The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:01 So, let's go into this beautiful passage on enjoying life. Um, you've got a
00:08 handout and there only three questions I'm going to answer today. Why should we enjoy life? You think it's a stupid
00:15 question, but it's not. Uh, how should we enjoy our lives? When can we really
00:21 enjoy our lives? Three things. And you've got a handout in front of you. So, in case you get lost, I'm sorry it's
00:27 so small. I can't read thing. All right. So, some of you bif focals.
00:34 Yes. Right. Why should we really enjoy life? Let's ask the Lord. Father Lord,
00:39 we just pray that this morning you will speak to us. Uh show us why, show us
00:46 how, and show us when. We ask for Jesus' sake. Amen.
00:51 This is Bronny Wear, New South Wal's nurse who works with sick and dying
00:58 people. Um she published a book recently five top regrets of the dying. So every
01:06 patient she talks to she will actually interact and they will come with all the
01:11 things that they have had over the years and as they're dying they will express
01:17 how they feel, their hopes, their regrets, their fears, their successes.
01:24 and she wrote a book and it's very interesting if you look at her book there are five things that come out very
01:31 clearly. Number one, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself
01:36 and not the life others expected of me. Two, I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
01:42 Young people, look at that. I wish I'd taken the courage to express my
01:48 feelings. That's about love, isn't it? I wish I'd stayed in touch my friends.
01:55 I wish I'd let myself be happier. Five regrets of many many thousands of
02:01 peoples whose lives ended. And that is at the top of the list that they wish they had done. And if you look at
02:07 Ecclesiastes, it starts off with but all this I laid to heart examining it all.
02:13 How the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. And he's saying, "Look, the righteous people in
02:19 the world who believe the Lord that that they're wise and their deeds all are in
02:25 the hands of God. God is sovereign. He's in control. But even that whether love
02:31 or hate, man does not know what are before him. Even though you're in
02:36 Christ, whether whe you know whatever happens tomorrow, whether something good or something bad, you really don't know.
02:43 Suppose you got a raise from your company. You know, they doubled your salary, gave you more time off, and they
02:49 sent you off to some nice island somewhere in Bali to work. Is that a blessing or a curse? Do you know?
02:57 Because you know, 6 months from now, that job in Bali may not have turned out
03:02 well. What is blessing at first may have turned out to be a disaster. when life
03:08 is tough or you fall ill, is it the fact that God is disciplining you or something else God is bringing out? So
03:13 hard to tell. You've got all these anxieties even in the hearts of Christians. Uh and then you so you the
03:20 problem is that you can't control the future. And if you look here, it is the same for all. The same event happens to
03:27 the righteous and the wicked, the good, the evil, the cleaned, the unclean. To
03:33 him who sacrifices, him who does not sacrifice. The good one is, so is a sinner. He who swears as he who shuns an
03:40 oath. This is an evil that's done under the sun. All the same events happen to everybody. When a bomb goes off in the
03:45 marketplace in Thailand, good, bad, ugly, everybody dies. And
03:52 this is a problem. it. Life is unfair and uncertain and because life is unfair
03:59 and uncertain uh good things happen to bad people and sorry good uh bad things
04:06 happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Ecclesiastes 7:8 this theme is repeated time and time
04:11 again and because of that I wish I had myself feel happier and so therefore we
04:18 spend our time worrying about the future because we have fear and also we have
04:24 regret about the past. So if you worry about the future and regret the past you cannot be happy. You're stuck sitting
04:33 here uh look look at this lady what's her name again? Susan Bole, right? Won
04:38 the contest at uh Britain's Got Talent, became a multi-millionaire worth $35
04:45 million, and yet she lives in a small cottage here, never moved out, not because she can't afford it, but because
04:52 she had been poor all her life and because she's suddenly come into riches, she's waiting. You see, we don't know
04:58 what's going to be in front, good or bad, love or hate. And if life is so good, one day the other shoe will drop
05:05 and it's that time to be bad again. And you're frightened. And so therefore, you don't move out of your council fat
05:10 because that's what you always know. But you know if that kind of attitude and deep insecurity actually traps us.
05:18 It takes the joy of life away. This is a website called trackyouhappiness.org
05:25 by Matt Killingworth. Right? So if you download this app, young people, all
05:31 right, every minute you can say, "I'm happy. Why are we happy? So I'm eating ice cream. I'm having a date with my
05:38 girlfriend. I got a raise today. The sun is shining so brightly." And then he let there's about 650,000
05:44 reports. And he did a study, a scientific study on what brings on happiness. All right? And he found out
05:52 that 47% of time we actually let our minds wander. Right?
