Mo Better Joy

gooIntroduction

What's it like to walk free again after years behind bars? Lee Horton and his brother Dennis know the feeling. They were convicted of robbery and murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. They always maintained their innocence. In February 2021, after being locked up for a quarter of a century, they were granted clemency and released.

Here's Lee Horton’s story:

I'm going to tell you honestly. The first thing that I was aware of when I walked out of the doors and sat in the car and realized that I wasn't handcuffed. And for all the time I've been in prison, every time I was transported anywhere, I always had handcuffs on. And that moment right there was … the most emotional moment that I had. Even when they told me that the governor had signed the papers … it didn't set in until I was in that car and I didn't have those handcuffs on.

And I don't think people understand that the punishment is being in prison. When you take away everything, everything becomes beautiful to you. ... When we got out … we went to the DMV to get our licenses back. My brother and I stood in line for two and a half hours. And we heard all the bad things about the DMV. We had the most beautiful time. And all the people were looking at us because we were smiling and we were laughing, and they couldn't understand why we were so happy. And it just was that - just being in that line was a beautiful thing.

I was in awe of everything around me. It's like my mind was just heightened to every small nuance. Just to be able to just look out of a window, just to walk down a street and just inhale the fresh air, just to see people interacting. ... It woke something up in me, something that I don't know if it died or if it went to sleep. I've been having epiphanies every single day since I've been released.

One of my morning rituals every morning is I send a message of ‘good morning, good morning, good morning, have a nice day’ to every one of my 42 contacts. And they're like, ‘how long can (he) keep doing this?’ But they don't understand that I was deprived. And now, it's like I have been released, and I've been reborn into a better day, into a new day. Like, the person I was no longer exists. I've stepped through the looking glass onto the other side, and everything is beautiful! Lee and Dennis Horton’s experience is the same as being set free from the prison of sin and Satan's influence. It can have a hold on you that you just feel you can't break, but I want to tell you this morning that when you experience the freedom that is found only in Christ Jesus, there is joy unspeakable full of glory! All when I think of how he brought me through! Of how the Lord change my life my soul is overwhelmed! I have Joy! Unspeakable joy! Hallelujah!

Do you have joy today? I couldn’t wait to get here today…To tell you about the Mo Better JOY that Jesus has for you!

Paul speaks of the Macedonian church, who even while they were poor and impoverished got over-the-top crazy in their living and giving. Do you want to be that Mo better Liver and Giver? DO you want to have that over-the-TOP crazy Joy life? This morning the LORD has given us the keys to Mo Better Joy! There are two steps that are necessary for us to experience more better joy in our living and also our giving of our time talent and treasure. First we need to be positioned to experience the mo better joy. And then we need to become proactive to experience that mo better joy in our living and our giving. The first is an internal action, and the second is an external action. If you will...Allow me just a few minutes to explain them both to you.

Getting Positioned To Experience Mo Better Joy

To be properly positioned to become a joyful giver we must totally surrender three foundational areas of our lives and the more fully we are able to surrender them, the more perfectly positioned we will be to experience the greatest levels of joy in our living and giving.

1. We must surrender ourselves

if we want to experience real joy in our lives we need to voluntarily vacate our own throne. Now I know that's easier said than done! But as long as we insist on remaining in the center of our own universe, as long as we insist on being the potentates of our own self-kingdoms, we will never find the deepest and most profound levels of joy in our living and giving. Paul tells us plainly and painfully in Philippians 2:3-4, "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests but also for the interest of others." Paul further cautions us about an inappropriate overestimation of ourselves when he warns us in Romans 12:3, "I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of yourself than he ought to think."

Unless we are willing to abdicate, to to give up our "most important person" status and fully surrender our needs and interests to the needs and interests of others, we will never be properly positioned to experience the deepest levels of joy in our living and giving.

So in position #1: the "king" voluntarily gives it up to become a servant. When you voluntarily become a slave to Jesus you're not available to any other Masters... Most important of all yourself.

2. We Must Surrender Our Stuff

There's something incredibly liberating mentally, emotionally, and spiritually when we finally come to embrace the realization that we own nothing. Everything, and I mean everything, we possess belongs to God. He clearly expresses this truth to Job in 41:11 when He declares, "Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine." And He is still declaring the same message to us today. For many of us we have absconded with God's stuff and claimed it to be our own. And we need to return the stolen property back to its rightful owner with our humble apologies for having taken it from him in the first place.

Now, we will see that our living and giving is not about what of my life and stuff am I going to give to the Lord, it is about what of God's life and stuff am I going to make available for his purposes. With this proper reorientation of our relationship to the life and stuff, we are now free to have the attitude that can say literally, "My Life and whatever is mine is yours Lord and you can have it." Because we understand that none of it is ours in the first place.

Jesus tells us things like this, “So then none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions” (Luke 14:33). He says, total surrender of your life and your stuff is your only option if you want to be my disciple.