Are you tired of all the bad news? I am. I don't think any of us have lived through a year like 2020, with so much bad news coming our way. And the bad news is, 2021 is starting out the same way. Bad news. But today, I have some good news for you. And the good news is, the Bible shows us how to make our own good news, despite all the bad news. To make our own good news. And that's what Paul's letter to the Philippians is all about. Bad news had been pouring into Paul's life. For 20 years, he'd been stoned in every town he went to, to preach the gospel. People rejecting Jesus Christ. He even caused a riot in Ephesus, because people are so angry about what he said about Jesus as God and as Savior. And then Nero, he finally is fed up with Paul, and he has him arrested and thrown in the dungeon, because Paul kept preaching that Jesus Christ was God, and Nero was not. And Jesus was King, and Nero was not. So the only thing Nero could do to silence this rebellious preacher was to throw him into his dungeon. On the screen, you actually see a picture of the dungeon that Paul was kept in, with Peter at one point, before Peter was crucified by Nero. It's an amazing experience to stand there and think about Paul being caged here like a tiger. He wanted to be in Spain planting churches, but instead, he was caged up in this dungeon, waiting for his own execution. Add to this, it gets worse. Paul writes in his letter about how Christians were deliberately badmouthing him, falsely accusing him, lying about him, and undermining his ministry. Christians not behaving like Christians, and trying to destroy this great apostle's ministry. So he writes in chapter 1, verse 18, "They stir up trouble for me while I'm in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice." That's an amazing sentence. Do you see what Paul is doing here? Paul is making his own good news in the midst of bad news. All this terrible lying about him, but they're still preaching Christ. And that's all that matters: that people might hear about Jesus. And that's why 23 times, in four short chapters, the word "joy," or a synonym, is used by Paul to describe what his life is like in the dungeon. Repeatedly, stubbornly, irrepressibly, Paul writes about joy in the dungeon. He said it's because he's learned how to make his own good news, despite the bad news. That is a crucial skill in life that a lot of people don't know how to do. Most people are only as happy as they are about their circumstances and how people are behaving. It's a crucial skill, because no one gets a fairy-tale life. Bad news comes to everyone, sooner or later. That's why I always say, life is what happens when you had other plans. Isn't that true? You could write across the book of Philippians that Paul proves bad news is inevitable, but misery is only optional. That's what you could write across this letter: Bad news is inevitable, but misery is only optional. Because Paul lives that. That's what he's talking about to the Philippians in this letter. How did he do it? Well, first, Paul chose what to focus his thoughts on. Proverbs 23:7 says, "People are what they think." Repeatedly, the Bible has that message to us. No one can live a better life than their thought life. No one can live a happier life than their thought life. You are what you think. It's impossible to live better than the way you think, because you are the way you think. I'll never forget visiting a man dying of cancer in the hospital. He said to me, "I wish I had realized sooner what a good life I had had." What a sad thing to say. I knew him well for years, and I can tell you that he was critical about everything and everyone. No one is ever good enough for him. He was always complaining. He lived negatively. And the problem with that is, when you live negatively... negative people never fully realize how good their life actually is. Think about that. Negative people never fully realize how good their life is. The reason is, negative thinking colors our life. It colors the way we see things. It's a form of blindness. Actually blind to the good news that's still in our life, because we're focused on negativity. We become blind to so many blessings that we have, because we keep talking about what's wrong. Negative thinking, it blinds us. Do you know any negative people, really, at work or in your family? Does anybody's name come to mind who's negative and is blind to all their blessings? Milton, the epic poet, wrote, "Our thoughts can make our life heaven or hell." We've all experienced days like that. It's a bright, sunny day in California. We had a good lunch. But we've turned our day into hell because of our deep negative thinking and complaining. Like Proverbs says, we are what we think. Paul turned even a dungeon into a place of joy, because he made it a place of focusing on the good news, with thanksgiving. He had all sorts of bad news hitting him. But he tells us, in verses 8 