Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve this, that you and I are to deve and continue to develop this ong intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, incomparable rela with a personal God. male announcer: In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on “In Touch,” “Triumphant Joy.
” Dr. Charles Stanley: When you are going through difficulties and disappointments and trying times in your life, how do you respond? What’s the difference in your conduct, in your temperament, even in your facial expressions when you’re going through a hard time or when things just suit you fine? What’s the difference? Do you let the hard times get you down? Do you find yourself being less friendly? Do you find yourself having a hard time making decisions? What upsets you? Now, you say that you’ve trusted Jesus Christ as your
personal Savior. And your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, and you are a happy person. But when things are not going your way and you suffer real disappointments, or hurt, or physical pain, how do you respond? Does it absolutely wipe you out? Does your disposition change to the point that people say, “What happened to you? I thought he was a Christian.
What’s all this about?” Are you the same person when things are going right and when things are going wrong? When you find yourself disappointed and you want to hang it up and walk away? Whatever happened to your faith? Whatever happened to your relationship with Christ? That relationship doesn’t change. Maybe the way you express it changes a little bit, but that’s because maybe you’ve never distinguished between happiness and joy.
What’s the difference? Well, when Paul wrote the book of Philippians, only four chapters, it’s interesting what you find. In these four chapters, over and over again, in fact, once out of every seven verses, Paul speaks of joy or he speaks of joyful. So I want you to turn to Philippians, if you will, and I want to just read these first few verses here in the fourth chapter, to get us started.
