Rich had planted in my brain.

Why do I tell that story? My point is this. That's exactly what is happening to you and to me right now, every day. Because of the way the algorithms, the machines, tend to curate reality for you. That's going to frame the way you anticipate every single day. It's going to frame you the way you see the future. Your nervous system is always going to be anticipating the worst. It's going to be the Rich Henderson note on April Fool's Day. You're living in alarm, dread, doom, anger, fear. Can anybody relate to this at all? So I thought, okay, I need to take control of this. I need to change this in my life in the new year. And I thought, since I need to change this, I'm just going to preach about it to you.

See, here's the really good news in Scripture. You and I don't need to live like that. You can be free of that. One of Jesus's early followers, the Apostle Paul, wrote a book called Philippians in the Bible, some background. It was a letter to the church at Philippi written by Paul from prison in chains. And in the four years prior to writing this letter to the Philippians, he had been in an actual perma-crisis, illegally arrested, spent two years in prison unjustly, put on a ship to stand trial in Rome, then shipwrecked, then bitten by a poisonous snake, then two more years of imprisonment during part of which he's chained to a guard 24/7. Yet the words for joy and joyful occur 17 times in the letter to the Philippians. It's infused with joy.

So what is his secret to not just being clobbered by the perma-crisis circumstances that he was in? It was the frame through which he perceived reality. It's like the difference between the bronze medalists and the silver medalists. Paul had a very specific lens, a frame that he viewed the world through without denying all of the bad stuff he was going through. By the way, is he wearing an Apple watch? I'm not sure, but there it is. And he tells us what that frame is in one verse in this letter. He drops it in. And that's the verse that we're going to be looking at for the next six weeks, because this is beautiful. This is fantastic. This is a frame that we need to construct or reconstruct in our own lives. It's Philippians 4:8, and since this is the launch of this series, where we're really going to dig deep on that, I'd love for us to read this out loud together. Are you ready for this? Here's a good way to start the new year. Here we go. 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. Amen?

Now, if Paul had been writing the way many of us actually think and what many of us actually look for in life, he would have written something like this. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is scary and whatever is bad and whatever is an outrage and whatever is scandalous and whatever goes viral online, if anything is disgusting or worrisome, I think about such things. Californians 4:8, that would have been where he was coming from. But instead he writes this. This is how joyful people think. And as I've been developing this series, I've been personally really helped by a couple of books I've been reading lately, Winning the War in Your Mind by Craig Rochelle and How Joyful People Think, where I got the idea for the title for the series from Jamie Rasmussen. These are great. I'm going to be referring to them a lot.

Why, again, honestly, true confessions. It's because I need this. This is not like I'm a natural born optimist telling you all you stupid pessimists how dumb you are. Not at all. My whole life, honestly, I've struggled with this. So if you find this difficult at times, your pastor is right there with you. Now, I would say I've made progress on this. My wife would say I've made progress on this every single year thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit, right? I can tell you that God doesn't want you to live like that. God wants you to think joyfully. And God is for you in that quest. Yet I can also tell you that recently, in the last several months, I got less diligent about this. And I began to see it taking its toll again. And so I need to retrain my brain again and learn this. Are you ready to join me as we learn this together?

Okay, I want to start the series with a word that's repeated over and over in this verse. And you can miss it. It's the word whatever. Say whatever. Whatever. Paul repeats it six times and then he adds a word anything. And this is very, very important. The Greek word is hosas. It's used six times here. It means as much as, as many as, limitless anything. The point Paul's trying to make is he's not just telling you, you better think about religious things or spiritual things or only Bible verses, although there's nothing wrong with that, obviously. What he's saying is whatever falls into these categories, look wherever you're looking in life, look for things that are true and right and lovely and admirable and so on.

What am I talking about? Our son David, he was just four years old when this picture was taken. Can you tell he liked Spider-Man? But he went through a phase where he was waking up in the middle of the night, night after night with terrible nightmares. And he would scream for us and either Laurie or I would go into the room and honestly most of the time it was Laurie. And we would try to help him and nothing seemed to help. And then one night my wife Laurie said, David, I'm going to teach you a Bible verse. And she taught him Philippians 4:8, our key verse. And she taught him to memorize it. Four years old, just line by line and he got it memorized. And she said, what I want you to do when you go to sleep is to think through this verse and then start to think of anything, whatever fits these categories, which she explained to him. And she said, that's going to change your dreams. And we didn't know whether it would, but we thought it was worth a try.

