Sherri Lynn: Joy in the Workplace

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Speaker 1: 00:06 Okay, we're going to get started. How's the food by the way? Isn't it awesome? Great job, really great job. So I have the privilege of introducing this month's speaker, but let me introduce it with a little bit of a quick story. When I was living in New Jersey, being in ministry is obviously a lot of times a thankless job. And one morning I woke up and I came down and my wife said to me, what's the matter you have a long face? And I'm like, nobody cares. Nobody cares. And I won't lie to you: I'm a manly man. I can tell you I went out and I had tears in my eyes. And I got into my car, I press the on button for the car and I had the Christian radio station on. And the first words that came out of the station were you're an overcomer. And I had a sunroof and I spoke out the roof and I said, I heard you. That's what Christian radio does.

Speaker 1: 01:09 It is powerful. But when you add the power of the music, and you add onto that, the power of personalities that are not going to be corny, but they're going to be just like you and me. Average Joe and Jane, or in this case, average Brant and Sherri. I'm going to read you what it says on Sherri's website as an introduction. Yes, I'm gonna read it. I'm a simple girl who loves Jesus and gets to write and talk for a living that's pretty cool and more than I could have ever hoped for. I produce the Brant Hansen's show. God has been incredibly gracious today. Would you please join me in welcoming Ms. Sherri.

Speaker 2: 02:00 That's so funny. I told him, I didn't even know.I 've got a website. All that stuff is true so praise God (whoever wrote it). Very true. Hello everyone. How are you doing? So glad to be here. I'm not going to be long, I'm just going to talk about some stuff that we talk about on the show. I don't want to assume anyone listens to the radio show. If you do, uh, you know, how a kind of goofy it can be at times and hopefully insightful as well. We really do believe that part of the dialect of the kingdom of God is joy and laughter. And, uh, in the church we're not really taught. (And when we say church we're talking just overall) taught how to laugh. And I know that because I'm a laugher and that it has been seen as the opposite of spiritual and that in many churches and, and I do Christian comedy and had gone to churches where they paid me to come. And then on those, they dared me to make them laugh. Like I said, the people at my church when I was growing up, I always used to say, they looked like they were in the middle of dying and someone pressed pause. The more serious quote unquote, you look, the more spiritual they said you were. But I really believe that a laughter is some, one of the most of faith filled things you can do and being a Christian radio, um, and, and laughing as much as Brant and I do. And talking and goofing off as much as I do. As you can imagine, we get some feedback and it's not always a positive. A lot of times it is. We do, thank God, get more positive than negative. But one time, this is just to show you how some, sometimes we're so ready for offense (Brant wrote a book entitled unoffendable about how not to be offended), but as, as believers sometimes we're just kind of on edge to hear somebody say the wrong thing. And we used to do this thing called the joke factory and we would take two random things and then you'd make a joke out of them and people would call me in and make a joke. And we had Walmart and a Lama and I wish I could let you hear the jokes that came across that radio. But a woman called, I answered the phone and she went off. I mean she just, and I couldn't get a word and she just thought, how dare you. And I'm trying to find where are the offenses so I could help her. And I caught it when she said politics. And I said, ma'am, we said Lama, not Obama,five minutes into it. No, ma'am we said a lama was walking into Walmart, not Obama. And so for us, what I wanted to encourage you is to really think about the joy of the kingdom and how can we bring that to our jobs, our businesses, our neighborhoods, just joy. That's what we are so happy to be able to do at Christian FM is to hopefully bring joy to people. When I hear that we say we're not just safe for the family. I know a lot of, um, Christian media entities will say that safe for the family is great. We want to be fun for the family so that a mom and her kids can laugh together because the culture, I want to tell you this, the culture is so just filthy and funless. I don't know if I'm listening to the word, but we're gonna let it roll with it today.

