Jesus came to give us joy, peace, satisfaction, and contentment. Paul understood that probably better than anyone, even as he was writing from a Roman prison, when he wasn’t going anywhere and was stuck where he was. He wasn’t going to have any more than what he had, and he certainly had no computer and no cellphone. He pens this letter by talking about how he had found the secret of satisfaction. If Paul had died with his last words he would have been totally satisfied. There are three things we can do to live a life of total satisfaction according to Paul, and my prayer is that we all learn to implement these things in our lives so we can be totally satisfied as well.

The question now before us in today’s message is this: How can you bear the fruit of joy that you have to handle, with all the problems that you have to solve, with all the people that you have to deal with? A man who is in prison, under the threat of death every day, not knowing whether he would live or die, from one day to the next, wrote the perfect prescription for how to get stress out when you are stressed out. Paul gives us four steps to follow if we want to experience stress relief, and I can guarantee that your life will be richer, better, and sweeter if you practice these steps on a daily basis.

Life is exactly like a race. From the time you are born until the time you die you are running a race. The one goal in every race is to cross the finish line. No matter what else you do in a race it doesn’t matter how hard you run or how fast you run. If you don’t cross the finish line you won’t win. One sure-fire way to get joy and ultimately win in the life you are living is to set God-given goals and then to give your life every day to reaching those goals. A man by the name of Paul gives us the formula on how to do that. He gives us three simple steps that you can use at the beginning of every year, every month, every week, and every day to make that year, that month, that week, and that day the best year, best month, best week and best day of your life.

I believe that two things will determine what difference you made and to the degree that you made a difference - what you know and who you know. Nobody got a bigger bang for the buck of their life, outside of Jesus, than a man named Paul. Besides him, I don’t believe anyone who has ever lived had a more productive life, got more out of his potential, or had a greater long-term impact than this man who took a seed called the gospel, planted it as far as he could go, and the result has been the explosion of Christianity that we see all over the world two-thousand years later. How did he do it? What was the secret to his unbelievable influence and impact? Well, we have discovered the secret of who we should know and what we should know that will help us to get where we need to go in life and where God wants us to be when it is over. We should be determined to know three things on a daily basis, and they made all the difference.

We only get to take the ride of life once. Shouldn’t it be a joyride? Even with the bumps in the road, the sharp curves, the steep cliffs, and the deep valleys, don’t you want every hour of every day, of every week, of every year, to be filled with joy? In the coming days, would you like to be less stressed out? Would you like to maximize your pleasure and minimize your pain? Would you like to face life every day with a smile on your face, a bounce to your step, and joy in your heart regardless of your circumstances? In the second chapter of Philippians, Paul gives a three-step formula on how to do that. So, if you want to enjoy the ride of life, I guarantee that you will if you take these three steps.

There are two things that every human being has to face from the moment they are born. That is life and death. I don’t believe you are ready to live until you are ready to die. I also don’t believe you are ready to die until you are ready to live. I believe that Jesus is the only one who can truly get you ready for both. When Paul was in prison, he had to go to sleep every night ready to die the next morning. But even in this terrible set of circumstances, he continued to rejoice because he recognized that his life was in Christ, and to die was gain. In this message, I want to walk through the different things we gain when we die so that we can live our lives unafraid of death.

The Apostle Paul wrote thirteen books of the New Testament. All of them were letters. Of the thirteen letters, eleven of them were written to seven different churches. Philippians is the only letter that we have in the New Testament where Paul never one time corrects bad teaching, rebukes bad behavior, or handled a bad situation. We see only a completely positive letter to a church he wrote. This was a church that was full of joy. It was a church that gave joy to the pastor that founded it and gave joy to the people who attended it. Nineteen times you will find in this book the words “rejoice, joy, and gladness.” When you read this book you realize this is what a church should look like on the inside to the people who attend it, but it is also what a church ought to look like from the outside to people who don’t attend it. I want to share with you today the three things that are true about that church that I want to be true about the church today, both to insiders and to outsiders. I want to be a church wanted.

The God we have been talking about throughout this entire series knows you better than anyone or anything. Just like He knew Moses, and He knew the Israelites, He knows you too. But the question of the day is this, “Do you know God?” Now the question is not, “Do you know about God?” The question is not even, “Do you believe in God?” The question I am asking is, “Do you know God personally?” Then I would follow up that question with this one, “How well do you know God?” I can answer that question for all of us. You know God as well as you want to. As we wrap up this series with today’s message, we are going to take a look at how we can come to know God deeply and personally.

The people of Israel had been treating God like a heavenly bellhop expecting Him to be at their every beck and call and give them everything they wanted when they wanted it. When Moses had lingered on that mountaintop meeting with God, they decide they would just take matters into their own hands. They would make a god more to their liking. The truth is, we all have “idol hands” that tend to either make the God we worship the God we want or make the god that we want the god that we worship. We’re going to learn today that if you are for God, you won’t put anything before God. You may not think that you have an idolatry problem. You may not even understand why we even have to discuss this issue, but when we see how we do choose false idols and what happens when we do, my prayer is it will cause all of us to give our total loyalty, complete love, and full life to the only true God there is.

In this message, we are going to study the story of when God had a word for His people and wanted to meet with them. But before the people met with God, God wanted to meet with Moses. Every meeting was a mountaintop meeting and though you might get the idea from the movies that Moses only went up the mountain one time, he actually went up seven times. God wanted to show both Moses and the people that there is no bigger deal in life than meeting with God. What’s also great about this story is that we learn that the same God who met with Moses wants to meet with you. The same God that spoke to Moses wants to speak to you. We can learn from this mountaintop meeting how we can meet with the God of this universe every day, and not only do we not have to make an appointment or wait in line, but when we meet with Him, He will give us His undivided attention.