05:59 How many of you are minds wandering now? Huh? Put your hands up. I want to ask
06:04 you to put your hands up. But 47% of time whether you're stuck in traffic, whether you're operating,
06:11 whether you're seeing patients or reading news,
06:16 your mind is wandering. Isn't it? Yeah. Uh if you actually are truthful,
06:21 your mind wanders. And what the the thing the second thing that you notice that when your mind wanders, it
06:29 inevitably wanders to things which are not pleasant. What is the last time your
06:34 mind wandered and you're thinking about great things? The last time when you were in love, I think, but even then
06:41 you're wondering, does she love me? Does she love me not? You see the young people, they go ruminating. It's not all
06:46 good, you know. All right. So therefore, you've got this problem. 47% of the time
06:52 your mind wonders. And when your mind wanders, inevitably it is unhappy because you deal with regrets and you
06:58 deal with fears. That's a fact. They even did a study on people in traffic.
07:04 If you're focused in traffic, you're actually happier than if your minds are wandering. So you're wondering traffic
07:10 is a horrible thing, isn't it? You're driving, you're cursing along, but even then that's a happier event than letting your mind wander. All right? Right? So
07:18 therefore the wandering mind shows us that underneath us there is so much insecurity in life and insecurity brings
07:25 unhappiness and we can't enjoy our lives. The second thing is that also the hearts of the children of men are full
07:31 of evil. All of us are full of evil and there's a madness in their hearts. You
07:37 know what is this madness? Madness of folly is reckoning with death. We fill our lives with distraction of a thousand
07:43 passions and squander the time we have on all these insignificant worries. We're actually mad. We're thinking of
07:49 stuff that can never happen or will never happen or not likely to happen and we're filling up our minds. Isn't that
07:54 mad? Or you're filling our minds with ambitions, great ambitions that will never actually come to fruition. That's
08:01 why we're sad. So, we're evil and obsessed with many ambitions which are ultimately useless. You know why? After
08:08 that, they might they die. All right? So, it it really doesn't
08:13 matter. This is a picture captured by CNN. Classic picture. Can you see
08:19 anything wrong with this picture? Look. Can you see something at the back? It's a tornado in the Midwest,
08:26 right? And the hus and the wife took this picture because the husband is mowing the lawn. Got to get the lawn
08:33 done. When the tornado goes through, what do you think will happen to his lawn? It'll be gone. You don't need to do
08:39 that. The tornado will sweep it up for you. Right? So, so the dilemma of living with death, the death is inevitable. And
08:46 whatever you do, you can mow your lawn, it'll all be washed away. Death,
08:52 the dilemma of living with death, it negates everything that you do. He who is joined with all the living has hope.
08:59 A living dog is better than a dead lion. You could be a lion, but you could be dead. For the living know that they will
09:05 die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward. For the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their
09:10 hate and envy already perished forever. They have no more share. All that is done under the sun. Imagine a
09:16 dysfunctional family. They're all fighting, talking, doing all sorts of things. What's the point? When you're
09:21 dead, it's all gone. So death actually makes life precious because a living dog
09:28 in the Middle Eastern place dog is worse than cockroaches. You know, they're horrible things. Not night today. You
09:34 got nice beagles like Merrills. All right. A living dog is actually worse than the dead lion. Even a dog is better
09:42 than someone who's dead. So, uh, this is Derek McManus from a cop in I think is in Australia. He was shot 14 times, you
09:49 know. Can you imagine? 14 bullets and he's almost bulletproof because he never died. I was reading about him and he and
09:55 he wrote anything better than death is a bonus. He actually survived. And in fact, if you look at Steve Jobs, famous
10:03 creator of iPad, iPhone, you can see I'm a believer.
10:11 Stanford University address, very famous address given some years ago. Um, and and he shared the secret of his success
10:20 and what he said that if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you're going to be right.
10:28 But if this were the last day of his life, he would he want to spend doing it
10:33 doing what he was about to do. So you as you go on in life, maybe you're cooking in the restaurant, maybe you're fetching
10:38 your kids to school, and if this was the last day of your life, would you want to
10:45 be continuing doing this? If it is, then you should live the way
10:50 you should live. So this is a question he asked himself all the time. Let me read to you the rest of his address. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is
10:56 the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big decisions in life. Because almost
11:02 everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment, all failure, these things will just fall
11:09 away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you're going to die the best way I
11:15 can know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You're already naked. There's no reason not to
11:21 follow your heart. And he's got some powerful realistic truth there, you
11:28 know, because if you realize you're already naked, you're already going to die. What is there to be embarrassed?
11:34 What is that to be fearful of? Because at the end, you die. And it brings life,
11:39 the preciousness of life sharply into focus. It's like this drop of water. It's you don't think about where it has
11:46 been or where it's going to go. You revel in that particular moment. And
11:51 when we are yet alive, we have hope. So the problem with death that actually
11:59 accentuates the preciousnesses of life. How we need to really savor and enjoy
12:04 our life. But how do we actually enjoy the life? All right. So we could talk about prosperity gospel today.