And I would go by David's room at night and hear him reciting this verse from memory and it really did change. The nightmares went away. And that was a big deal for David. He had told Laurie one night when she got up, he told her, Mom, I think I'm really struggling with anxiety at four years old. A four year old shouldn't know what that word means, right? But he sure did. Yet it changed him, knowing this and putting it into practice. Now, honestly, I thought, what is he thinking of when he's thinking of this verse? And so I asked him, David, when you are thinking of whatever is true and noble, excellent praise with you, what are you imagining? And he said, that's easy, dad. Disneyland. That works. That's whatever, right? And honestly, I find Disneyland to be a good thing. I find it fits those categories. When I think of it, the craftsmanship there, that's excellent. That's praiseworthy. That's admirable.

But I also find my whatever when I'm, for example, hiking in the redwoods and I see this in the Monterey Bay. I see it in all of the creative life that's surrounding us. I find this in good books. I see this in art. I hear this in music. I see this in the skills of great athletes. Whatever is true, noble, right, excellent. And so here's what we're going to do in the series. Each week we're going to examine the whatever about another one of these words and explore it in order to help you word by word build or rebuild a healthy frame through which you see your life because that's how joyful people think. And it starts with the truth. Whatever is true.

So let's talk about three steps for changing my perspective to the truth. And this is going to bring you joy because listen, one of the characteristics of joyful people is not, on the one hand, kind of toxic positivity. Ha ha. It's all good. It's all good. It's not all good. That's fine for a day or two, but that cannot last. That cannot be sustained. But on the other hand, it's also not constant catastrophizing because that's also not true. Neither one of those things are true. Joyful people actually root their life view in actual truth. And how can I do that as well? Very simple three step process. I've been practicing this myself. It's challenging, but it's essential to start with this.

Number one is you recognize the lies. You recognize the lies that you believe and that you're telling yourself and listening to. Now this is a challenge because it is human nature to believe whatever people repeatedly tell us. Do you believe some lies, you think? Maybe. Let me give you a little true or false quiz just kind of for fun for 60 seconds. Things that could or maybe aren't true, like Vikings wore horned helmets. These are just things that generally speaking people all agree are true. Is that true or false though? That is false. Historians say the idea of Vikings wearing horned helmets originated in the 19th century and is a myth perpetuated by art films and cartoons. Next, most body heat is lost through the head. True or false? False. Scientists point out the idea that most body heat is lost through the head is a myth. Heat loss is proportional to the surface area of any exposed skin.

Number three, Napoleon was short. Also false. Historians say he was average height or even a little tall for his era. The myth that Napoleon was short is based on a series of cartoons. So I'm picking up that I can't learn history from Looney Tunes. I'm gathering this. How about Washington had wooden teeth? False. According to historians, the myth that Washington and wooden dentures appeared in school textbooks until the 20th century. Finally, medieval people, you know, people back in the dark ages, they thought the earth was flat. False. Historians say with few exceptions, no educated person in the history of Western civilization from the third century B.C. on believed the earth was flat. By the time of Christ, people not only knew the earth was round, they had calculated its circumference. This idea nonetheless has persisted in popular culture and even some school textbooks into the 21st century.

What I'm trying to point out is a lot of the things that we just believe are true are not true. Now, the problem, of course, with discerning true from false is, as you know, we only use 10 percent of our brains, which is also false, by the way. Sorry to break it to you, but you're using all you got. It's not like I know I'm acting dumb, but you know, I got some reserves back here. No, that's it. Now, none of these things are going to change your life, right? But there are other common falsehoods, common myths that culture pushes at us all the time that people often don't take time to kind of analyze and see whether or not they're true. But they're commonly believed, just like these things. Like money is the key to happiness. The more people like you, the happier you'll be. Fame is worth getting at all costs. If you follow your heart, it'll never lead you astray. All false. Study after study shows riches don't make you happy. Whole department at Harvard now studying that. Fame actually makes you less happy.

