Chapter 26: Two Years In, The Fruit Of Joy

Galatians 5: 22-23 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."
 
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           Yesterday was my 2nd birthday. I'm now two years old. Yep, you read that right. I'm learning to eat solid food, playing with more complicated toys, my bedtime is now 7 p.m. instead of 6, and I can throw temper tantrums like nobody's business. (And no, I'm not potty trained yet, and I still have to take a nap after lunchtime feeding.)
            What? You don't believe me? Wondering where I'm going with this? I'm sure most of you already knew what I was referring to, but, just in case you’re new here, let me clarify: I turned two years old, spiritually speaking. Yesterday was the second anniversary of my salvation, my rebirth in Christ. Hard to believe so much time has passed so quickly, and yet, sometimes, it feels as if an entire lifetime has been crammed into these past 24 months. The last few weeks, especially, have seen more spiritual growth, more blessings, and more new challenges for me than anything I've dealt with since I surrendered to the Lord on September 17, 2020.
            For the past couple weeks I've been trying to come up with a cohesive theme for this blog post. I know what I want to say, but I also want these posts to be more than bi-monthly church bulletins of my daily life. The writer in me insists on being creative and not settling for just a by-the-numbers log entry of this new adventure that I started two years ago.
Today, in his sermon for the morning service, my pastor spoke of joy. He described the qualities of true joy that is found only in being saved and being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ. As he was speaking, I thought back to the sermons by Brother Ben Smoker who had visited our church the first week of September. He, too, spoke of joy, but his messages were a trilogy that was spread out over three nights, and he covered all nine fruits of the spirit.
            There's something else too. For the last month or so, the phrase "joy in the waiting" has been circling in the back of my mind. I don't remember exactly when it first popped into my head, but it was probably sometime shortly after returning from church camp at the end of July. I had been in the book of Isaiah for most of that month, and one of the recurring themes in his writing is "waiting on the Lord", especially in the hard times, when we are beset with trials and tribulations in our daily life. Something new occurred to me, though, as I thought about that term "waiting", and all the various meanings of that word. Most of my daily life as a Christian has felt like a very long waiting period. For most of this year, especially, I have been eagerly anticipating the answer to the prayer request that I first spoke of here in Chapter 22. I know consciously that I must wait on God and His perfect timing, but, as with so much else in this new life that I now lead, there's a big difference between knowing something and actually living or experiencing that thing. And so, for the past few weeks since returning from camp, I began praying to the Lord that He would help me find the joy in the waiting. In other words, what else can I focus on in the here and now that will give me joy and satisfaction in my daily walk with Him as I wait for the joy and the blessing of that future answer to prayer?
            Now, this morning in church service, as I listened to my pastor expound on joy, and as I thought about Brother Smoker's sermons on the fruit of the Spirit, and as I ruminated on my 2nd anniversary of being saved by grace, and, once again, as the phrase "joy in the waiting" leaped to the forefront of my conscious thought, the theme for this blog post finally started to form in my mind's eye.
            Joy, plain and simple. It's become a part of my daily life, in bits and pieces, surfacing in different forms, in different areas, and, most importantly, it's been a recurring theme in the new chapter of my life that began this past week. Here’s a brief list of the different types of joy that I’ve been experiencing in the last few weeks.
 
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            There's joy in the mirror.
            For all of you who have been following along with me since I started this new adventure, you know about the huge change I made last year when I embarked on a physical fitness regime. Thanks to my friend, Gama, and the makeshift gym he set up in his garage, I started a regular workout routine. He showed me how to properly lift weights to develop my upper body and tone muscle. He gave me dieting tips and nutrition advice (some of which I still follow, some of which I still don't have the willpower to give up completely). But the original desire to get fit and be healthier in general came from the Holy Spirit. There are no couch potatoes in the Lord's Army, and He gave me a strong craving to be the best that I can for my God and Savior: physically, mentally & spiritually.
In the last fourteen months I have lost significant weight in my stomach area, increased muscle mass and tone in my legs, arms, chest and back, and gone down a full two sizes – sometimes three, depending on the design and label – in shirts: from an 2XL in June 2021 to a large or medium earlier this summer. Even in just my face I can see a huge difference when Facebook pops up photo or video memories from two, three and five years ago. All of that has done more than make me feel happier and more satisfied with the reflection in the mirror.
