How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay | Josiah Jones

[Music] [Music] well welcome to the porch we are great i'm great let me back up welcome to the ports it's great to be with you guys tonight let's go come on it's sports day come on y'all that whole thing got threw me off a tech guy but much love brother i love you um man if you're watching with us online welcome wherever you're watching uh for all of our porch live locations out there houston el paso boise idaho idaho balaton minnesota cedar rapids iowa wherever you're watching oklahoma city we are so glad that you tuned in with us tonight my name is josiah i have the privilege of serving on staff here at the porch and i get to oversee our volunteer leaders and listen if you're ready to like man if you want to go hard after jesus uh man you want to change the world listen i encourage you to come find me tonight at the front of the stage or you can just go back to your eight to five and just be average oh man someone that just hurt and i just offended everybody in the room that had eight to five jobs listen i'm playing i'm playing but for real if you're ready to go all in with jesus hey and you're looking for a place to serve and i would love to talk with you tonight well hey as we get going and i'd like to share with y'all this meme going around i'm sure you've heard it it's this meme how it started versus how it's going how it started versus how it's going right and uh and so i mean i've been off the grid for a few months mainly because of uh what i'm about to talk about tonight so i haven't really been on social media but as i was preparing for this talk some friends of mine uh showed me this meme and showed me what was happening and so i just thought i'd uh share with you my top five here we go here are my five my favorites uh lunchables uh man i don't know what you're talking about lunchables for life baby come on like i until the day i die i'm still on that train uh next one ah listen that's just funny because some of it is true right some of this is true maybe it's because your name is muhammad ali right um next one oh yeah from my dog moms out there come on uh let's go next oh that speaks for itself right too close to home someone said uh last one here we go we'll end on this happy 2020 right 2020. we all know how that's going oh man by the way mj's still the goat just want to tell you that throw it out there yes he's better than lebron and all my all my boys who uh and girls who are millennials said amen are you gen xers the next generation like no i'm as lebron listen but really hey 2020 has been a year right like it has been a year and as we get closer to the end of 2020 i bet you have your own version of how it started versus how it's going like 2020 man it was gonna be your year like you were gonna get that ring like you're gonna get married right you're gonna get that job and then you're working your way up you're gonna get that promotion hey it was the year that you were gonna break the addiction get off the medication it was going to be the year that you got in the best shape of your life you're going to save that 20 pounds of unwanted lbs right like it was your year man you were going to find true peace and the expectations we hope for in 2020 versus the reality of this year listen there's very two different stories some of us have never felt more alone job loss some of us had to move back in with parents still single and lonely political expectations not met when are we getting a vaccine like when is everything just going to go back to normal i'm sick of this mask if that jd comes up here one more time to try to tell me what to do right it's like some of you are just fighting it right now i ain't wearing no masks you have to get me out of this place right i just want everything to be normal again there's many of us right now that would raise our hands and bro you're going to ask me to wear a mask it's putting more anxiety on me living in fear some of you if you had to be honest you would say hey i'm not okay things are not okay i'm full of anxiety looking for satisfaction in what the bible would call contentment this word contentment this is what i want to talk to us about tonight it's not a word we use a lot in our day what do i mean by contentment i mean this hey i'm okay hey no matter what happens not just this superficial i'm good i'm okay no on a soul level like i'm okay single engaged or married i'm okay whether i get the job or i get the promotion like i'm okay think about the very like the worst thing that could happen to you say i'm okay i'm not distracted i'm not depressed i'm not overwhelmed and really man when i think about that i even ask myself is that even possible is this jesus thing really the answer can i really find that type of peace can i really be okay when things are not okay that's the question we're answering tonight and i believe god's word has something to say about this tonight i believe god's word is going to offer hope to a generation in a culture in a world that man seems really chaotic right now we're going to be in philippians chapter four if you're new to the bible you just open to the middle and philippians is towards the back matthew mark luke john acts romans first and second corinthians galatians ephesians philippians and here we're going to find paul who's the author of philippians god through paul he's writing this to the church in philippi and he says makes a really bold statement he says i found the secret to contentment it's literally phrased like that in this text he found the secret to be okay when things are not okay and anytime i think about man that's a secret what like i'm i'm listening like my ears are up like i'm i'm i'm ready whatever he's about to say next right if you don't know paul's story he is a guy who started out in his life persecuting christians as far as killing christians but then quickly jesus arrested his heart and he went from persecuting christians to being a hope dealer bent on spreading the good news of jesus to an unknown world and flip the church in philippi was one of the first churches he planted in europe it's a real place real people let's never forget that as we open up god's word and listen the secret isn't found in a pill or a drink it's not found in something you can buy at north park mall where is it found glad you asked paul says it it's found in three things first thinking about the right things second practicing your