Laugh! For God’s sake, let her rip!

Steve Brown:
Laugh! For God’s sake, let her rip! Let’s talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. I’m Matthew, executive producer for the program, and our host is author and seminary professor Steve Brown. The church has suffered under do more, try harder religion for too long, and Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. We’re looking, as a part of our months long study in the Book of Philippians, we’re looking at the fourth chapter of Philippians: verses four through seven. I’m not going to read it again to you, but if you were listening yesterday, I spent most of the program talking about what it meant to live in wonder, a supernatural life. And the question I suggested that you should pose to yourself is this. What is it in my life that can only be explained by the supernatural? Or maybe better in terms of evangelism, what is it in my life that others see that can only be explained in terms of the supernatural? One of the dangerous things we do as Christians, and we need to make this a part of it, being rational, being balanced, systematic theology, propositional truth, those things are all important. But they’re important insofar as they point to Jesus and to God, who is a supernatural God, who won’t leave us as orphans, but will come to us and teach us and guide us and grant supernatural answers to supernatural prayers. And then what we’re going to do is get specific, and I’ve mentioned this, going to talk more about it today. First, I would have you note in this text a supernatural joy and rejoicing. Look at the fourth verse.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

And just in case you didn’t get it, because it sounds so crazy, I’m gonna say it again.

I will say it again. Rejoice.

You ever be at a funeral, and somebody says something funny, and you get tickled, and you can’t stop laughing? And the more you try to stop laughing, the more you laugh? And the more you laugh, the people sitting next to you start laughing, and you just can’t stop. Oh man, I’ve been there, and I hate it. It’s, you know, I’m saying inside, quit this, stop this, this is time for tears and mourning and not laughing. But the laughter is there, and it’s hard to stop once it starts. We went through Hurricane Andrew. And no, I’m not going to tell you about it again, but it was a big deal. Years ago, a hurricane came through South Florida and we lost our home. And we lost everything. It was just awful. We thought we were going to die. And a lot of supernatural things happened in that. Did you know that after Hurricane Andrew came through, our house was destroyed, the whole phone system was destroyed, there was no electricity, and our phone was working. It was the only phone in the entire neighborhood that was working and it wasn’t even connected. And so, I called all of my neighbors and I said, come in and call your relatives and tell them you’re alright. And they did. And I did interviews with radio stations all around the country. And as soon as all of that was done, the phone died. Why didn’t it die before then? It was supernatural. Something was going on that was beyond me. And when I think about it, I still wonder and the supernatural nature of it, but I remember. Let me tell you something that really happened. We, after we lost our house, looked everywhere. We lived in a hotel way up Florida for a month or so, and then it became important that we find a place to stay, and we found a little apartment with one window, and it looked out on a brick wall. It was smaller than a hotel room, but it was safe, and it was dry, and we lived there for months. One Sunday morning and my wife wasn’t feeling well, I decided to go to church and she decided, this is rare, that she was going to stay home. I went out into the parking lot to get my car and to drive to our church and my car was gone. I mean somebody had stolen, I don’t know why they wanted it? A tree had hit her and it looked awful, but it ran okay. But somebody had taken my car. Now, three months before that, if somebody stole my car, I’d get my gun and go looking for them. But this Sunday morning, I went back into our little apartment and I said to my wife, Do you know what just happened? She said, what? I said, somebody stole God’s car. And she said, what? I said, the car’s gone. Somebody took it. And I don’t know who took it. And she said, you’re kidding. And then she started laughing. And then I started laughing. And we laughed until the tears were rolling down our faces. And I thought about that later. And I wondered, what was that all about? There was nothing to laugh about. I’d lost my house. I’d lost the car. I’d lost a lot of important things. And here I was, giggling, laughing and couldn’t stop. You know what happened? Philippians 4:4 happened.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice.

It’s a supernatural gift and nobody can explain it. It’s a supernatural gift and when you smile and laugh in the middle of the darkness, everybody notices. And some will run to Jesus. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Laughing in the darkness. Thank you Steve, for that story and that reminder. We’ll continue here in Philippians four tomorrow. Will you join us for that? Well, I think you’ll agree that Steve has a special gift for teaching the Bible in a way that makes challenging concepts more accessible. Someone else who has that gift, Chad Bird. We spoke with Chad recently on Steve Brown Etc. about an audacious idea that even if your life is pretty ordinary, God still wants to use you. Take a listen to part of that episode, then I’ll be back to tell you about a special free offer.

Chad Bird: We learn, of course, theology from the Bible. But as Martin Luther said.

There’s three things that make a theologian. One of these is prayer. One of these is study or meditation of the Scriptures. And the other is tentatio, affliction, struggle.

And if I’ve learned anything over these last few years, since writing Your God is Too Glorious, it is that the theoogoly of the cross, which is really what this book is all about, is not only true Biblically, theologically, but it’s also true very much experientially. The ups and downs of life, especially the downs, they just don’t stop. So, you learn more and more, I think, with every passing year as a Christian, that God isn’t in the glorious, in the spectacular, in the victorious. But he’s in the nitty gritty, the dark places, the small places, the ordinary places of life, including, of course, when you’re struggling under the various crosses that burden us in this life.

Steve Brown:
Saint Teresa said, prayed.

Lord you’d have more friends if you treated the ones you had a little bit better.

But what you’re saying in this book is that that’s where you meet him in the dark places sometimes.

Chad Bird: Yeah. God’s got friends in low places, and sometimes he puts them there.

Steve Brown:
So, don’t waste them. You know, there is this kind of thing in the church that there are professional Christians who are smart, who’ve studied, who are qualified to lead us because they know God. I can’t tell you how often people have asked me to pray for them. And I have said back to them, your prayers don’t work. And they laugh, but there is a sense in which they think that, and that’s what you’re saying in this book, that may be in our weakness and our failure and our pain and our ordininariness we meet God’s gloriousness. Do you have a short definition of glory?

Chad Bird: Yeah. I would say the glory, at least as we think about it in terms of God is power, is might, is spectacular, is all the big God type things that we associate with him. Everything related to power, related to the brilliance, everything related to these things that we associate with the great splendor and power of God. It’s that Biblical image of God’s glory is perfectly revealed in the crucifixion of Jesus. That supreme irony, where when you want to see the glory of God, you look at the cross. And when you look at the cross, of course, visually you see nothing but the lack of glory. You see gory, you see death, you see suffering, you see what seems to be a divine abandonment, all that kind of stuff. But when you, as one of my professors liked to put it.

When you pluck out your eyeballs and stick them in your ears.

When you see reality through what God speaks to you, instead of what your eyes are lying to you about, then all of a sudden you have the proper perspective and you realize that god’s glory is certainly there, but it doesn’t appear to us as glory. It appears under it’s opposite. It appears under cross, it appears under weakness, it appears under suffering, it appears under the small and inglorious things of this life. That’s where God likes to hide himself precisely in order that there we might find him. Not in the way that we think naturally God is going to be, but in the way that instead he has chosen to reveal himself.

Matthew Porter:
We put that entire show on a CD that we would love to send to you for free. Does that sound good? Well, then call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail Steve@keylife.org to ask for that CD. To mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for your absolutely free copy of the CD featuring Chad Bird. And finally, if you’re blessed by the ministry of Key Life, would you help share that blessing with others through your giving? Giving is easy. Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. And of course, now you can give safely and securely through text. Just pick up your phone and text Key Life to 28950, then follow the instructions. Again, that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And as always, we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.