It has given me joy.
            Something else that I didn't consciously realize until just recently, as I looked back on all the changes in my life in the last two years, was just how little self-esteem I possessed before getting saved. In my old life, ever since high school, I was the dictionary definition of couch potato. I never went to the gym, ate whatever I wanted, and parked myself in front of the TV or computer as soon as I got home from work or my college classes. I had no real goals, no definitive ambitions, no idea, really, of what I wanted to do with my life. I just lived in the present, with no real thought of the distant future, and my only concern was that my DVR would function correctly so I wouldn't miss the fall premieres of all my favorite TV shows.
            But, beneath all that, what God has shown me now, as I look back on that old life, was not only how selfish I lived, wrapped up only in what I wanted and what made me feel good from one moment to the next, but also how ashamed I was of my fat, flabby, out of shape physical self. This was part of the reason that I avoided serious, romantic relationships. I couldn't imagine what guy would be attracted to someone as overweight as I was. But, at the same time, I was too happy living a carefree life for myself to really care about any relationship deeper than simple friendship, so the whole self-image problem wasn't really a huge concern. I just ignored it and changed the channel on my TV to the latest episode of "Desperate Housewives".
            One of the beautiful aspects of God's grace and His "good work" that He begins in us at the moment of salvation is 1: to show us just how ugly and awful and lost we were as sinners; and 2: the amazing, wonderful, and glorious transformation of our mind, body and spirit in His likeness once we surrender wholly to Him. I now care enough about the way I look and about the body that I have been gifted with to make sure I am as healthy and as strong as I can be physically in order to fully serve my loving and gracious Creator and Savior.
            Every time I read the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, I always stop at verse 17: "And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!" I always wonder: at what point, covered in mud and filth, half naked, trying not to vomit the moldy, putrid husks that were all that was available to him as food, did that lost son finally wake up and realize how ugly and desperate and lonely he really, truly was? I know when I finally faced my ugly, fat, unhealthy, and desperately lonely self and admitted that I didn't want to continue in that life anymore. It was the night of September 17, 2020, and now, two years later, when I look in the mirror every morning, I smile. Not because I'm happy to be alive another day to serve God, or because I love my new, in-shape, physical self, though I am glad for both of those reasons.
            No, I smile because I have joy for the desire God gave me to see myself as He has always seen me: His dear child whom He loves, no matter what I might look like now, or how ugly I used to be when I was wallowing in the mud with the swine.
 
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            There's joy in walking by faith.
            At the beginning of this year, when my boss, Vanessa, called me into her office for a one on one meeting, I knew what she was going to ask me. She had had the same meeting with some of the other tellers and assistant managers in our store, and I had been mentally preparing a list in answer to her future inquiry. She asked me three things that I wanted to set as my personal goals for the first quarter of the year. I've had meetings such as this off and on over the last decade of my employment with Check City, and my response is almost always the same: do better with customer service, work on my people skills, and do better at managing and training the employees under me. I gave those same three suggestions in that January meeting with Vanessa, and we talked for a few minutes on what steps I was going to take to achieve those goals, came up with a game plan, yadda, yadda, yadda.
            The next day, as I reviewed that meeting in my mind, I suddenly remembered one of my new year’s resolutions. I also  felt a distinct leading from the Holy Spirit. I emailed Vanessa and told her that I wanted a second meeting the following day. Once I was seated and the door closed, I told her I wanted to change one of the items on my list: instead of working on my customer service skills I wanted to train for the position of branch manager. Vanessa grinned and her eyebrows shot up. "Who's inspiring you?" she asked eagerly, pleased with my request. "The Lord Jesus Christ," I replied honestly and simply, without even thinking of where I was or who I was talking to. Although this wasn't the first conversation I've had with Vanessa or my co-workers about my new life and my faith, it was the first time I had directly connected my work life to my new spiritual life.