faith and lastly before you leave tonight i hope you see this idea of that we should hope in christ let's dive in philippians chapter 4 we'll be in verse 8 starting there paul says this 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 just just circle that right there circle think about such things like paul is sitting in prison right now he's in a jail cell let's make sure you you have the weight of what's happening right now with paul he's in a jail for for uh he's in jail for persecuting or not persecuting he used to persecute he's in jail for sharing the gospel because the christians are are being persecuted right now in this time and he says this hey if anyone has the merit and the credit to say this it's paul he's sitting in a cold prison locked up for sharing his faith and he says hey if you're gonna find the secret to contentment if you're gonna be okay when things are not okay first spiritual truth is this think about the right things thinking about the right things will help you be okay when things are not okay the reason why you're not okay right now is because your mind is drifting and the bible would say as your mind drifts for to all these distractions that you came in with and as we learned last week here at the poor it's through jenny allen i hope you got to listen to that if you weren't here but the bible would say that we are to take every thought captive second corinthians 10 5 to the obedience of christ in other words every thought we have should be filtered through this book that i hold in my hand called scripture the bible what you think about has the power to make or break your contentment do you know that because the mind is powerful discontentment is found in our one and when you walked into this place tonight you uh honestly you had want there was something you wanted there's something that you're fixated on what are you thinking about what's on your mind don't answer it out loud it could be awkward right nervous laughter there some of you came in here with the the desire to get married and listen um contentment isn't the absence of desires let me just say that real quick contentment is not the absence of desire some of you come in here with the desire to get married which is a good and noble thing and someone said hey when you just become content that's when god will give you your spouse and that's just a lie that that's just a lie that might now now it might be true that god wants to grow you in your contentment in him first but it's not wrong to desire a spouse marriage from god's word says it's a good thing marriage is a gift from god paul is saying this because he knows our thinking dictates our living this is why he says think about such things that are true that are noble that are right that are pure he goes on and says your thinking will be fueled by your focus what are you focusing on tonight some of you are anxious because you watch the news and it's filling your mind with anxious thoughts what if fear some of you are discontent because you're always on your pinterest board right and you're and maybe it's that it's that private pinterest board that nobody can see only you know it's there do you think you're going to be more okay with the season god has you in or less if you continue to pursue that only you can answer that question if you struggle with singleness let me talk to you ladies for just a second do you think you're going to be okay continuing to take in episode after episode of the bachelorette if you're struggling with singleness it will will it help you or is it hurting you what do you think if you struggle with insecurity and jealousy and body image is social media helping you or hurting you if you struggle with lust uh just following women who uh post bikini pictures or you know those those really uh great women and and men this is okay vice versa right who who uh are kind of these athletes and their and their fitness athletes do you think that's helping you or is it hurting you if you're trying to get out of debt you think casually walking through nordstroms and you just hey i'm just checking things out but you know this the more you check things out the more you're going to have a tendency to want to buy something and so you do and so we hop on instagram and we watch shows to compare our lives to others and we don't struggle with the old school ocd we struggle with the new school ocd it's the obsessive comparison disorder right we're just comparing our life to everyone around us thinking that we're going to be satisfied by doing that and you know it's just breeding discontentment it's causing us to buy things we should and it causes us to look at things we can't touch while touching ourselves in a way that dishonors god i'm just being real tonight it causes us to isolate ourselves thinking hey we're the only ones who struggle come on when we struggle with comparison it robs us of creativity and energy and peace and these are three things that you're going to need to thrive in life compare is sin compare is sin comparison think of it that way yale university said that those who spend less time using social media are more happy and healthy than those who use them often and listen i'm not a hater on social media the problem with me is i like it just to i like it a little too much the problem with me is i it's not that i don't like it i just like it a little too much and so it feeds something in me that ends up leaving me empty and unsatisfied with what i do have listen i've never seen anybody skip into my office or never met a a friend or a young adult for lunch and he man they're just so happy and i'm like hey bro like why are you so happy man like and he and he and i never heard him say this oh man i figured it out man i downloaded instagram i just been looking at it all day it's like no man that does not happen i've never heard it because you know you're feeding something that isn't good so you go to these places to compare your misery and all it does is salt your runes right it just throws salt on the wounds and and yeah you all broke up and you find yourself following him on social media just to compare the misery just hopefully hopefully you you jump in and you're like man i hope he's feeling the way i did only to find out he's not and it's just adding more salt more salt on that wound oh she got the promotion gosh i'm so much better than him oh how does that girl have another how does she have enough money to go on another vacation and