And the last one, although this is essentially lyrics in every single song, every single Disney Princess sings in every Disney movie, if we're honest with ourselves, we know our hearts aren't always in the right place. The Bible says our hearts can be deceitful. If I followed my feelings, I can do all kinds of destructive, impulsive things. Yet, people base their lives on these without ever even questioning them. So what you and I need to do is use our brains, all of our brains, and always ask this question. Is this true? Such an important question. Say that out loud with me. Is this true? I mean, let's just start with what you read online. A recent paper by MIT researchers found that fake news goes viral ten times faster than any other kind of news on social media. Quote from the study, "Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, not just politics, but sports, celebrity, gossip, anything." So before you hit send, before you hit share, always, always, always ask, is this true about what you read, what you hear, and what you feel and what you think?

So check this out. Following a Craig Rochelle suggestion in that book I suggested earlier, one day this past week I conducted what he calls a thought audit. I went through a normal day, kind of noticed my thoughts. It was stunning to me. I never would have guessed how many of my own thoughts about myself and life are negative. Thoughts like, "You're so stupid. You always seem to blow up. Why do you always say such stupid things? Come on, stupid." It was really amazing. I thought I would never let anybody else talk to me the way I talk to myself. But I wonder, what would you find? How much of your own self-talk is negative, leading to worry, isolation, constant worst case scenario thoughts? You need to call out those lies very diligently. And then you get to step two, which is replace lies with truth. Replace the lies with the truth.

Now how do I do this? Take a peek at the third page of your bulletins. I put there a list of common lies we believe and truth from God's word, the Bible. Just a few examples. The lie, "I'm ugly and worthless." So stupid, right? The truth? We're God's masterpiece, says the Bible, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Or the lie, "My situation is hopeless." It's a lie because the truth is we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. Or the lie, "Everyone rejects me." The truth is God chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight by His grace. This is where grace is so important.

By the grace of God and the sight of God, I'm holy and blameless, chosen by Him. This is so important because of the sacrifice of Christ, my sin guilt has been taken care of. Positive thinking is great. The positive thinking doesn't deal with the guilt of sin. Jesus does. And once you know that foundation, that's not something I have to be obsessed with anymore, then you can move on to true biblical positive thinking. What about this lie? "I need to be afraid because there's so much scary stuff out there." The truth, God commands us, challenges us, coaches us. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. Not because your life is going to be perfect, but because the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

And you notice all of this is based in scriptural truth because once you get into this bad habit of negative self-talk, people tell you, "No, you've got to give yourself self-affirmations." Well, the problem is you don't believe yourself affirmations. You believe yourself criticism. You know, scientists talk about neural pathways, literal neurological paths that are built in your brain when you repeat certain habits and thoughts over and over again. You can get into bad neural pathways though, and you have to rebuild positive habits of thinking. It's kind of like this. Somebody said, "In Alaska, there's a long road that is muddy and it's rutted." And somebody put a sign at the beginning of it, "Choose your rut carefully. You'll be in it for the next 50 miles." That's what a neural pathway is. You're developing a rut, a way of thinking, a way of framing your life that becomes a habit.

And what you have to do very carefully is to choose a rut that's actually taking somewhere, use somewhere that you want to go. And you do that by building these new neural pathways. This does not happen in one 30-minute sermon one Sunday morning at the beginning of the year. This is something that we do week after week. It takes at least five or six weeks to build a new habit, at least. And so I encourage you to be with us during this whole series and build this new way of thinking. And in case you're going, "Great, you're saying based on the Bible, I have no idea where to start." We have amazing Bible study options for every age group and demographic.

Every single week I put discussion questions in your notes that are meant for your personal reflection or discussion that prompt you to look up Scripture. Those are always meant to keep this way of thinking going. Every weekday we put out little, approximately three and a half minute daily video devos that you get for free. You can sign up to get them texted to your phone every morning at 7 a.m. You can find them on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, our church website. You can get all the info at tlc.org/devo. And in this series, what these daily video devos are going to be is a lot of bonus content that I just couldn't squeeze into a 30-minute message. But it's meant to keep you going, to help you develop new neural pathways, new ruts.