            I went on to explain to her that I had felt led by the Spirit to step up in all areas of my life: personal, work and at church. That meant doing something I had always been afraid of: being a leader. In my ten years with Check City I had never desired to be a branch manager. I didn't want the extra responsibility and all the risks that came with it. I also didn't want to be the one having to lead and train and cultivate the characteristics in the people under me that are necessary to building a good, effective team at one's store. In my old life I was not only fat and out of shape, but I was also lazy and selfish. I didn't want to take any risks in my daily life that would push me outside my comfort zone. But now, as the Lord was shaping me into that "new creature" that Paul spoke of in 2 Corinthians 5:17, He was clearly and directly nudging me in this new direction in my career with Check City. He had given me a desire to be a true man of God, and one of the chief qualities of that new man is the ability to lead, regardless if that's a church family, a biological family or a work family.
            I'm not sure if Vanessa fully understood all of that, and I didn't go into quite that much detail, but she was pleased nevertheless to begin training me, and I felt a new joy and self-confidence – as well as a healthy dose of anxiety and fear – as I left her office. "Okay, Lord," I prayed silently, "You directed, and I'm following. But I have no idea how good of a manager and a leader I'll be since I've never done this before." There one other reason I had always been reluctant to take on the branch manager's role. I had witnessed more than once in the last decade a branch manager being fired for not getting their store up to par. A branch manager is expected to run their store so that sales are up, loan defaults are down, quarterly audits receive a passing grade, and the team is relatively drama and conflict free. Believe it or not, that's often a tall order that not every manager can successfully pull off, and thus, he/she is often let go after a certain amount of time has passed with no real improvement in the weak areas.
            So, as I walked out of Vanessa's office that day, I was understandably worried and fearful. "This is what it means to walk by faith," I mused to myself as opened my cash drawer and prepared for a busy shift. I knew by the feeling in my heart that I had followed God's direction, so I reminded myself that, if this really was His plan for me, then He would also give me the strength and the fortitude and the wisdom that I would need to step up to the new position.
            Flash forward seven and a half months. On August 31st, after a four hour class of branch manager training at our corporate office, Vanessa texted me. She wanted me to stop by the store on my way home. I knew without even asking what she wanted to see me about. Butterflies exploded in my stomach. During the twenty minute drive to the store I did my best to quell the fears, worries and anxieties that I had managed to ignore for the last few months. Even though I knew this day would come sooner or later, I had been secretly hoping it still wouldn't happen for another month or two, and it was still possible that Vanessa needed to talk to me about something else entirely. But, in the back of my mind, I was pretty certain that I was about to get handed my own store. And, even though it was too late to change my mind, I still prayed and asked God to delay this announcement. I wasn't yet ready.
            God, apparently, thought otherwise. My suspicion was correct, and Vanessa was pleased to inform me of my promotion to branch manager. My new store was N930, located up in Centennial Hills in North Las Vegas. (All 29 of Check City's stores are specifically numbered, starting with the letter "N".) Ironically, this was a store I already worked at in 2015 for 3 ½ years. It was one of my favorite stores, in fact, and I was overjoyed to get it. I wasn't scheduled to take it over until September 12th, which gave me a week and a half to transition from my current store and get ready for my new role.
            But that wasn't the only big change that God decided to spring on me in the last two weeks. On the first Wednesday night of September, as I exited my car after arriving at church for mid-week service, my pastor was also getting out of his vehicle, and hollered to me as I crossed the parking lot. As I drew closer to him, he said, "Just the man I wanted to see!"
            "Oh?" I replied, a fresh new crop of butterflies bursting forth in my gut. Anytime your boss or your pastor start a conversation with, "Just the man I wanted to see," it usually signals a special request or new assignment that you're not going to like.
            "How many hymns do you think you can learn on the piano?"
            I blinked, startled, and stammered, "Uh, well…I don't know. Uh…you need me to play tonight???"
            He laughed. "No, not tonight, brother, but by the first week of October." He went on to explain that our three main pianists – two young ladies and an older housewife – were going to be out of town in a month. The two younger ones were going on a mission to Papa New Guinea for two months, and the other woman was going back east to visit her daughter in college for her 18th birthday. I responded as anyone else would when a man that they respect and admire asks them to step up and fill in by doing something that they haven't done for 25 years and have no idea on God's green earth how they're going to pull it off:
            "Sure, pastor! I'd love to!"