then to get more nuclear like come on like where's this co and what happens is you're just feeding something inside of you that's leading to discontentment and in your season of setbacks you look at others who are in seasons of advances and you just begin to be marked by more anxiety and depression and so how do we overcome this like some of you tonight might need to get off social media because every time you jump on you're fueled with discontentment you got to walk away from the thing that is feeding your discontentment that's why paul says hey what you think is ultimately going to fuel your focus i found myself watching sports a few months back and in one hand i had my phone and i was vacillating between instagram and uh texting and email and i just began to have all these things that began to distract me in text messages and then i read verses like psalm 1013 and it says i will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless see i put a lot of worthless things before me at times not necessarily things are bad in and of himself it was like the spirit of god said hey hey josiah won't you take a break because you're feeding something inside of you that quite frankly you won't ever be satisfied and so i don't know what that looks like for you maybe it's the same maybe you need to take a season off from the thing that's feeding your discontentment maybe you need to break away from the madness of comparison and get off of all social media for a season maybe just take a week off and watch the spirit of god breathe something fresh into your life i was telling a group of guys that i meet with weekly it's like man i feel like a weight's been lifted not tempted like i was to look at things i shouldn't look at and to compare my life with people that quite frankly don't even know i feel like a weight's been lifted paul is saying be careful what you think about thinking about the right things will lead you to be okay when things are not okay your thinking affects your contentment only does he says this but he says your practice will affect your contentment verse nine he goes on and says what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things and look at the promise porch the god of peace will be with you you know what christians do when they're not okay they actually live out their faith this is what they do this is what they do in the past and this is what they do in the present they actually live out their faith when they come up to places in their life that are just not okay when they have discontentment they actually decide to live out their faith they wake up and spend time with god let me ask you do you think you're going to be okay without putting that discipline of getting in god's word and hearing what he has to say day in and day out do you think you're really going to be okay without putting that into practice we as men and women of god are called to practice the things of christ we're called to read and study scripture we're called to get into community one of the number one things i did after i came to christ was to change my playground and my playmates and have men that were going to call me up and call me out and say god has more for you following someone who follows christ in other words find someone that will mentor you that will disciple you that will walk alongside of you pray and talk to god confess sin struggles pursue healing from addictions walk in love humility and kindness flee sexual immorality and drunkenness drugs and anything that will take you off course from what god has for you paul says practicing the right things will equal peace and if you don't have peace maybe it's because you're not practicing the right things or you have wrong practice i remember several years ago i was dating a girl and uh man i walked into the relationship with all the right intentions and quickly uh i started beginning to compromise and i um man just telling you man this girl is everything i wanted man she had the instagram bio philippians 4 13 but you scroll down a little bit more let me just tell you it was a little reveal revealing and i remember in that moment when i would just say oh man it ain't that bad come on i've seen a lot worse you know what i'm saying i would just compare oh i can always find someone worse than her which gave me security in the fact that i was fine i was good and i remember in that moment that um there began to be a lack of conviction because there was a lack of contentment see where there's a lack of contentment there will be a lack of conviction and where there's a lack of conviction you and i will always we will always and i mean this be willingly with willingness there will be a willingness to settle for less than god's best did you hear that there will be a willingness to always settle for less than god's best and in that moment i promise you i was settling for less than god's best and i would make excuses i was the king of excuses and there was a season that i settled and i remember the holy spirit just saying josiah you know this isn't right you know you're making excuses paul says the things that you've learned from me received from me heard from me seen in me practice such this is such a bold statement paul is making he's saying hey follow me why because i follow christ see paul was so confident in how he followed christ not perfectly but how he read god's word how he confessed sin how he served others how he was out sharing the gospel how he was truly applying the things that god was teaching him and he says hey you want to follow christ you can follow me i wonder how many of you tonight can say that how many of you tonight can be that bold and say hey you can follow me i know i'm not perfect but i'm pursuing the perfect one and this verse here is really a discipleship verse this word discipleship just means hey you're gonna like it's a rat you're gonna make a radical self-donation into someone else's life for the purpose of godliness and multiplication it's this idea that hey you were created to invest your life into someone else and those of you that been coming to the porch long enough and you've been singing songs and you've been hearing messages but you walk out of the the the auditorium and you do nothing with it god would say tonight paul would say hey it's your job christian to give that away they see some of us man we come into this place and we have more truth than what we can obey and some of us man we need to know less and do