12:11 Well, let's look at what Ecclesiastes says. All right. Go eat your bread with
12:17 joy. Drink your wine with a merry heart. for God has already approved for what you do. So here's the physiological
12:25 dimension of enjoyment. For some of you here who are upset about us drinking wine in church, read
12:39 okay not I didn't write Solomon wrote. Okay. So you can take up with him. So we
12:45 drink in this church. We drink wine in church. What's a big deal? God wants us to drink wine. See, drink wine with a
12:50 merry heart some more. You know, very merry heart. Okay. All right. So, so this is a simple pleasure where you eat
12:57 bread. We eat noodles. It's even better. All right. This is the London shooting a
13:03 couple of weeks ago, right? Everybody's running away. They're afraid of being killed. This fell is carrying his beer.
13:09 He already paid for his beer and he runs away. He runs away and he's still holding his beer, right? He's enjoying
13:17 his life in the midst of terror and pain. All right. So, so this is in perspective. Uh you know some say it's
13:25 okay for you la you can buy good wine. You know we can't buy good wine. But there was a study done in Caltech and
13:31 Stanford University looking at various kinds of wine. All the wines were labeled at different price. $10, $5,
13:37 $35, $95. So if you had a choice, if you had a choice, what wine would you drink?
13:43 Uh Jeff I think in this case, I drink the $10
13:48 wine. 10? Well, very wise man. You He knows it's a trick. I drink the $95 wine. Isn't that
13:54 most of you would be uh drinking $95 wine, but actually all the three wines come from all the cups come from three
14:02 uh wine bottles and they're actually randomly priced. And it turned out that
14:07 whenever you drank the wine, your appreciation of the wine, they did MRI studies that look at the it is a medial
14:14 prefrontal cortex of the brain. This is an area of brain that really lights up to show you you really enjoy the wine,
14:21 right? So when they drank this wine and they drank a $95 wine, this area lit up
14:27 like a Christmas treeing and you drank the $5 wine,
14:34 it didn't quite work out, you know. But they also scan another part of the
14:39 body which is called the uh taste center right and whatever wine you tasted right
14:47 the taste center registered the same amount of activity. So in real life in
14:53 your mind all the three physiologically tasted the same but because your mind
14:60 said this is a $95 wine then you actually enjoy it better. is like the
15:05 jokers who buy a penthouse and think they pay double the price and the same square feet from the one just underneath
15:11 the penthouse. This is how developers trick you, you know. So, so there's not much difference there, isn't it? It you
15:17 don't take a lot of money to enjoy your life. Another experiment by Robin Goldstein published in 2008. Uh do more
15:24 expensive wines taste better? Evidence from a sample of large sample of blind tasting. So they put blinders over your
15:31 your your head, your eyes and they gave them a sample of wines and the conclusion is
15:38 conclusion is individuals on average enjoy cheaper wines more.
15:45 Right? Experts with wine training enjoy more expensive wines.
15:52 So if you are an expert, you have to pay more. If you're not an expert like me,
15:57 you pay less. But the enjoyment is the same, right? So you should be like Mr. Bean, isn't it?
16:05 Look at truffles. They retail now 1 kilogram for $100,000 US.$100,000.
16:12 We only get to scrape a little bit on on your pudding or whatever they want to eat, right? But in those days, 200 years
16:18 ago, this is trash food. The peasants ate this. In fact, the pigs ate this.
16:24 This is uh 100 years ago. This is called Americans call this cockroach of the
16:30 sea. There's so much of it they used to grind them up and throw them in the corn fields as fertilizer. Today you won't
16:37 get one of this under 500 ringgit. Right. All right. So, so taste and
16:42 enjoyment is a matter of your brain. Northwestern University at University of
16:48 Minnesota 90 Massachusetts 1978 did a study on two groups of people. one
16:54 basically people who won the lottery, another a group of people who were paralyzed, quadriplegic or or uh
17:01 paraplegic. And they measured their levels of happiness before their accidents and and and after their
17:08 accidents and at 6 months you find a very amazing thing. The people who
17:13 actually won the lottery at six months their level of happiness in doing everyday task were actually lower than
17:21 when before they won the lottery. And the people who were paraplegic six
17:26 months later on also had recovered their level of happiness but less than the ones who had won the lottery. But the
17:33 point is that winning the lottery may not be very good for you because you find out that you can't enjoy your life
17:39 as much as you did before you you know why you're already spoiled. You already tasted good life and you need more
17:46 lottery winning in order to you need more stimulation. So the bottom line don't win the lottery.
17:52 I mean, think, think about it. Every time your paycheck comes, how many of you jump? Wow.
17:59 When you get a bonus, how many of you jump and say, "Wow." So, everybody jumps when they have a bonus, right? Monthly
18:06 paycheck, nothing, isn't it? So, it's because you're used to it. All right. We've got this problem there. Uh, some
18:13 of you will be nice big cars like Waong for example, right? Yeah. We'll point him out. He's got one of those, you
18:18 know, Lamborghini. Bad news for Wyang. You know why? When
18:23 they did a study on people with expensive car and cheap car, all right, this is a real study. And when you tell
18:30 them this expensive car, real good car, they sit down, of course, the Lamborghini wins out. But when you
18:35 actually take an interview of the person after he's gone and fetch his kids from tution and come back using a Proton or
18:41 using a Lamborghini, there exactly is no difference. So it's only when you go to the showroom
18:47 and when you buy the car there's a great difference but when you are fetching your son back and forth on tution it's any old car. So bottom line you have
18:54 saved a lot of money right? So let's look at a theological dimension of enjoyment. Okay look here go eat your
19:03 bread with joy drink your wine with a merry heart for because God has already
19:10 approved for what you do. All right. So, when you're enjoying yourself, you don't actually have to have a guilty
19:15 conscience because God has approved for what you do. Look at here. Because in Psalm 104, go you cause the grass to
19:22 grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden
19:28 the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen a man's heart. God gives you wine to gladden
19:35 your heart. God brings joy. He intends for you to actually have joy.