Filthy and funless, and it's just there, there is no actual joy. There's an appearance of happiness with self-gratification, but we all know that ends injust emptiness. And so the joy of the kingdom, the laughter. I tell the story about my cousin who is a two time cancer survivor and she, um, when she first got cancer, it was really, really a difficult time. It was so early on before, I mean it's bad now obviously, but chemotherapy, they hadn't gotten a lot of the medicines under control or how it doesn't make you sick. And I don't know if anyone's ever been through that here or had someone go through it. Uh, but it was just brutal. And we were so young, very, very early twenties. And I remember after about four or five treatments, she would actually get sick on her way to the place, just anticipating that she was going to have to go through it. And one night she just, she was, I can see her retreating within herself and she wasn't okay. And, um, were, she's sitting on her bed and I'm sitting on the floor next to her and she's into the fashion space, she loves clothes and shoes and all of that. And uh she's just in depression and she's kind of huddled up and I said, crystal. She said yeah and I said, if you die, can I have those shoes to the left and up. And she busted out laughing and I said, laughter's the only way we're going to get through this. And we got up and we went to get ice cream. This is funny cause I'm showing my age here, but I'm guessing you'll understand this. They were looking for us because that was before everybody had a cell phone, like only the rich of the rich had cell phones and number like this. {Very Large} Remember that and you'd be like, hello? So we didn't have a cell phone. We had a pager and the idea of pager was so stupid because I still don't have a home. So you would page someone. "one one one" anybody remember that? Like so they were paging us "where are you guys"? I'd taken them for ice cream. Then we went out and we decided that joy was going to be the way we got through it and I, for our radio show and for Christian FM joy is the thing that we, Grace and Joy, it's what we're pushing because that's what the kingdom of God is, that's what Romans says, It said it's righteousness it's peace its joy in the Holy Ghost, and I don't know if the Christian culture in this country, if we're known for joy, we're known for a lot of stuff. Good and bad, fair and unfair.

But are we known for joy so that when people are around us, and I know everybody's not a laughing kind of person, like uh, I was talking about this with my mother, she was talking about one of the preachers that we knew who had, he has just a sort of like a melancholy way. And I told her, well, and my mother is not like me. I'm a laughy anyway, (I'm the seven times 70 sort of enthusiasm, laughter). After all of that's me, she's not so much. And I said to her, I said, you know, the preacher he was talking about, I said, mom, I'm sure John the Baptist wasn't in the wilderness doing knock knock jokes. For some reason she thought that was so funny. She laughed for like 20 minutes about that. But my point is, when I say joy, I don't mean you have to be goofing off like I do with Brant every morning. But joy is a deep abiding sense of wellbeing. And if everyone has that, that's one of the fruits. It is one of the fruit of the spirit. And do you know that the fruit fruit on a tree is not for a tree so that a tree doesn't eat an Apple? Right? It's the evidence and it's for someone else. And so for us to have that joy, I am telling you all across the country, but I'm allowed to speak. I pushed this all the time. Are you known for that? Do - my grandmother, uh, was an incredibly joyous woman and she, she was a singer, she was a writer. She was an artist who did 70 things.

She had a really, really deep husky voice and uh she had dementia and the family is in the room and we're discussing what we're going to do. You know who's going to take care of her? Where we, again, I don't know if any of you ever been through that. That's another really hard thing to go through. I remember going out to her balcony and crying, calling my brother, cause he wasn't there and crying and crying and crying. See, I came back into the room we're talking about and she sitting there and she's dementia. She's in and out, in and out. More out than in. And as they're talking, she looked at me and she said with her husky voice, "I'll tell you one thing, devil's not gonna steal my joy". And my mom and I just talk about that the other day. I just remember that so vividly that even in that state, she's like, I know the one thing that will keep me afloat and it's joy and I will tell you as she continued to deteriorate it, she would be in her room.

Honestly, when we finally did put her in a nursing home, nurses and aides would come to her room and eat their lunch and take their break because she was, she had such a sense of peace about her and I had, I heard someone say one time that joy is peace dancing and peace is joy resting and she had such a sense of peace around her and I want to be that person all the time. I want to be that person when I'm in Publix, I want to be that person on social media. I don't know what social media brings out of some of us, that's just, well it lacks joy. Ever Look at someone's social media and say, yeah, I don't, I like you in person. I don't care for you on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg between us is causing a schism. Have you ever? No? Then you probably are that person. Someone's probably looking at you like, "Who is this", I don't know what social media brings out of us, but through my social media or whatever it is, I want it to be a person of joy. And I just want to tell you that whether it's your business, wherever you are, to be known for that. Because again, I hear people talking about millennials all the time and how awful they are and Oh God, what else? I'm a little confused because who's raising these people? Like everyone's complaining somebody is their Mom, one of ya'll are their Dad, I don't know who, but I do know this. Dealing with millennials, I know what they're looking for. I can see it they're looking for joy. They're looking for peace. They're looking for an assurance that it's going to be okay. And you know what? We serve the Alpha and the Omega, and as I say in comedy when I'm trying to get people to kind of loosen up and know that it's okay to laugh and say if we serve a God who started it and he's going to end it the middle would have to be kind of funny.