Because once you develop this habit of seeing the world through this frame, then you can get to our final point. You can reframe your circumstances with the truth. Reframe your circumstances with the truth. And the world champion of this was the Apostle Paul. Remember, he writes this from prison. He had wanted to go to Rome to share Christ, he had hoped, with the leaders of Rome so that the gospel could go out. Instead, he's in prison chained to a guard, bad circumstances, out of his control. And you've been in circumstances out of your control, too. Bad circumstances. Maybe you're there right now. What do you do in that situation? As Craig Rochelle writes, when Paul was in this situation, he could have written, "Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me really stinks. I wanted to spread the good news, but that didn't happen as a result of the liable and slander against me. I believe prayer doesn't work. I'm not going to church. This is all stupid." But that's not what Paul wrote.

Here's what he actually writes, "Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it's become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else, I am in chains for Christ. What I had planned didn't work out, but God's moving through it anyway. What we now know is that these soldiers he was chained to, the Praetorian Guard, they were on a rotation. Part of the rotation was guarding these elite prisoners. Part of the rotation was guarding Caesar's palace, Caesar's household. And we discover that later, that members of Caesar's own household had come to faith in Jesus Christ. How would they have heard about the gospel from the Praetorian Guard that had previously heard about it, when they were chained to the Apostle Paul?

Now I want you to notice Paul's not in denial about any aspect of his situation. He acknowledges, "I'm in chains." And early in the letter he said, "I'm probably going to die. Probably awaiting execution." He doesn't deny the truth, but he sees the whole truth of his situation. He is in chains. True. God is also working. True. Your situation, it may be true that you're in trouble right now. That's true. But that's not the whole truth, is it? It's also true that people are helping you, or they're out there if you ask. That's true. It's also true that God is working. Joyful people reframe their circumstances with the whole truth, because you can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you frame it. And that's where Philippians 4:8 comes in. Think about those things, because here's the reality. You tend to see what you are looking for, right? If you look for the bat all the time, you're going to see it. And bots are going to forward more of it to you. But if you look for the good, you're going to see that, no matter what circumstance you're in. That's how joyful people think.

Last weekend I was off, so I went to our little video congregation at La Posada Senior Living Center. Every Sunday morning at 9 a.m., they watch our services on video there. So hello to all our community at La Posada. It's great to have you here. They usually are a week behind as they watch the video, often of the 11 a.m. service. Well, I told them about this new series, and they got so excited. And many of the people there, they can't make it to church in person, because they have trouble even getting down the hallway, right? Well, one smiling elderly woman at a walker raised her hand, and she said, "I'm so glad you're telling everybody how to do this." This is the woman. She said, "Tell them for me you can always have joy. Joy is a choice." And I asked her, "Well, why do you choose joy?" And she said, "Well, I love God, and I love Jesus, but mostly because it's just more fun." I loved that. By the way, you know what her name is? Joy. That's right.

Now, I can tell you, being old is not a guarantee of that kind of a perspective on life. There are people in senior living homes that look like this. And there are people who look like this. The way they frame their circumstance makes all the difference. Now, before we close with communion, what about the times that are really dark? And we all go through them, all of us, no exceptions. The times when you really, you really can't find anything good. That's why this advice has to be rooted in the gospel, because even when things are at their worst, you can find all of these things in Jesus Christ. Jesus shows all the qualities in Philippians 4:8, eternally and perfectly, truth and beauty and excellence. Right? That's why you develop the rut, the neural pathway, the habit of fixing your thoughts on Jesus Christ.

We've just scratched the surface. Here's the challenge of this series, to rewire my brain. To start the year with a new habit, new neural pathways, new ruts. So keep coming back. Watch those devos, do those meditation questions, as we learn together how joyful people think. Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? Jesus, you told us that you are the way, the truth and the life. And so now as we take communion, we just want to dwell on you, on how your sacrifice for us on the cross, we see all of these things. We see truth and nobility. We see righteousness and purity. We see beauty and we see excellence. And so we just want to give you praise for that right now. Thank you for your sacrifice. And we want to become more like you. In your name we pray. Amen.