19:42 Now, two weeks ago, I was in the restaurant in Australia with Malcolm Anderson. He ordered a much smaller one.
19:51 And and again, look at that. When you see this, what do you think about when we say grace? Ah, very important. See,
19:57 when you say grace, you think about three things. One, that this burger is fantastic.
20:03 One day when I go to heaven, God will give me a big mouth
20:08 for a much even bigger her burger. I mean, this this this spells of possibilities, isn't it? I imagine I've
20:15 never imagined you could have a Wagyu beef burger that big. All right, Malaysian ones are very small. All
20:21 right, and it points to something even greater. And second thing it does is that it gives you context to life. I've
20:28 been starving all couple of months and by God's grace, he gave me the airfare. go there, found this restaurant, I mean,
20:35 and given you the health, given you the teeth. Some people don't even have teeth to eat this. It gives you context to
20:40 your life. And thirdly, you actually experience God in a practical way when you sink your teeth in the explosion of
20:47 flavors, the savoriness, the juices running from your mouth. Wow. That's the
20:54 way you experience God. That's right. God gives you these things as
20:60 gastronomic delights so that you could experience the goodness of God
21:05 practically. I mean, you don't see God, right? Unless some prophet's here,
21:12 but you feel and you taste the blessedness that he's given you. One bite of this burger or if you're in a
21:19 cold country, the heat of the sun, you know, just just on you on that day itself. You see, then I've got to go
21:25 back to saying grace for this. I haven't worked out how you say grace for rabbit
21:30 food. Says, "Dear Lord, thank you. I'm not a rabbit." So, I'm still struggling with this part
21:36 of my life. So, so basically what we eat, what we
21:42 drink, uh sexual pleasure, relationships, they're all material
21:47 things which are symbols of a self-revealing God. God reveals himself
21:52 in all the sights and sensations of the things he has given you. Uh so uh we
21:57 should actually take it in. And on the other hand, you've got other religions where you actually think the body is
22:03 evil and the soul is good. And the more you punish the body, the more holier you
22:09 are to God. And Christianity, unlike Buddhism or Hinduism, is so far away
22:14 from it because when you're eating that burger, you're celebrating Jesus Christ.
22:20 Yes, it's a fact. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, what does he talk about sex? You, the
22:28 people one Corinthians chapter 7 was saying, "No, you shouldn't have sex, not even with your wife, because a sexless
22:33 life is a holy life." Paul says, "No, you must have sex with your wife." And so, the only time you actually stop
22:40 having sex is when you come for prayer, prayer meeting, you know, Thursday, once a month, so that's okay.
22:46 And the rest of the time enjoy sex with your wife. So therefore, he is someone who basically takes all of life in and
22:53 enjoys it in a proper context because this is what God has given you. That's why in the in the Bible there's lot of
22:59 marriage and feast. The typical example of of of celebrating God is having a marriage feast where there's union of
23:06 two people in love and everybody is mucking and we all yum sing together, right? That is a picture of fellowship
23:13 with God and it leaves that beautiful taste in our mouth. Uh this is Acts chapter 2 uh 46. After they became
23:21 Christians day by day attending temple together breaking bread in home they received the food with glad and generous
23:28 hearts praising God having favored all the people and the Lord added to the number day by day. What were the early
23:34 Christians doing? Makan day and night. Durian
23:40 burgers hawk and me. All right. Simple pleasures don't have
23:47 to be expensive. I explained to you scientifically, right? Glad and they were generous in their hearts. What
23:53 about the social dimension? Here we look at enjoy life with the wife whom you love with all the days of your vain life
23:60 for he has given you under sun because of that is your portion in life and your toilet in which you toil under the sun.
24:05 So you this a social dimension. You can't imagine you sit down on a burger and you ate it yourself
24:11 by yourself. What fun is that? You can't tell people about the explosion of
24:16 flavors, can you? Oh, it's fantastic explosion of flavors. You tell yourself, you can't do that. You got to have your
24:22 wife, right? And she's got to appreciate you. Say, good one going on, Jeff. Way to go. Have another one.
24:31 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love. This is another study looking at social relationships and mortality. uh a review
24:39 of about 38,000 participants and this is studies uh and
24:45 it shows if you look at this graph of depression versus marital rates and you
24:51 can find the people who are least depressed are what? Married people. So
24:57 quickly single people go and get married. Well, let me hold that for a while.
