Hey this is Stephen Fertake. I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our

podcast. I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you.

Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message.

Look, I want to preach about Joy today, and I want to get there from a story and then

share several scriptures with you. Can I tell you a story?

I just got a new car last year. I drove a Nissan Maxima for 10 years before I bought

this new car. I loved my Nissan Maxima. My car before this Nissan Maxima was a Nissan

Maxima. That's how much I liked my Nissan Maxima. I maximized the Maxima and it was very good to me

Only thing that I ever remember happening other than the time it cut off in an intersection was that one day I was driving down the road a few years ago,

and my stereo system started doing strange things.

It started skipping around to different tracks

without me telling it to.

And the volume kept... without me telling it too.

And the volume kept increasing and decreasing. And so then I would put it back on the song I wanted to listen to

and I would turn down the volume or turn up the volume depending on it would go both ways without me telling it to

without me turning the knob and it happened for about 10, 15 minutes straight one day that I was driving and it seemed

like my speakers, my car had a mind of their own.

So I thought maybe my maxima got a demon.

And then I looked in the back seat and realized it wasn't a demon, it was my daughter. That she had the center console down, and I never rode back there,

so I didn't realize that all the years that I've had this car,

you can control the volume and skip tracks from back there and she was laughing

...