and 9, how he made his own good news in bad news. He says, "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things." Logizomai is the Greek word. Now notice, "whatever, whatever." What Paul is saying is, there are good things, even in the midst of bad things. He is not saying everything is good. I hear people say, "It's all good." No, it isn't. That is the most mindless thing I hear. My son dying of mental illness was not a good thing. I will never say that. A couple losing their child, it's not a good thing. I'll never say that. Soldiers maimed for life in Afghanistan, that's not a good thing. I will never say it's a good thing. The Bible doesn't tell me I must pretend that bad is good. It allows me to say, "No, that's a bad thing. No, that's evil." Everything is not all good. Paul doesn't say that. He says, "Whatever, whatever": in the midst of bad things, there are still good things to focus on. And that's what the word for "think" means: logizomai. The word, literally translated, means to dwell upon, to focus. And what the Bible is teaching here, and that Paul had learned, is, our moods do not drop out of the sky. Our moods are produced by our thinking. If you're alert, you can prove that to yourself every day. How you think is going to determine what mood you are in. So Paul says to the Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians 10:5, "Take control of your thoughts." Literally, take control. He says that because the greatest human freedom is to choose what we focus our thoughts on. That's your greatest freedom, that no one can take away from you. No one can make you focus on anything you don't want to focus on. It's your freedom. And I say to us again: if you don't take control of your thoughts, your life is out of control. Paul's telling us that he had learned to make his own good news, and be joyful even in a dungeon, because he took control of his thoughts and focused on the good things in his life that he was thankful for, that were praiseworthy and excellent. I read about a person who was at the bank withdrawing money, and a robber came in and shot the place up, including shooting him. He was in the hospital. He didn't die. He was in the hospital recovering, and a reporter came to interview him and says, "Gee, I'm sorry about your bad day." And the guy said, "No, it wasn't a bad day. Wasn't a great day, but it was a good day, because I got shot and I didn't die. That's a good day." Isn't that true? Focus, focus, focus. In my research last week, I came across a line that just stopped me in my tracks. The line was this: "There are 7 billion people in the world, and you're letting one or two ruin your day." Seriously. That's worth remembering. In the last couple of weeks, have you let somebody ruin your day? There are 7 billion people, and you've let one person at work ruin your day. Seriously. Focus. Focus. It is the crucial happiness habit. And the good news Paul has is that everyone can learn to do this. But it takes courage. Why do I say it takes courage? Because negative people just don't like positive people. Have you ever noticed that? They want to turn you negative. They want to argue with you: "You're not seeing life right." They start filling you with negativity, because they want conformity to them. They want you to be like them. But it takes courage to be positive in a negative world. You've got to be like this bird. And I've circled him in red. Everyone else is looking this way, but he decides to look another way. That's called perspective. Remember that picture. You can't look at things the way everybody else around you is looking at them. You've got to turn and look a different way, to be independent of them. On a mission trip to India, our small group went into the back roads of India, to really tiny little villages and tiny churches. And in one of these churches, the pastor asked the group of Indians who were there worshiping, "What's your biggest impression of America? Tell them." Do you know what they said? "How big your garbage cans are." It just struck me. We take for granted... we throw so many things away that so much of the world is praying one day to have. The abundance that we enjoy in America. Tolstoy was thrown into a concentration camp in Siberia because of his political views. And believe me, a Siberian concentration camp is horrible. But as he wrote about that experience, he wrote, "Bless you, prison." Is he serious? He wrote that he blessed that prison experience, because it was in Siberia that he learned to be thankful for all these things in his life he'd always taken for granted. Friends, good food, freedom. He said, "It was while I was in prison that I learned to be thankful for ordinary things that I'd always taken for granted. That I only became thankful for when I lost them." That's what Dostoevsky said. He said, "Most of us never realize how many blessings we have until we lose some of them." Isn't that true? I