25:05 Social interaction has been shown to actually increase by 50% your likelihood
25:12 of survival. 50%. That's more than abstinence from alcohol which only 30%. Uh if you're
25:19 like a slob if you become uh more active they'll help you in 20%. And if air pollution 5%. So it's actually social
25:26 interaction is the most important thing that you should actually have in your life. Enjoy your life with the wife whom
25:34 you love, not someone else. It's very, very important. The Bible is very clear.
25:40 With the wife, with the number one wife, the only one wife that you have and the one that you love. You know why? Because
25:46 having someone you love teaches you about God's commandment, isn't it? You
25:52 are supposed to love your neighbor as yourself. Who's the closest neighbor? Your wife. You're going to love the
25:58 neighbor across the road. go to her house every day and then the
26:03 wife that's next to you you don't love. You see only when you can understand the blessedness of a relationship with
26:10 someone closest to you that so transforms your heart that you are then able to form relationship with other
26:16 people outside the neighbor across the road or person in church and all that that opens up your heart otherwise we
26:23 are intensely selfish people and we have to learn how to love. So God says take the wine enjoy your life with the wife
26:31 that you love and that changes your life. This is the longest stud this
26:37 longest study ever done in the entire world. Okay. Uh it's published there's a
26:43 recent publication on Harvard. You see whether you live life happily and live long does it depend on your genes or is
26:53 it depend on what you do? Very important question. In 1938 in the in Harvard they
26:59 followed up 238 white men and one of them included John F. Kennedy actually
27:05 and they've did the study they followed them up for 79 years even to this day. In fact of the researchers four sets
27:12 have died already. We are talking about a fourth set now. All right. So u joy is
27:18 better. This is called the grant gluik study from Harvard. Okay. And the
27:24 conclusions from this particular study looked at what are the things that actually make men live long or women
27:30 live long and and and uh and what are things that will actually uh result in
27:36 them being happy h long lives happy and healthy lives and these are the factors
27:41 two foundational elements this is uh professor of psychiatry in Harvard University there's only two one is love
27:48 and the other is finding ways of coping with life that does not push life love way. Amazing that say 80 years you
27:56 follow these people and the conclusion is the most important element in life is
28:02 actually love. This is Robert Waldinger in a TED talk in 2015. I want to read to
28:07 you what he says. Over and over in these 75 years, our study has showed the
28:13 people who fared best were the people who learned leaned into relationships with family, with friends, and with
28:20 community. That's very, very, very important. Some of our octoerian couples, people in
28:28 the 80s, could bicker day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they
28:34 could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn't
28:39 take a toll on their memories. I mean, you and wife may be psychologically very
28:45 different. So, you disagree on whether you wear a gray shirt, a green shirt, or even color the sun that day. It doesn't really matter as long as you're able to
28:51 count on each other. and the underlying love and loyalty that's there and that's the best predictor of a long and healthy
28:59 life quality relationships right so lastly there's so we we we actually
29:05 enjoy life by physiologically enjoying all the stuff that God has given us
29:11 living it with our within community and thirdly is the work dimension whatever your hand finds to do it with your might
29:20 for there's no work or thought or wisdom in sh to which you're going. All right?
29:26 So he's saying whatever your hands find to do which means actually a Hebrew idiom which means what needs to be done
29:32 that is within our capacity to do. It's talking about life is a calling when you
29:39 actually work is a calling. I mean you don't work so that you don't have to work. I this funny stupid idea of people
29:47 who work so much money that you could sit on the Caribbean island somewhere or Pinang and and do nothing and I tell you
29:54 within three months you will die. All right, because we are created to work. Uh in fact this is Richard Leer
30:02 who wrote a book called power of purpose and looking at neurohysiological studies
30:08 is showed that having a purpose in life actually gives aids cog uh uh cognitive
30:15 decline by reducing Alzheimer's by 40 to 50%. Reduce 40% in strokes add seven
30:21 years to life reduces sleep apnnea. One in three people get up in the morning
30:27 with no purpose in life. Did you know that? One in three. That's that's a huge percentage because they don't know what
30:34 their lives are about. You could be making a lot of money but you actually have no purpose. You just make it because you have to make it. And this is
30:40 a very very important thing. The Bible tells you you enjoy life when you actually have a purpose. It doesn't
30:46 matter what purpose that you have. All right? So you need to have a purpose. This is a correlation looking at the US
30:54 population in terms of average income and happiness from United States 1957 to 2002. Look, average incomes goes really
31:01 sky up. Happy people say the same. If you're poor, you're going to be very
31:07 very unhappy. Yes, the data shows if you're poor, you're unhappy. And you give money to poor people, they become
31:13 happy. But after a certain stage, whatever money you give them doesn't correlate with happiness anymore. it
31:21 flattens out. So this idea that the more money you make, the happier you are
31:26 actually is not proven in life. Right? This is Mikuel uh Chickzen Mali which is
31:33 basically a um psych psychology professor who wrote a book on this phenomenon called flow. All right, this
31:41 is let me he read to you some of the people he interviewed. This is a music composer. You're in such a ex Oh, this
31:49 will apply to Joanne. You are in Well, she's playing the
31:54 piano, right? Oh, sorry, the the the the the violin. You're in such an aesthetic
31:59 state as though you almost don't exist. I have experienced this time and time
32:04 again. My hands seem to be devoid of myself and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there and
32:11 watching it in a state of awe and wonderment and the music flows out of itself. Is that how you feel, Joanne?
