Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I want this for you, for me, for all of us.

In fact, before we go further I want you to take a moment and think of one bit of happiness from the past year and tell the persons on your right and left what you thought of.

(PAUSE)

I understand that we represent a variety of 2022’s in their quality and quantity of happiness.

But we’ve all had happy elements of the past year and I’m confident that 2023 will be no different.

Now if the quantity and quality of your happiness last year was low, again, I sincerely wish for you to have a happy new year.

But today we’re going to turn to God’s word in light of the fact that we really know very little in terms of what’s in store for the coming year.

We all have wishes, hopes, perhaps even plans.

But since we don’t really know what’s in store, I thought it appropriate as we step into 2023 to take a look at a key aspect of what it means to know and walk with God and will have far more impact on the happiness of this new year than what happens in this year.

Our 2023, like every year that has come before and will come after, will actually be marked far more by how we respond to the events of the year than the actual events themselves.

This year could be filled with more good things than you could possibly imagine (lottery) and yet it’s not at all uncommon for people to be miserable in just that kind of situation.

We have very little control of what happens to us

But we have a lot to say about how we respond to what happens to us.

So with that in mind I want us to understand what God wants for us in 2023 and beyond.

Very simply, it’s this:

BODY

More than your happiness, God wants your wholeness.

Turn to Matthew 5

Let’s go through and replace every “blessed” with “flourishing”

This is what Christianity is all about.

You and I are not the point of this whole world, God is.

Jesus is the hero.

He’s the one who is, always was and forever will be holy (set apart) and whole (perfect).

But the point of making us in the first place and of Jesus coming to earth, as we’ve been celebrating this advent and Christmas season, is to make us whole so that we can know and enjoy God now and forever - because he is infinitely worthy of knowing and enjoying.

This is the gospel, the good news upon which our faith is built and around which our lives are lived.

So as we consider how we’ll respond to the events of the coming year it’s good for us to rehearse the promise and power of this gospel.

The promise of the gospel is that God will:

Fix what’s broken in you.

This is true for every person on the planet.

But the promise of the gospel is that we are made new:

Each of us is either an old creation or a new creation.

But all of us are creations - we are created by God to be made whole, to flourish.

And part of flourishing is the ability to deal with hard things.

What happens when this ping pong ball hits the hard thing that is the floor?

It bounces.

It’s able to absorb the hard thing and bounce back

What happens when this egg hits the floor?

It breaks.

While there is a brokenness in each of us that only God can fix, God made every one of us to be bouncy, not breaky.

The difference between and Old Creation and a New Creation is another promise of the gospel:

The promise of the gospel is that God will:

Use what’s broken around you to make you bouncy.

If we have put our trust in Jesus then we can rest assured that the hard things have a point.

God will personally use these things to make you more and more bouncy.

He did it with Jesus, making it possible for us to be made new:

Because of Jesus we can do as we’re told in James 1:

See? God uses the broken things to make us more and more bouncy, more and mkore whole (mature and complete)

And this isn’t just one fanatic early Jesus follower.

Peter writes the same kind of thing:

Paul, writing about all the hard things he’s going through, says the same kind of thing as well:

All of this leads us from the promise of the gospel to the power of the gospel.

The power of the gospel means that, for God’s sake, we can pursue resilience.

Resilience is the big, fancy word for being bouncy.

And God not only makes us new, and uses what we go through to keep making us whole, he enables and expects us to put effort into this wholeness making project.

We don’t earn this gift of new life and we could never accomplish this project on our own.

(All the kings horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put humpty dumpty together again.)

But we do get to participate in a certain way, in God’s good work.

So Paul says

He is playing his part in helping people become whole in Jesus.

We get to play a part in helping others and we get to be a part of our own growth.

And so Peter says:

See it?

If we’re new creations God has given us everything we need, we don’t supply the materials for wholeness.

But we get to use these materials, in his power, for his name’s sake, so that people see how great he is, and develop our wholeness, including endurance or resilience - bounciness

That said, we are made to bounce, but we get deflated.

(basketballs)

We all need some pumping up.

How to pursue?

Scientists have found 4 key aspects of resilience for all people - physical, social, mental and spiritual and these align very well with Biblical priorities for our growth.

So I want to encourage you in 2023 to trust God’s promises and power to grow bouncy by doing these four things:

Get moving.

Hard things come and we stop moving (shutdown)

God made it good for us to be moving.

Show love.

We need healthy friendships

Hard when friendships aren’t what we want them to be

And hard when you mess up friendships (shaking fist)

Love in this case means asking for forgiveness and giving forgiveness

Give thanks.

Hard thing is stuff you don’t like and tend to just think about that

Instead, find something to be thankful for

Seek help.

When hard things happen we forget God

Bring your cares to him

We’re told this because we can - we have the ability to come to God and seek him all the time.

And we’re told this because we need help when hard things come

CONCLUSION

God made you bouncy

And in Jesus he remakes you so that your bounciness leads to flourishing.

May you trust him in 2023 and grow bouncier than ever.

The Bouncy Song

Body - Move, Move, Move

Stand Up and practice being bouncy - MoveX3, JumpX3, DanceX3

Hands (Friends and Family) - Love, Love, Love

Practice: Is there someone to ask forgiveness?

(hi five)

Mind (Thinking)- Thank, Thank, Thank

Practice: say what you’re thankful for out loud