Laughter (2006)

Laugh It Up!
God wants you to be completely serious all the time! Haha. Just kidding.
Theme verse: Proverbs 15:13 "A cheerful heart brings a smile to your face; a sad heart makes it hard to get through the day"

When was the last time you had a really good laugh? I mean a seriously good, milk-coming-out-of-your-nose, about-to-wet-your-pants laugh?

I love to laugh. I'll bet you love to laugh too. So that leads me to wonder … why don't we laugh more often with God? When was the last time you laughed so hard in church that it actually hurt?

The absence of laughter in our faith is a very serious thing because laughter is God's idea, his gift to us. In light of the sin, pain and chaos of this world, it's one of the few secret weapons we who know God have.

I believe there are two big reasons why Christians don't laugh along with God more:

1) Christians sometimes don't understand who God is.

2) Christians sometimes don't understand who they are.

A lot of people view God like a grumpy old person who expects us as his followers to be seen and not heard, to keep our hands to ourselves, and mind our own business.

Not true.

Why do most children feel comfortable joking around with their parents or grandparents about things that they would never say to other people? Simple. Because we know that they love us, and their love is unconditional.

1 a) Who God Really Is
I have a grandpa in Kentucky that looks like he is straight out of the mafia. He was a police officer for over 30 years and was raised in NYC. This guy is tough. But, even as a small child, I was never intimidated by him. I knew that he loved me and he thought I was the coolest kid ever. We shared a close bond and we could joke around and it was okay. This is a lot like God, who loves when we laugh, likes to laugh with us, and delights in us as we fumble our way through life. Just like my grandpa laughed at my adventures as a young child.

God's Best Jokes

Have you ever thought about how funny some of the events and stories from the Bible really are?

Like when God told 99-year-old Abraham and his 90-year-old wife Sarah they would have their first child. Abraham laughed at God, but after the birth of Isaac, he learned to laughwith God. In fact, it was God's idea to name the kid Isaac (which means laughter).

Or the time in 2 Samuel 6:14 when we see King David so caught up in worship that he comes dancing into town in his underwear! Add that to the list of things you can't do in church.

Or in I Kings 18:25-29 (CEV) when Elijah is challenging the prophets of Baal. In the first historically recorded instance of "trash talking," Elijah suggests Baal isn't answering because he is probably on the toilet.

What about Acts 20:9-10? It's the story of the time Paul preached for so long that a young guy named Eutychus fell asleep and fell three stories out of the window he was leaning against (funny) and died (not funny) but was miraculously brought back to life by Paul (OK, funny again!).

Then there's Jesus. Don't think that he didn't know how to have fun. After all, his first miracle was at a wedding party where he turned water into wine so the party could keep rolling. Jesus did other wacky things. On more than one occasion Jesus used spit in healing miracles (thankfully not something he did when he turned that water into wine).

Jesus also said some stuff that would have been pretty funny to those around. In Matthew 23:24, he tells the Pharisees, "You blind leaders! You strain out a small fly but swallow a camel" (CEV). While this is a funny mental picture, it's also an example of Jesus having fun with words.

In Matthew 23:27 Jesus told a group of Pharisees that they were nothing more than sparkling tombs, nice and clean on the outside, but filled with rotting corpses on the inside (oh burn!)

This is all fun, but God's love for laughter goes much deeper than funny or playful Bible verses. It's most revealed in the life, sacrifice and hope of Jesus. In his final dark hours before death, Jesus kept talking about joy. He told his disciples that while there is sin, pain and chaos in this world, they would have joy—we would have joy—by trusting and following him. In John 15:11 (NLT), Jesus told them: "I have told you this so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!"

The joy Jesus talks about is a joy bigger than what's going on in your life right now. A joy that can dance in the face of death. It is the joy of God that flowed from his heart into the everyday life of Jesus, and through his death was made available to you and me. It is the joy of Jesus that gives us every reason to laugh, to dance, to sing, and to know the heart of the Father.

2a) Who We Really AreDo you know this God of joy? Does he attend your church on Sunday? Can he be found anywhere in your everyday life?

When it comes to seeing yourself rightly, you have to understand one very important truth: You are a fool. Seriously. You are a fool. You and I are meant to be fools for God in this messed-up world that thinks it has it all together.

In 1 Corinthians 3:18, Paul says that you are called by God to be a fool for Christ. The way you live should be so radically different from this world that people are dumbfounded and demand to know more. To be a fool for God is no easy thing. You can't be a fool and be worried about what people might think. To be a fool for God is to get excited over the fact that God loves you. To be a fool for God is to believe that God would use you to bring joy into a world filled with sin, pain and chaos.

I think Christian professor Robert Hotchkins said it best when he said, "Christians ought to be celebrating constantly … because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian."

Think about it: Research shows that laughter has a role in fighting viruses, bacteria, cancer and heart disease. It is also known to release chemicals that fight stress and help you relax. God knew what he was doing when he put laughter in our DNA.

Try this: Discover what really makes you laugh and keep doing it. Hang out more with that crazy, fun-loving friend. Regularly watch movies that leave you rolling on the floor. Just be sure to take time to give yourself a much-needed laugh.