32:22 I mean, I don't think Joanne will ever retire. This Olympics figure skater. It was just one of those programs that
32:28 clicked. I mean, everything went right. Everything felt good. It's such a rush.
32:34 like you feel it could go on and on and on like you don't want it to stop because it's all going so well. It's
32:40 almost as though you don't have to think. That's some of you. Do you have this feeling when you go to work? If
32:47 not, you're in trouble. Former CEO of Loheed Martin, Ralph
32:53 Norman Austinine writes, "I've always wanted to be successful. By definition, being successful is contributing
32:59 something to the world, being happy while doing it. You have to enjoy what you're doing. You won't be very good if
33:05 you don't. And secondly, if you have to feel that you are contributing something worthwhile. If either of these
33:11 ingredients are absent, there is probably some lack of meaning in your work. So you've got to be contributing to society to bring meaning to your
33:20 life. All right? And uh this is a graph with the professor draws out and I think
33:26 it's a good one for you to take a picture of this. If you got a handphone, you know why this applies to my life.
33:33 All right? How I how I can enjoy my work. You've got two axis. One is difficulty of the task and the other one
33:41 is skill sets required. If you actually have very little skills,
33:47 right? And your job very simple, you sit in a factory and you're just polishing lipstick like I used to do, then you
33:54 become very apathetic. If you are a very clever fellow and you are very highly skilled or you know quite skilled and
34:01 your job is very easy then you become very bored right. If you got a very
34:06 difficult job like for example you became a surgeon and you weren't didn't really qualify you cheated
34:14 very very high difficulty and you weren't very well trained every day you
34:20 go to work you become very very anxious that now what the good professor says is
34:26 that you should be in this area called flow when everything flows when you got high degree of difficulty and a high
34:34 degree of skill And they ask me, Peter, why don't you retire? I don't retire simply because my
34:40 job has high degree of difficulty and requires a high degree of skill. And when I'm operating, I'm not there
34:46 anymore. It feels great because it's I'm trained to do that and it just disappear. I mean
34:53 hours I do an 8 hour operation, but it's beautiful. It it if it works out in the end, if it doesn't work out, you got
34:59 heartache and you got pain and that's the thing I've got to suffer. But you when you're in flow, there's nothing in
35:05 the world like being in the flow. All right? In any job, I'm sure Mel will
35:11 flying the 747 isn't exactly easy, right? And it requires a whole degree of and he's flying up there in the flow. So
35:18 if you are in this area, arousal, you be aroused, but you, you know, you need to,
35:23 you need to get better. It means you have to increase your skill level. If you're on this level, you've got high
35:29 degree of skill, but your job is not that difficult. So you actually have to get a harder job so that you go into
35:34 this when you're maximally utilized. This is the secret uh to basically the happiness and enjoyment in your work
35:40 life. All right. So during flow people typically experience deeper enjoyment,
35:46 creativity and a total enjoy involvement with life. All right. However, if you look at the Gallup poll, how many people
35:52 actually engaged in life? The sad fact is out of all the people interviewed in this study only 13%
36:00 enjoy their work. Very very sad isn't it? Only 13% of people in the world. Um
36:06 there was an interview of a of a of a taxi driver and he you know this taxi
36:12 driver asking you know do you enjoy your work? No. You think what I'm driving? I'm not a grab car person. I'm a taxi
36:17 person you know. Um, is there any part of your job that you really enjoy? And
36:23 the taxi driver says, "No, every day is terrible." Oh, yeah. When I fetch some
36:28 old ladies to a particular old lady to her bingo game or or the church or
36:35 something and she could know where to go and she only relies on me and I'm her guy and she always calls me. You know,
36:42 that's a highlight of my day. He says, you see, those are minutes of when you're on zone where where you actually
36:49 find your work matters. And so, basically, you actually got to go and get more of yourself into your job to
36:57 look those areas where there's passion. The calling in life depends on three things. Gifts, passion, and values. and
37:06 your values where the Bible actually transforms those values to see that jobs
37:11 they are not necessarily pay well but that's where you're gifted to do and
37:16 you are passionate about do not become a doctor just because you want the money that's the stupidest thing in the world
37:22 to do because one day the job will be very hard and the skill set not quite there and you've got great anxiety isn't
37:29 it just because you wanted to earn an extra buck isn't it all right so um
37:35 when Should we enjoy life? All right. So, this is the last bit of my sermon. Uh Ecclesiastes. Again, I saw that the
37:43 under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor
37:49 bread to the wise, nor riches for the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge. But time and chance happens
37:56 to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish caught in an evil net, like birds caught in a snare. So
38:02 children of men are snapped in evil time when it suddenly falls upon them. The trouble is you want to wait to enjoy
38:07 your life because you want to earn your money so that you become a millionaire and the first time in your life you buy a business class air ticket, right?