want to tell you that a life that doesn't practice thankfulness is an impoverished life. It's an impoverished life. It doesn't realize what a good life it's having until it's too late. In India, we went from tiny village to village. And one village we went to, these are just mud huts. It was so poor that the church did not even have chairs for the people to sit on. They sat on the dirt. And they sang worship songs a cappella, because there were no instruments, to the Lord. And I want to tell you, that worship service was one of the greatest I've ever been part of. After about 30 minutes, the pastor began to take requests from the people. And I'll never forget that one young woman, maybe 30, raised her hand to make a request. It was fingerless. It was just a stump. Leprosy had taken all of her fingers off her hand, and it had also removed most of her nose and disfigured her face. Do you know what her request was? She wanted to sing, "Count your many blessings one by one." Honestly, I remember sitting there, and... is she serious? You see, leprosy could take her fingers. It could take her nose. It could disfigure her face. But it couldn't take the smile off of her face. And you could see the joy radiating from her eyes, that leprosy could not take from her. I have that view, her smiling face, tattooed in my memory. And I can never read verse 8 of Philippians 4 without seeing her in my mind's eye. "Whatever is lovely, whatever is worthy of praise, think about those things." And make your own good news, no matter how bad the news is. That's what she did. It's all a matter of focus. I wonder what you've been focused on in the last couple of weeks. What have you been focused on? I read this last week: "If you made it through the night, be thankful. Not everybody made it through the night." No matter how bad the news is, be thankful that you woke up this morning. Life is worth being thankful for. Secondly, never, never, never make other people responsible for whether you are happy or not. Don't make other people responsible for your happiness. So many people go through life almost begging for people to change what they're doing. They're saying, "Really, make me happy. You're making me unhappy. Please make me happy." That's a weak way to live. Never do that. Growing up, I was a champion negative thinker. If you asked me if my glass was half full or half empty, I'd say, "I don't even have a glass." And then I became a Christian at Stanford, and I began to go to a Bible-preaching church, and I got into a Bible study. And for the first time in my life, I bought a Bible and began to read it. I'd never done that before. And along the way, I stumbled on Philippians for the first time in my life. I read this book, and when I came to chapter 4, the lights turned on in my life. I saw that my negative thinking had made me my own worst problem. And I resolved to be in Paul's group instead of the world's group. I resolved to be focused on whatever is praiseworthy and good, rather than my complaints in life. And chapter 4, that I'm speaking about today, became my life chapter. That means I live by this chapter. I read it again and again. I try my best to practice what it says. And it has changed my life. In verse 12, Paul writes, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation." Any and every situation. Paul is saying, "I wasn't born this way. This isn't my DNA, or my genes." Fact is, Paul was a Pharisee. And Pharisees were the most critical, negative, unhappy people in Israel. Nobody was ever good enough for them. That was Paul. And then he became a Christian, and he learned how to do what I'm talking about today. I know some of you are pushing back right now. All through this sermon, you're already pushing back and saying, "No, I can't do that. I can't do that. I've always been negative. I've always been critical. You know, I just tell it like it is." Is that your speech? "I can't learn to be that way." Yes, you can. You were not born that way. It was a habit you developed over time, to be critical and negative. And you can unlearn that habit. And that's why Paul says he learned to undo that habit, and you can too. And your joy and happiness in life depends upon changing your thinking. Because, as Proverbs 23 says, as a person thinks, so they are. Verse 12 challenges us. He said he learned to think differently. And that's such good news. The good news is this: it means we can live a joyful life before it's too late. I'm really quite serious about that. There are people who go through their whole life not learning what I'm talking about today. And they come to the end of their life, and they never realize what a good life they had. They missed out on the joy, because they didn't learn to think like Paul says. Don't wait until it's too late to learn how to do this. Paul says he had learned to be content. And the Greek word that he uses there is only here in the Bible. And this word "content" means, in the ancient world, to have happiness that is independent of bad news and other people's behavior. Independent. Paul didn't make other people responsible to make him happy. But I bet many of us are living that way. He learned to be independent of people's behavior, because he can't control them. He just needs to learn to be independent. The word that is used here, in the ancient world, was used to describe a city that imported nothing from the outside. No imports. No food imports. Nothing. It was a city that was totally self-sufficient and independent of everything around them. And that's what Paul's saying: learn to be independent of how other people behave, and circumstances. What he's saying, you could translate this verse: "Nothing can steal my joy, our happiness in life. Nothing makes me cancel my joy, however you behave." Wouldn't you like to live that way? Have you been letting people cancel your joy? Bad news did not cancel all the good news in Paul's life. So how did he do it? By choosing to be thankful. He says, "Whatever is lovely, admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy," dwell. Focus on those things. At Christmas a few years ago, I was flying out of the San Jose airport. And you know how it is at Christmas. I was flying to meet my family in Phoenix and enjoy the holidays. Well, the parking lot was just stuffed with cars, and I was driving up and down the lanes looking for an open space, and there just wasn't any. But I saw a woman walking down the aisle towards her car. So I whipped around and got in that aisle and drove up and waited for her to drive out. But she sat there for, I don't know, five or 10 minutes, fixing her hair and putting on her lipstick. And I just sat there. And finally, her rear lights turned on, and she backed up. And I backed up to give her more room to maneuver in. And there I sat. She stopped, and suddenly I heard this loud vroom, and I saw this black Porsche speeding down the aisle towards us, 40, 50 miles an hour, I don't know what. Come right up to us, hit its brakes, and squirrel into that parking space. I couldn't get to it, because her car was between me and it. Then she drove off. And the dude in this Porsche got out in his $3,000 suit, carrying a leather briefcase, walked past my car, looked right at me, and smiled. I was losing my Christianity. But I had a great idea. I'm not sure if it came from God or the devil, but it was a great idea. And my idea was this: I'd just take my key and score both sides of that Porsche, and then put a Raiders sticker on his bumper. [unclear] vigilante justice. I was starting to get happy at what I was going to do to his Porsche. And then this thought interrupted me, about Philippians 4, my so-called life chapter. And I remembered what Paul said. Focus. Focus. And honest to God, I said out loud, sitting in my car, "You can steal my parking space, but you're not going to steal my joy today." And I focused. [applause] And what I did, I switched from what the parking space was, which was piddly compared to all the fun I was going to have with my family at Christmas. Focus, focus, focus. That's what Paul says. If you want to make your own good news in the midst of all the bad news, you've got to choose the focus. We must stop making other people responsible for our happiness, and learn to be independent of their behavior, by being thankful and focusing on the good things. Whatever is praiseworthy. One of the things that I most love about our ministry at Compass is our TV program on Sundays, that lots of people watch, but especially prisoners in Soledad. And I know that, because every week I get letters from you. And just this last week, I got three letters from you. And I want to say publicly, on TV, thank you for all the letters you write to me, because honestly, I learn so much from you. They're really inspirational to me. And an example of this is, I got a letter in which you described what you had done to land yourself in Soledad, and really how it's pretty bad in prison in Soledad. And then you wrote this blockbuster sentence that said, "Every day I go to the mirror and talk to the person who is blocking my happiness." Wow. "Every day I go to the mirror and talk to the person who's blocking my happiness." That's a good habit to have. Have you ever thought about going to the mirror this week and talking to the person who's blocking your happiness? I say that because whatever consumes your mind controls your emotions. That is the explanation of why we have the life we have. Whatever controls your mind, consumes your mind, controls your emotions. So if you looked into the mirror today, what would you say has been consuming your mind? Let me pray for us. Lord, I pray You'd help us to be in Paul's group. Help us to change things in the way we think, and just break chains. Break chains, and live an independently happy life. And I pray it in Your name, Jesus. Amen.