If you have your Bibles, I would love for you to grab them so we can look at this text together. There’s a lot there, but I want you to be able to see it. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there’s a hardback black one under your chair, either in front of you or the chair you’re currently sitting on. I want to dive in. This is our last weekend of Advent, and the last weekend of Advent always focuses on the same theme and then rolls into Christmas Eve, where you continue with that theme. That theme is the theme of joy. All the candles are now lit, and we’re focusing on the Advent, or the coming, of joy. Many years ago, I was in a country far from here that will not be named, and I had the privilege of training house church pastors over the course of two or three days. It was right around the time that «24,» featuring Jack Bauer, was a huge television hit. So, I’m with this group of people, and then I’m breaking off for a couple of days just to vanish to go do this training. I had to hide in a van and go through checkpoints, and the 13-year-old boy in me had never been happier in my life. We got out into the middle of nowhere, and I had to kind of get out of the van and walk, and then I met these people. I won’t say their names because I think that would give it away. Then we went to this farm, and it was probably 1:30 in the morning. I’m a 9:30–to-bed kind of brother, so being up at 1:30, especially not with jet lag, was tough. At the farm, they made this little bed for me, but I had to fight the dog and a rooster for it. I got in this bed and thought, «Jesus, help me. Just give me an hour and a half, just two hours of sleep, because I’m about to teach for three days through an interpreter.» My style isn’t conducive to an interpreter. I mean, have you been here long enough to pick up on that? How do you translate «flux capacitor» across languages to people who have no idea what you’re talking about? Not my problem, it’s the interpreter’s problem. To make matters worse, they were training a new interpreter, so I would say something, they would interpret, and then the real interpreter would correct that interpretation. Oh well, I’m trying to get into the flow. I’m laying in bed saying, «Jesus, I just need some rest.» Then I started to hear something probably 30 minutes later. I had just drifted off when I began hearing just a single voice in a language I didn’t understand. Then that voice started getting louder and louder, and I thought, «Oh man, they don’t know that the guest guy is here.» I wished they would just go outside and do that. All of a sudden, it was a couple of voices, then many voices, then there was clapping, shouting, and agitation in my soul. I wondered, «What time are we starting? Did I sleep longer than I thought?» I looked, and oh my gosh, it was 3:00 a.m.—we don’t start until 7:00! It felt like revival was breaking out in the other room. I tried all the things, right? I put my headphones back in, cranked up worship music that I could understand, and pleaded with God to give me some rest. I knew the exhaustion coming for me, and I was already feeling tired, so I prayed, «Give me power, but give me sleep, Lord.» Finally, around 4:00, I thought, «Forget it,» and got up. I went into this room where probably 40 to 50 house church pastors from around the nation had gathered. They were singing, clapping, crying, rejoicing, and hugging. That started my relationship with this group of men and women, which lasted for the next three days. In the evenings, we stayed up around campfires. They would give me words to say in their language, which I would butcher, and the whole campfire would giggle and laugh. I would give them an English word that I knew they could not pronounce due to a well-placed consonant in the middle of the word. I knew they wouldn’t be able to do it, and then I would laugh. What marked me during my time with them was their gladness—their excitement about belonging to Jesus. You’ve been here long enough to hear…
