Some days, let’s be honest, there’s not a lot to be happy about.  But no matter how bad things get – we have the opportunity to decide how we react to them.  We can have a gladness, even on the darkest of days.

It’s great to be with you again today. When life’s the pits the last thing we feel like doing is smiling. I read something the other day that put that into quite a sharp focus for me.

Here’s how it goes. It said, “Out of the gloom a voice said unto me ‘smile and be happy things could be worse,’ so I smiled, I was happy and behold things did get worse.” I love it! But you know it does have a point, no matter what’s going on around us, no matter what our physical circumstances are, no matter how bad it gets there’s something deep inside us that gives us the ability to choose how we respond.

It’s something that elevates us above animals. It’s a dignity, it’s a nobility that’s in each of us, the ability to say, “No, I won’t be a victim, I’ll choose to respond differently.” From where I sit, it has everything to do with being handcrafted in the image of God. No matter how much we feel the victim of our circumstances, it’s that dignity and nobility that give us the power to choose.

And you might say, “Berni, well that’s really easy for you to say. You know, l look at you, you do this ministry stuff, you’re on radio that’s pretty easy. You don’t have to put up with the things that I have to put up with in my life. You have no idea what I have to put up with in my life.” Let me share with you, just a part of my life that’s going on right now as we speak.

Yes, I’m in full-time ministry, haven’t always been, had a career in the IT Industry but now I’m in full-time ministry. This is what I do for a living. But at the same time I still do some IT consulting because it’s really good revenue for the ministry. It helps us to spread the gospel. And right now I’m doing a really large consulting job, its huge, its complex, I mean I’m enjoying it, but there are big stakes in this job and its hard work. And most days I start work at four in the morning and I finish at five or six at night.

You get tired doing that day after day, on the one hand it’s satisfying; on the other hand it’s a real burden being tired a lot. It’s only for a time but it’s what’s going on in my life right now. And on top of that I’ve a recording schedule. I come into the studio, I sit down and spend time with you. And it’s not good enough for me just to put on a happy voice because if I’m just putting on a happy voice you’ll figure that out in about 15 seconds flat.

To be of any use to you, to be able to pull up next to you and share the goodness of God and the love of Jesus I have to be living it. Unless I’m living it, this life of victory that Jesus gave me, I am useless to you. And some days it’s a heavy load, some days those long hours feel like a heavy weight, right now, today, here as we are sitting together. Now I’ve a choice I can say, “Well there’s nothing I can do I have to do it, I’m in the middle of it, I’m a victim,” or I can rejoice.

Last night I got an email from Rwanda, and it was a woman from a church and she said we love the programs and we want to take these programs and use them as studies in a women’s group that meets regularly together here in Rwanda. And I’m just in the middle of doing that and setting that up, oh man that makes it all worth it! I just rejoice and I think I would do all that I do just for that group of women meeting in Kigali in Rwanda having that study together.

We all have really good exciting bits in our lives and then we have crosses to bear. And we can make a choice, we can walk around and grumble and complain and whine and whinge. I could do that with the hours I’m working. I could let that get me down. I could complain about the fact that I don’t have the hours to spend with my wife right now that I really would love to have. But when I do that I know something, it robs me, doesn’t it? It robs me of life, and rather than making the burden lighter it makes it twice as heavy. Can you make a decision not to do that any more? I have, I’m not doing that anymore.

There are sometimes when I want to open my mouth and let negative words come out of my mouth and I have decided not to do that, I have decided to rejoice. And that’s what the Apostle Paul does in this letter that we’re looking at – we’re looking at all week this week on A Different Perspective – that he wrote couple of thousand years ago when he was on death row in a Roman prison.

And he wrote, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.” And we’re going to look at why he was rejoicing, seems a little bit bizarre, but he was, on death row.

And the question is for each of us, are we going to grumble and complain and whinge for the rest of our lives or are we going to speak God’s words and rejoice because He’s given us something to rejoice about?

So there’s Paul on death row in a Roman dungeon, chained hand and feet to his guards, he’s a political prisoner, he was a celebrity, really well-known, now he’s out of the limelight and he’s on death row. My hunch is, doesn’t get much worse than that, and this is what he says about rejoicing in his letter to these buddies of his in a church at Philippi. He says:

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I tell you rejoice, let your gentleness be known to everyone, the Lord is here. Don’t worry about anything but in everything, in prayer and supplication with thanks giving; make your requests known to God. And you know something the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4: 4-7)

Rejoicing is about gladness, about thriving, about exceeding abundance. And in fact the Greek words that’s used in the original text comes from a group of words, a group of Greek words that mean free gift and grace. The thing that Paul was rejoicing about was his relationship with Jesus. Why? Because in this dark personal prison, in this dark dungeon, in his heart there was a light, in his heart there was a candle burning, Jesus – hope, a future, a certainty, a joy. Jesus does that. That’s what happens when you have a real relationship with him, not a stain glass window relationship with him; I mean a real personal relationship with Jesus the Son of God.

What about your prison, what about your dark space? Will He, does He? This Jesus wants to be in that place with you and with me, whatever it is we can take it to Him and say, “Thank you God for this dark place, thank you God for this problem.” That’s what Paul says, doesn’t matter what’s going on, go to Jesus in prayer and thanksgiving.

Thank you God for this opportunity to let your light shine in my heart amidst all this darkness. Thank you God for your promise you’ll be here. And there in prison Paul says that the peace of God which surpasses anything that we can understand will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So no more tossing and turning at night, no more fear, no more grumbling, no more worrying, get close to Jesus and He will surround our hearts and our minds and protect us with the peace of God. No more feeling sick to pit of your stomach. He gets not only on the inside of our personal prison but wraps himself around our hearts and minds insulating us with peace – a peace that doesn’t make sense, a peace that we can’t understand but a peace that is so real and so pure and so wondrous we can’t put it into words.

That’s what happens, and all of a sudden life looks different. We see life maybe still in our dungeon but with a peace and a joy and a love that words cannot describe.