more instead of knowing more and doing less and some of you right now you're not experiencing true contentment you're not experiencing how to be okay when things are not okay because you're not putting into practice the things that we see in scripture i uh heard this phrase a while back it says practice like you play practice like you play and i grew up playing baseball that was my jam it was my sport i love baseball and i remember going into high school and uh i loved it and you know i wasn't the most talented i was just kind of the hustle guy call me charlie hustle you know not not i never really got many awards but for some reason i uh got to go to college and play and in high school i really didn't have anyone to follow i just picked up some really bad habits and you know i i just kind of scraped by and then some coach gave me a shot in college and i remember my freshman year of college just riding the bench but what's so significant about my freshman year in college is i had some upperclassmen some seniors come alongside me and said hey just i see something in you bro and and i want you just to follow me this year i want i want you to imitate what i do and so i would man i would follow them and i would watch how they threw the baseball how they fielded the baseball how they hit the baseball how they uh worked out in the gym how they dieted and i had to unlearn some of the things that i learned in high school and i remember following those men and i remember uh just saying man this is incredible i've never learned this much before i i would s they would show me how to properly prepare and play the game of baseball they would say imitate me watch what i do and do it and they would coach me on the importance of practicing the right ways taking no shortcuts and listen how you practice determines your progress on the field you're hearing me and listen how you practice gives you the confidence to face whatever might happen in the game and it's it's true with your spiritual life how you practice spiritually will give you the progress that you ultimately want and how you practice spiritually will ultimately give you the confidence that you're going to need as life throws curveballs at you like we've seen in 2020. it's the questions that you're asking what are you practicing where are you spending your time what are you investing in what you're truly looking at when no one's looking what you're truly doing when you're behind closed doors it's not just some insta bio it's not just a tuesday night service at the porch right so right now if i looked at your spiritual life and i asked you these three questions what would be your answer question number one who or what are you imitating are you imitating a political figure are you imitating people magazine or vogue like are you imitating those friends that you know aren't following christ but man you just want to fit in man and you just and you can't shake it is your life worth imitating could you say hey imitate me follow me for i follow christ like i wonder if if i was to watch you or i was to follow you and i watched and i heard um the things that came out of your mouth and the things that you did i wonder would i fall more in love with christ as a result what does your spiritual practice look like for you like like what does that look like some of you tonight like you need to leave this room like you've been making excuses after excuses and 2020 is about to come to an end and and listen you're not all in but we've created an environment called first steps up in the loft every single week and you can go and you can hear more about how to get in community and how to find people that are going to come alongside you come up right here at the end of service i would love to talk with you what it looks like to spiritually practice your faith what it looks like to fight against sin to be a man to not make excuses i'm not talking about perfection i'm talking about pursuing the one who is perfect and trusting that in that process in that pursuit he'll give you what you need and so we think about the right things we practice our faith and last truth that's going to help us learn the secret of contentment is hoping in christ look at what philippians 4 11-13 says not that i speak of being in need for i've learned in whatever situation i am in to be content listen i know how to be brought low paul says and i know how to abound in any and every circumstance i have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger abundance and need and look at what he says here the climax the coffee cup verse the the the i black verse for the athletes right the t-shirt verse the one that we throw on our insta bios it's this i can do all things through him who strengthens me and here we see the secret to life i can do all things through christ who strengthens me and but you know what's sad about this we just slap it on a coffee mug we just slap it on um the instabios but when we look around the world we see a world that doesn't say hey i can do all things through christ who strengthens me no it says i can do all things through my good looks i can do all things through my gifts i can do all things through my job i can do all things through my money i can do all things through my popularity i can do all things through my followers on instagram i can do all things through my 401k i can do all things through my future relationship but the opposite is just as true if not truer i can do all things when i don't get the job i can do all things when god is calling me to make hard decisions to walk away from some things that i began to compromise in and i begin to settle for less than god's best i can do all things when i don't win the game when i don't get the promotion when the cancer does come see we have used this verse as selfish motivation to get what we want and paul's saying no no this isn't just for the good times it's for the bad times notice what paul is saying here in any and every circumstance i've learned how to be content whether it's the lowest of lows or the highest of highest see a lot of us come into tonight and we've confused happiness with joy where happiness is based on your happenings man you have a great happening man you're good you're happy but when that happening is low you're like bro what what just happened and i am reading tonight that paul is offering and through through christ he's offering us something else he's offering us a deep-seated joy that's not