38:14 You're waiting all the time. All right? But the fact is no matter how hard you
38:19 try uh time and chance happens to everybody. You think the smart people
38:25 get away in life? No. Uh let me give you an example. Uh, how many recognize this
38:32 fellow? Very famous cat, Orlando the cat. Orlando the cat plays
38:39 with a mouse and he takes his mouse and throws it on a grid. Okay, which got all
38:45 the stock written on the grid and wherever the mouse hits, they buy the stock.
38:50 And Orlando the cat in Footsie 100 actually beat two groups of uh money
38:58 managers. All right. A cat, okay, earned 5,542
39:05 pounds at the end of the year, which is 4.2 increase compared to the professionals 5,176.
39:12 You know, today if you're a fund manager here, you're going to be very disappointed because I also got a can chimpanzeee
39:18 called Raven the Chimpanzeee who acted in How many seen Babe in the City? Yeah, Babe in the City. This is the actress
39:25 called uh and she was actually using a dart and she threw darts at the stock
39:30 exchange uh all the counters and chose 10 stocks and she pres got a 213% return
39:37 beating 6,000 money managers. 6,000 money managers all over the US could not
39:43 beat one chimpanzeee. All right. So, uh lastly is uh Adam
39:49 Monk, the name of a Brazilian cinnamon ringtail sebus monkey. He actually works for the Chicago Times, you know, and he
39:57 has used a red pen and take all the stocks that she wants and for how many
40:03 years? Uh 2003 2006, she beats the index every time. financial crash 2014. Her
40:11 portfolio dropped 14%. Everybody else dropped 35%. So it tells you you could be a monkey,
40:17 you still make money. Please I mean you want to go and make money. I
40:22 mean a monkey could do better job than you. Right? This the frustration you
40:28 know time you know bread doesn't go to the wise reaches to the intelligent or favor to the ones with knowledge. It
40:34 doesn't quite work out that way. You could have a PhD. You could have permanent head damage. But time and
40:40 chance happens to everybody. So you can't plan your life that well,
40:46 can you? This is the last meal
40:51 of John Gayy. You remember his name? He was a serial killer. He he killed 33
40:58 young men and boys. And just before they injected him with lethal injection, they
41:05 asked him, "What do you want to eat?" And you know what he chose, right? He chose Kentucky Fried Chicken.
41:13 That's Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's his last meal. Historic little picture. You know why he chose Kentucky Fried
41:18 Chicken? It's because he used to be a manager in Kentucky Fried Chicken stall. So therefore, for him, heaven is
41:25 Kentucky Fried Chicken. I had chosen the burger. All right. But the point is we're
41:32 trapped, isn't it? Our idea of enjoyment is limited to what we've experienced
41:37 because you're a manager there and you think that's the best in life. But today, we need to expand our horizons.
41:45 In Luke chapter 10 72, we turned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are
41:52 subject to us in your name." And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And behold, I've
41:58 given you authority to trade on serpents, scorpions, and all over the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice
42:05 in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." You know, the 70 that Jesus sent out. They were thrilled.
42:13 My goodness, all the demons they cast out, snap their finger in Jesus name, they kept running out. They said, "Whoa,
42:19 this is really cool." They got excited. But the trouble is in life Jesus is telling us you get excited about the
42:25 wrong things. So what the demons run away so much you can speak in tong. So what you can do this and do that. You
42:31 know what you should be really happy about? You should be happy that your names are written in heaven. That is
42:38 what you rejoice in. We we seem to settle like John Gayy for all the Kentucky fried chicken in the world.
42:44 That's not how you really enjoy. Uh this is parable of talents. The end of the parable of talents. The master said to
42:50 him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." There's a
42:57 special kind of joy that only comes from the master, not just the one that you're accute that Kentucky Fried Chicken
43:04 because you're a manager. The ultimate joy is Jesus. These things I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and
43:11 your joy may be complete. And Jesus Christ offers us today a complete kind
43:17 of joy. The same kind of joy that fills his heart when he is in the zone with
43:23 his father. The same kind of joy so that your joy may be full. Jesus said to
43:30 them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall not thirst." If you
43:36 like bread, you will love Jesus. Is that right? If you like bread,
43:42 especially Stephanie, she makes bread. If you like bread, that's why Jesus uses these images because these are things
43:49 that you could understand and taste and feel. So Jesus offers us an ultimate
43:54 joy, a kind of joy that's bulletproof. 2 Corinthians 6:10, Paul describes his
43:60 sorrow as sorrowful yet always rejoicing. As poor yet making many rich,
44:05 as having nothing yet possessing everything is bulletproof. If you are in trouble, if you have
44:11 sorrow, if you've got trials, if you are sick, the joy is accentuated actually by your
44:18 suffering. The goal of our ministry, what is the goal of ministry? The ministers ministers and the and and
44:24 speak and the leaders in this church. This is what Paul says. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you
44:31 for your joy, for you stand firm in faith. Why do we have alpha and beta and
44:38 gamma and Bible study and sermons here that go more than one hour? Why do we do that? So that when you leave this hall,
44:45 you are filled with a bulletproof joy. And if you're not feeling the joy, then
44:52 you need to come and interact and get involved in these disciplehip programs. John Piper says, "Christian joy is a
44:59 good feeling in the soul produced by the Holy Spirit because he causes us to see
45:06 the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world. If you don't come into
45:12 contact with the world and only come on a Sunday and you don't come on disciplehip day, it's very hard to get
45:17 the beauty of Christ in you. How do you know you actually have Christian joy?" Thomas Aquinas says joy is a response of
45:24 having been united with what we love. We all know joy, right? You know joy
45:31 because when we united with what we love, there's happiness,
45:36 right? So if you come to church because you have to and there's no joy means you don't love.