         As I walked away, I silently prayed, "Seriously, Lord? A promotion to branch manager wasn't far enough outside my comfort zone?? Are you kidding me??" But I immediately began forming a game plan. Since I had no piano at home I would have to use the one in the church sanctuary, and I made a mental note to coordinate with one of the keyholders after the service so I could have access later in the week to come practice.
            But no sooner had I sat down and made myself comfortable than one of the ladies slipped into my row and said, “Neal, we have an extra piano here that pastor wants gone by next week so that there’s room for Master Club to meet when they start up again.” As it turns out, one of the families in our church that moved away at the beginning of the summer had left behind an old piano that they didn’t feel like hauling to Wisconsin. It was a Kimball, with a few scuffs and scrapes, and in desperate need of a good tuning as well, but otherwise in decent shape. “I heard you might have a space for it at your place?” she finished as I stared at her in amazement.
            “Uh…sure,” was all I could think of to say, though I had no idea where in my living room I was going to fit it.
            Flash forward one week. My living room now has a new piece of furniture. (I attached a pic of it at the top of this blog entry.) Before I was able to get some guys together to help me move it, though, I started practicing on the piano in the church sanctuary on that Thursday morning, the day after pastor presented me with his special request. I was very anxious and terrified. I hadn’t touched a piano keyboard in 25 years, and I was sure that I was going to fail. I figured I would need, at minimum, a couple months of 8-10 hour days, seven days a week, just re-learn the basics, much less be proficient enough to play in public. I bowed my head, asked God for guidance and help, and then flipped open the spiral bound hymnal to page one, “My Savior’s Love”.
          Yes, it wasn’t good at first. But neither was it as terrible as I was expecting. I remembered enough to know where to put my fingers for the key of E major (I think), and I also correctly remembered which notes were flat (B, A & E). The hardest part was putting the two hands together to play the treble and bass lines in harmony and unison. Practicing each separately, I remembered far more than I thought I would, and I now fully understand the term “muscle memory”. I still can’t name every single note or every key, but that morning, as I looked at the music on the page, I just knew, on some deep, instinctual level, where to put my fingers and what notes to play. At the end of two hours, I had a list of nine hymns that I felt I could play reasonably well enough to accompany our small congregation on a Sunday morning. I came back again on Friday morning for another two hours. That list of nine expanded to fifteen. In the week since, that number has grown to twenty-four. There is still a lot of work ahead, but I’m still reeling to the point of being gob-smacked at how quickly this particular talent has come back to me!
           I left church that Thursday morning filled with a new joy. In the space of ten days, God had plopped in my lap a free piano, resurrected a talent I thought was long dead and buried, and gave me a new way to regularly serve Him. Not only that, I’m now eager to return to my classical roots as well. I can’t wait to dive back into Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Chopin! It’s like God reached down and flipped another switch inside me, and now I can’t get enough of this new blessing!
 
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            There’s joy in serving.
           As if a new promotion at work and the re-awakening of an old talent wasn’t enough, God saw fit to shower one more blessing upon me. Pastor announced a couple weeks ago that Master Club needed at least two more workers for this year. For those of you not familiar with Master Club, it’s an organization that teaches children about God and God’s Word through scripture memorization, as well as other activities. Back when I was in grade school, we called it Awana, an acronym that stood for Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed. We started out in Cubbies, graduated to Sparks somewhere around 4th or 5th grade, and then spent junior high and high school as Awanas.
      Master Club works much the same way. As the children complete each grade level, starting at kindergarten, they rise in rank at the end of each year, starting out as Little Lambs and ending as Ambassadors for Christ, usually around junior high, I think. (I’m still learning the ropes of this club and how everything works.) They have handbooks with activities to complete each week and verses to memorize. They can also earn badges to sew on their vests as they master certain tasks and recite verses. Each Wednesday night, as the adults have their mid-week service, Master Club meets for handbook time, game time, and then all together at the end for a short devotional lesson from the Master Club leader.