based on happiness it's based on who christ is do you know that you can navigate any circumstance that comes your way this is why people who have everything they've ever wanted aka hollywood they end up depressed have affairs and many times commit suicide people who own private islands have to wake up and take a pill every single day nothing wrong with taking a pill but you get the drift and so paul knows what it's like to be on both ends of the spectrum paul wasn't robbed of joy because of his focus because of his circumstances because but because of his focus his focus was solely on christ see proverbs 27 20 says this death and destruction are never satisfied and neither are the human eyes i had a fire pit a few weeks back and it was cool outside kind of like right right now and i remember feeding that fire just twigs and leaves and and some in some logs some wood and it began to consume those things and listen this is a picture of our heart that when we put something in our hearts and we try to satisfy it with other things other than christ like alcohol porn gossip and anger like it leaves us wanting for more you know this to be true listen this is why you go to bed at night asking the question is that it and paul's saying hey no it's not it there's more to life there's hope and the worst thing that god could ever do for any of us is to give us satisfaction and contentment with something other than himself that's the worst thing he could do for any one of us sometimes not prayer over a young adult says i'm praying that god would make you so miserable that you have no choice but to look inward and upward you know when this played out in my life this idea jesus is enough it was i was in a dark season man i remember it i was 26 years old i was lying in my bed after a series of breakups and man i was i turned the corner i wanted to be god's man i surrendered my life to christ and i was like yeah i'm in i'm all in with this god thing and i'm i'm going and then year after year after year i found myself single listen i know there's a lot of other needs in the room that are way bigger than that but that was mine and i remember as 26 27 years old this season all the way up to 30 years old i remember at times i'm crying in bed like just tears i'm telling you i'm i'm cool i'm cool if you know that i cry tears rolling down my face man some of you men but i never share that well good for you maybe you should maybe that would help and i just remember just having tears running down my face saying god i don't know i think you got it wrong god and i remember god saying hey am i enough josiah and i remember saying i don't know if you are like this is the one thing i never thought i'd have to wrestle with i never have to begin to fight and honestly that season god began to sustain me in ways like i just talked about tonight through community through other men pointing me to the scripture when i didn't want to believe this thing confession of sin like just confessing hey i'm weak i'm not in a good place a discipline where i got into god's word renewed my mind and through that season of like even shaking the selfishness that was in my heart where i replaced it with serving god began to do something in me and he began to show me hey that there's more to life than just a relationship that hey i i might i might have that for you josiah but hey listen that's not the end i'm the end and that's a really hard thing i'm not i'm not minimizing it i wrestled with it for a long time and through that season i learned that jesus was enough i chose to place my trust in him and let's listen this is what paul is getting at are you going to hope in christ i wonder if there's a generation of young adults tonight that would say hey i'm not just putting it on a coffee cup i'm not just putting it on a verse i'm not just putting on the instagram bio but i can do all things through christ who strengthens me no matter what comes my way no matter what happens i can do all things through christ who strengthens me and that would be the anthem of your life no matter what no matter what that's what paul is getting after tonight through god he's saying hey this is what i want to get you to you think that there's other things that are going to satisfy you and they won't i'm giving you these things if you have them awesome leverage them to make me known and to know me more that's the point not that you would find fulfillment in those things alone paul learned that christ was enough he realized that he couldn't do it on his own and you know what i love about this season of corona maybe the one thing is it stripped me away from josiah it's caused me to rely on a god who says no matter what happens no matter the circumstances i'm still the same yesterday today and tomorrow and i'm not changing even though that the world changes even though there's things that come and go i am present i am the same i am with you i love you i pursue you and it's me recognizing my fallibility my sin my weakness and when i'm weak the scripture says he's strong and so would you make me more weaker god so that i can be filled up with a supernatural strength that doesn't look like the rest of the world so that then when they see this life listen they see something else outside of me that's the heart and listen man god still's got ground to take in my heart but tonight he's saying hey we can have contentment and we can be okay when things are not okay but you have to commit to thinking about the right things to practicing your faith in hoping in christ that he would meet the deepest desires of your heart and let me pray that he would tonight father only you can do that no pill no relationship [Music] no purchase can do what only you can do god would you bring us to the end of our self to show us that you're enough that there's areas in my own life right now that fell to believe that and so would you do that would you take ground in this man and then my friends tonight for your glory our joy and the world's good

Channel: The Porch

Views: 8,519

Rating: 4.9248824 out of 5

Keywords: the, porch, dallas, watermark, community, church, christian, christianity, ministry, movement, fort, worth, faith, sermon, dating, truth, bible, advice, biblical, counsel, jonathan pokluda, the porch, watermark community church, young adults, fort worth, david marvin, todd wagner, the bible

Id: KgCbb_m68OM

Length: 39min 26sec (2366 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020