What is real joy when life doesn’t look the way we hoped it would?
In this Christmas Advent sermon, Mitch reflects on joy not as a feeling we manufacture, but as something we glimpse in the space between grief and hope. Drawing from Isaiah 35 and the season of Advent, this message names the reality many of us carry—loss, exhaustion, unanswered questions—while refusing to abandon hope.
Through personal stories of life, death, birth, and waiting, this sermon invites listeners to consider how joy changes across seasons, how it slips through our fingers, and how it quietly returns when we become aware of God’s nearness. Isaiah’s vision of deserts blooming and exiles returning becomes a picture of a deeper truth: joy is not tethered to circumstances, but to the presence of God.
This message is for anyone who feels like joy comes and goes, for those grieving during the holidays, and for those who are learning to trust that even when everything is not as it should be, Jesus remains the same. Real joy, Mitch suggests, sits somewhere between the pain of today and the hope of tomorrow—and the link between the two is Christ.
May this sermon offer space to breathe, permission to grieve, and a gentle reminder that God is still at work, bringing new life where we least expect it.
Shalom Project’s regularly scheduled series, Entering into Ministry for the First Time, will return on January 1 at 9:00 a.m. Until then, you’re invited to listen to the first two episodes here:
