Jon Hasselbeck Jon opened his message this week with a tweet from Jim Rudy "What you are going through is not nearly as important as how you are going through it." Aside from the revelation that pastor Jon has a twitter account, he wanted to communicate that we have the choice in how we handle and what attitude we have towards the things that happen in our lives. We can't always control when bad things are going to happen but we can control whether we turn that over to God and live in the joy that he offers rather than the suffering of the moment. Jon had Jen and Bill D'Alessandro come up and share about a recent struggle they had. Jen while waiting in her car at work was assaulted by a mugger. He opened the door rustled through her purse and hit her in the face with a gun. She complied and the guy left. She called the police and Bill came and picked her up and took her home. As she was processing through all that had happened she came to the realization that despite everything she was going to be ok. She would heal and she had a great family and a great job and things were going to be ok for her. For her attacker things probably weren't that great. She realized what kind of the situation that man might have been in to bring him to that point. Instead of holding a grudge she turned it over to God and prayed for the man. Everyone around her was shocked at the way she approached this horrible thing and God was glorified in the midst of a difficult situation. Not that what the mad did was ok or good, but God used her choice to be joyful to bring glory to his name. Jon then shared the story of David and his son Absalom. When Absalom openly opposed his father and David left Jerusalem he didn't want his son to die. He even told his army that if they came across Absalom to treat him gently because of David. Despite the evil that Absalom did to bring himself glory and power. David's identity was in God and that allowed him to be gracious to Absalom despite all the evil he had done to David. Jon concluded his message with some pointers for how to choose God and be joyful daily. First he said to pick out a verse of the bible that illustrates God's goodness in all things. Then take that verse and start to memorize it and recite it daily. Keep it on a card or a postit note that you can pull out whenever you need it. Second, he recommended getting a journal and creating a chronology of God's faithfulness in your own live, both the good things and the bad things and writing down how God used each one. Similar to how David wrote down Psalms to chronicle the struggles and joys he had during his own life.