"My Goodness Is His Goodness In Me”

“MY GOODNESS IS HIS GOODNESS IN ME”

2 Peter 1:5-9

John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins. If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, "I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?" He replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or...you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood." Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life. "Yeah, right, it’s not that easy," I protested. "Yes, it is" he said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live your life." I reflected on what he said. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw him about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?" I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter," he replied. "Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live." "Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked. He continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ’he’s a dead man’. I knew I needed to take action." "What did you do?" I asked. "Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said John. "She asked if I was allergic to anything ’Yes, I replied!’ The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ’Gravity’." Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead." He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything. You can be happy in all your circumstances if you have the RIGHT attitude. PHIL 2: 5 “Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had.” 1 JN 4:4 "The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." “the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.”

“My Goodness” is a phrase used by many people. We hear, “My goodness it’s cold,” “That is good food,” “It’s a wonderful day.” Now do you or I have any idea what “my goodness” has to do with anything? We are apt to toss the phrase around mindlessly as we sweat or blink our eyes. There is a story about Ernest Shackleton who set out to reach the North Pole in 1908. The journey would be one of inhuman endurance. His team grew bone weary and was starving. They were less than 100 miles from their goal when they turned back. He wrote in his journal that one time they were almost without food. He took what hardtack and dried biscuits he had and divided them up between his men. Some of them were so hungry they could not wait and ate it right then and licked the crumbs off their fingers like they were starved dogs. Others took it and put it in bags for later. That night he saw one of his most trusted men get into the sack of another man and took out the bag of stored food. What he saw next startled him. This man put some of his stored food into the other man’s bag. He wasn’t stealing but sacrificing his own food for another man. “My goodness” I’m working on it.