Would it no? The only time, it's not funny if, I don't know how it's going to end, but if I know He's Alpha and He is Omega, in the middle, good gracious guys, we've got to be able to laugh. And that doesn't mean that there aren't serious things, that doesn't mean that there aren't things that you know we gotta do. I know all of that, but He is going to finish it. That's the beauty of it. And so if we can look at it that way and just say, well, and ask God, how can that fruit be more in my life so that I'm a pleasant person to be around. That I - in this dry, dry, dry culture that there's water here. Jesus said to the lady - the woman at the well, it's living water. That's, that's who I want to be. That's what I want to be and as when I go and I do comedy, I'm always trying to get people to know it's okay to laugh. God is okay with you laughing. I believe deep in my heart that He laughs and if you don't believe that when you get up tomorrow morning and you look in the mirror, see that he has a sense of humor for you, dress yourself up, put your makeup on, do all of that stuff. Just look at yourself in a mirror and say, He loved, He made this, He loves this. That's pretty funny. And then be able to give that joy to everybody else. Three things I just want you to remember real quick and just take this with you. As believers, we should be the least anxious, the least offended and the most joyful, the least anxious cause the world is anxious. They're on edge. The least offended. I don't have to tell you about that. Everyone talks about outrage and the outrage culture and the cancel culture and all, you know, all of that, and the most joyful, I believe we would not have to struggle to get people to come to church.

We wouldn't have to struggle to get people to come and know Jesus if they saw that, that would be so different than what they've seen they'd be like, man, I want to be around them more. Even if they didn't want going up there singing "just as I am", we used to call them wham at church. I grew up in church. We call it, weepy alter moments because when you're 16 or 17 you go to the altar every Sunday "Jesus I'm sorry Jesus I'm sorry" the person may not do that but they would want to be around you because there's something calming about you and there's something calming about you because you're carrying a guarantee inside of you. That's what the Bible says. The Holy Spirit is, He's the guarantee. And the only time that you're nervous about a guarantee is if the person who gave it to you is, as little as my grandfather used to say, uh, careless with the truth. Did you ever meet somebody like that? Have a little bit of carelessness with it and you have to ask yourself, is God careless with the truth? I don't think He is. He's actually is the truth. So if He is giving you a guarantee, then my goodness, go ahead and laugh and have joy. That's it.

{Are you taking questions? How did you and Brant meet?} Yes. Ah Brant and I met a, I had a job that had stolen all my joy or I gave it away, however you want to look at it. I didn't have any joy in that job and I whew Lord one of you take me out for coffee later and I'll tell you that whole story. But I started looking for another job and, and I always say when you have a job where you have something that is, that is um, difficult, be careful cause God could be using that to drive you somewhere else. I wouldn't have never looked for another job if it wasn't for this difficult situation. So I saw a posting online and I applied and um, they called me. It was in Sacramento. That's where we met and started the show. It was in Sacramento, full disclosure, but just be honest with you, um, I looked the company up and saw that they did not have any people of color working there.

And so I thought they were just calling me to kind of fill some time, equal opportunities, something like that. Why don't we try, because we're both black. So I did not take it seriously at all. And that manager kept calling me and calling me and calling me like, you know, we really are interested and I'm going, yeah, whatever. So then they asked me would I meet with Brent, would I Skype with him and that was the first time I thought maybe this is real because we connected so quickly and our sense of humor seem to be the same. We seem to vibe together and um, and he was so interested in the fact that I seem disinterested in the job, can he will tell you that. So they flew me out there and when I got there, uh, he had, he had puppets and flutes and slide whistles. It was the craziest thing. But he had such a knack for talking about grace that I said, and the kingdom that I said, yeah, I'm going to work with this guy. So that was about seven years ago actually. So that's how we met. Thank you. Any others? Okay. All right. Thank you guys.