Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vot, the host and the senior publishing

director at Word on Fire. Today we share a keynote talk from the recent Good News conference

in Orlando, Florida, given by the great father Mike Schmitz. Many of you will know father

Mike through his YouTube channel and through his Bible and a year podcast. In this talk,

his father Mike explains, joy is a choice just like love. We can either chase the feeling

or choose the reality. Joy, as he says, comes from the fact that you know that God is here

and that you are known and loved by him. The Christian life is a pursuit of the one

who loved us first, the one in whom we find our true joy. So we hope you enjoy. No pun

intended this talk by father Mike Schmitz. Again, a keynote talk from the recent Good News

conference.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. It's really funny. I think it's funny at least.

I was assuring some of the folks that are on our table during supper about speaking

of the Bible in the year. Speaking of that podcast, about maybe a month into it, it was

doing relatively well and some people had, whether I knew them or they just were friends

or I didn't know them at all, they got my whole to my number or got a whole to my email

and they would message me and say, hey, congratulations, it's really cool. But don't let it go to

your head. And I appreciate that because that can happen. But my thought was, I mean,

that makes sense. But I had a podcast in 2007 of my own homilies that, and then I started

another podcast in 2015. And now the one that I just like pick up the Bible and say, I

read it from the Gospel of John, chapter six. And I mean, God's word, that's when it goes.

So I'm like, if anything, it's more humbling than anything else because it's like, wow,

when I tried to do it, it was fine. But when God does it, it's amazing. So, and that's

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