It is a great joy and honor to be here with you and to be brought into worship by singing together

with you to our Savior and Andy's prayer brought me into worship.

We read from Psalm 16 and from Matthew 13 13 which is a great setup because i want to talk about

joy this morning and read you here in just a minute one of my favorite chapters in all the

bible you can go ahead and go there Isaiah 55 if you'd a Bible, we've got them right here at the back.

If you need a copy, oh, it's so good to have paper in this digital age, to have paper in front of us.

If you'd like a Bible, they're handing them out.

Now, I know that when I come in here, guests from out of town to talk about joy, I realize that in any

gathering of this size, people are all over the map. I know there's some golden retrievers in here

who are just kind of like, whatever the pastor wants to talk about, let's do it, let's do it, let's go.

Let's talk about joy. Isaiah 55, this is great. And we have others who are more E.OR-like.

You're a Winnie the Pooh fan.

E-Oar's like, all right.

We talk about joy.

And there's different circumstances in our lives.

Some of you are in a season of sorrow, I'm sure.

And I'm not talking about a joy this morning that is mutually exclusive

with sorrow. I'm going to talk about a joy that's deeper than, a joy that will sustain you in

sorrow, a joy that will let you feel and grieve the burdens of real life sorrow in a real

way, going through a season of suffering.

The joy we have to talk about this morning is not mutually exclusive of suffering, but

sustains us in the hardest parts of our lives.

...