            I didn’t hesitate to let pastor know I was interested in helping out with Master Club, and, a few days later, as we met for breakfast on a rainy Saturday morning, he asked me to be game director for Master Club this year. I was grinning from ear to ear as I gave an enthusiastic “Yes! I’d love to!” in response.
            Our first night was this past Wednesday, and I was eager to get started, but also a little nervous. But, then again, I’d been feeling that a lot lately, so I wasn’t too worried. This year’s group of kids is smaller than previous years, so there were only two main groups: Kindergarten to 2nd grade and 3rd grade to 6th. There were only five kids in the former group and about a dozen in the latter. The little ones played Duck, Duck Goose and the older ones engaged in freeze tag. As I stood to the side and watched the kids tear around the yard, laughing and screaming and hollering to one another, I could only think, “Wow! It doesn’t get any better than this!” Earlier that day I had been stressed and tired, having just taken over my new store that week, and I was trying to adjust to all the big changes in my life that God had wrought in such a short time. But, at that moment, reflecting on my new life with this church family that God had provided me last year, I could only feel immense gratitude and…
            …joy.
            Between serving as game director for Master Club and filling in as church pianist, I can’t think of any time in my old life when I felt such joy. There’s no other feeling like this, and the more time and energy I devote to these services, the more my joy seems to increase.
 
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            There’s joy in surrender.
           To sum up all the previous types of joy, there’s joy in complete and total surrender to God and His divine will. I had heard this principle taught many times from the pulpit when I was a teenager, but I didn’t get it. It seemed ridiculous to me. My life was my own, I had plans for what I wanted to do after high school, and it seemed stupid to me to hand over my life to a God that may or may not exist in the first place. As I continued stubbornly through my adult life, I scoffed at Christians and other religious types who seemed more brainwashed than anything else as they spouted nonsense about God and His will and His love for us and that surrendering to Him would bring true joy and happiness.
            “Bull----!” I would always say to myself whenever I heard that in passing on the street or as I was channel flipping. “I know what I want for my life, and I’m the only one that can accomplish it! I don’t need God – or anyone else, for that matter – telling me what to do with my life!”
            As with so many other things in my old life, I was dead wrong. Now I understand. Now I get it! There is true, spiritual joy in absolute and total surrender! I wouldn’t trade my new life for anything in this world, and my only regret right now is that I didn’t do this a long time ago. Yes, there have been struggles; there have been sleepless nights when I’ve wrestled with God, struggling to obey Him while my old, carnal flesh rages within me, and I’ve thrown a couple really good temper tantrums in God’s presence that would make any two-year-old proud. I still struggle with my flesh, in fact, but I’m getting better at throwing the old man on the altar every morning when I wake up and taking up my cross instead.
            And now, as I start a new chapter in my life with a new position of leadership at work, a reawakened talent that will need a lot of practice and devotion, and a new weekly service in my church family, I can’t wait to see what other opportunities and blessings God has waiting for me. It’s immensely satisfying and utterly peaceful to not have to worry about the future or wonder how I will provide for myself. God has it all taken care of. All I have to do is follow His direction and do what I’m told. It’s that easy! He takes care of the rest!
 
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            All of that has led to one more type of joy; a joy that I hadn’t consciously started praying for until a couple months ago. Unlike my other major request that has yet to be answered, God answered this one almost right away.
            He taught me to find the joy in the waiting. I have more than enough on my plate now to keep me busy as He prepares both me and my future wife for our first meeting (IF we haven’t met already). Too often, I think, we associate the word “waiting” with negative connotations, i.e. the waiting room at the doctor’s office, or waiting in line at Starbucks for our favorite over-priced latte when we’re already late for work. We associate “waiting” with being stuck, or having nothing to do as we watch the clock, or wait for some news that takes days or weeks to come through, such as test results from a medical checkup.
           But we never stop to consider that maybe God doesn’t answer a particular prayer request because He wants us to be busy with something else in the meantime. Maybe He wants us to find joy in the waiting, as a reminder that we should always be busy with His work and not just sitting about, twiddling our thumbs while we wait for a response from Him.
            Sometimes, waiting is a good thing.
           Sometimes, for the child of God who is wholly surrendered to Him, it can lead to its own form of joy.