45:42 See joy and love is like a horse and a cart. The horse is love and the cart is
45:50 joy. So the love pulls the heart. Right? So if you are loving something and
45:56 you're united with that, then the joy will follow after that.
46:02 Dr. Jeffrey Camille, if you look at the study in in
46:08 Harvard, the Grant Gluick study 1938, there was a young man called Dr. Jeffrey
46:14 Camille and um he came from a dysfunctional family. His father was
46:19 aloof. They fought all the time. There was no love. At 19 years of age, he joined the study
46:26 and they followed him up to his death in n in when he was 85 years old.
46:32 He was a disaster. He was a hypocchondric, a narcissistic hypochondriac, only looking for himself.
46:39 And he couldn't love, he couldn't talk to, he couldn't actually empathize with people. And you know what? Perfect guy
46:44 went to medical school. Not a good person to become a doctor, right? Because totally narcissistic and he's a
46:50 hypochondric himself. And he actually wound up one day almost committing
46:56 suicide. At the age of 30, the people in the study, Grant Gluik study, concluded
47:01 that if there's anybody who's going to fail is this guy because he's got no
47:07 love. He's got nothing. He's dysfunctional family. He's suicidal. This kind of people will fail because
47:14 nature is against him. He's brought up in that kind of environment. At the age of 35, he got tuberculosis.
47:22 He wound up in hospital for one year and someone told him about Jesus Christ
47:29 and he gave his life to God. And it was over a period of many years,
47:35 not overnight, you know, that his life changed from a man who is narcissistic
47:40 and hypochondric. He became a wonderful physician who gave his life in love to other people. And when he gave his life
47:47 to other people, he found the joy that they eluded him all his life. And the people in the study were amazed because
47:53 this is a guy where nature and nurture says everything is against him.
47:58 But he turned his life around. Why? because he'd learned to love. This is
48:04 his words when he was 75 years of age. Before there were dysfunctional families, I came from one. The truly
48:11 gratifying unfolding has been into the person I've slowly become. Comfortable,
48:17 joyful, connected, and effective. That children classic, the velvetine rabbit,
48:22 tells how connectedness is something we must let happen to us. And then we become solid and whole. As that tale
48:30 recounts tenderly, only love can make us real. Denied of this in boyhood for
48:37 reasons I now understand, it took me years to tap substitute sources. What
48:43 seems marvelous is how many they are and how restorative they prove. He's devoid
48:49 of love all these years, but he found it not only in his wife, in his children,
48:55 in his churchmates. When when he came to his funeral, thousands of people
48:60 attended his funeral because his life was spent poured out. He learned the secret of joy. Enjoying your life is
49:08 enjoying your life with another person. That's what we are created to be. We're
49:14 created to be in the image of God and God loves. And if we don't love, we will miss out on joy. So let me end. There is
49:23 a command at the end which I want to share with you. comes from
49:28 Philippians 4. Rejoice, but rejoice in the Lord. Everything else
49:36 is like a Kentucky Fried Chicken last meal. It won't last long. In the Lord,
49:42 you will find that joy. And when that joy hits your life, you share that joy with someone else. And you will see your
49:50 life transformed. Let's pray. Father Lord, we we are so grateful that
49:58 you are a God who can touch lives. You
50:03 are a God who gives us the bright sunshine that greets us every morning.
50:09 You're a God who also sends rain to wet our brows to cool the day. You're
50:16 a God who sends us all that explosion of flavors and colors in our life. We can't
50:22 see. We can't see you, but we can feel you. And we pray, oh Lord, because life
50:27 is so uncertain and life is so difficult and time and chance will come. We don't
50:34 know what's going to happen tomorrow that we savor every day. We don't look back at what it was, our future, what it
50:40 will be. But every moment we learn to enjoy you in our wives, in our food that
50:48 we eat, in simple pleasures and the work that we do, that in all things
50:55 your name will be glorified and you are most glorified when we find our joy in you. We ask this for Jesus' sake. Amen.
