On a family visit to Disneyland a man pondered the sign over the entrance arch that read, “Welcome to the happiest place on earth.” The rest of the day he looked at the faces of the people and was impressed by the small number who were actually smiling during their visit to “the happiest place on earth.” He roamed the park trying to make sure his kids had a good time and wondering why so few adults seemed to be enjoying themselves. To live life to the fullest is qualitatively different than merely existing. Jesus said that part of knowing Him is to enable us to live life to the fullest: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Not according to the standards of a fallen world, but life as it was intended to be according to the designs and desires of the Creator of life.
• Would you describe inside your skin as the happiest place on earth.
What if you had the chance to start life over again knowing all you do after living as long as you do? What would you change? How would you raise each child different knowing the unique traits and talents they possess? Small glimpse of how God sees our lives and makes some of the choices He does.
Beyond that I think their would be two goals I would have for the second shot at life: 1) Live a happy man. 2) Die a happy man (life too short to not be happy) Key/trick/secret is the have the kind of happiness that you can carry beyond this world. Many in this world claim to be happy and are in many ways(spend lots to be happy, shop, buy expensive toys) but the problem is that their kind of happiness will die when they do.
TWO QUESTIONS YOU NEED TO ANSWER TODAY TO GET YOU ON THE RIGHT ROAD TO HAPPINESS:
1. DO YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY? Dumb question? Obvious answer? All generations have know the importance of being happy in life.
Founding Fathers: Right to the LIFE, LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
2. ARE YOU HAPPY? With your life as it is right now? Job? Family? Finances? With who you are? Where you are? What you have? What you are accomplishing in your life?
3. BONUS QUESTION: Did you know that GOD WANTS YOU HAPPY? BONUS ANSWER: Real happiness is found in a God centered life I did not say anything about money, prosperity, popularity, achievement or circumstances.
Henry David Thoreau is often noted for his statement that most men “live lives of quiet desperation.” In an attempt to avoid that kind of existence, he lived alone from 1845 to 1847 in the woods of Walden Pond, Massachusetts. In 1854, he wrote of his experiences in the book Walden. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” The worst fact of death is the truth that we had never really lived. You don’t have to go sit in the woods for 2 years to understand how true that statement is.
BEATITUDES: Blessed are the ______ lit…Happy are…
7 So Jesus said to them again, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 "All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
10 "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
A veteran mountain climber was sharing with a group of novices preparing for their first major climb. He had conquered many of the world’s most difficult mountains. “Remember this,” he said, “your goal is to experience the exhilaration of the climb and the joy of reaching . . . the peak. Each step draws you closer to the top. If your purpose for climbing is just to avoid death, your experience will be minimal.” Jesus did not call us to live the Christian life just to escape hell. Our purpose in following Christ should not be merely to avoid eternal punishment. If that’s our primary motivation, we are missing the wonders and joys and victories of climbing higher and higher with Jesus. When we walk by faith, we will see each day of the Christian life as a challenge to be met, and as one more upward step to glory! Do not live minimally. Live life to the maximum!
• Going to move forward under the assumption that people here this morning do want to be happy, want to live life to the maximum and want to know what God might have to say about it. DO NOT LIVE LIFE MINIMALLY!
• FOUR STATEMENTS that will help us to get a sense of what it means to find and live that ABUNDANT LIFE.
HAPPINESS CAN ONLY COME FROM A LIFE OF FOLLOWING THE SHEPHERD’S PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE: 7 So Jesus said to them again, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
• The DOOR TO HAPPINESS is found only in one place: That place is not more money –better circumstances – right relationship – better house or car – perfect vacation. Some of the happiest Christians I have met, the most satisfied and joyful were in Brazil and had very little or almost nothing compared to the average person in a American church pew.
• The DOOR to HAPPINESS is not a PLACE but a PERSON: Happiness begins by getting Jesus in the right place in your life.
Doors are what we put in places that allow us to enter into where we want to go.
Old story of the guy who decided to visit the wrong church. Not long after the service started the deacons started pulling poisonous snakes out of sacks to hand to those in the congregation to hold to demonstrate their faith. As the snakes were being handed out closer in his direction he asked the guy next to him where the back door was. The man said there isn’t one. ‘Where do you think they would want one’. When I am motivated to move from where I am to where I need to be THE DOOR IS KEY
• If you are going to find you goal of happiness you need to understand that it is only accessible through one entrance point.
• That entrance point is not one of the many doors we have here at the church. We have 20 exterior doors that will allow you to get inside HBBC and many more after you get inside that allow access to many of our rooms. Just getting inside the building and inside this room is not the entry point to a life of true happiness.
Lynne and I visited the church in Williamsburg, VA. 25 years ago one of the unique characteristics was that individuals had their own pews. Not like today where people tend to always sit in the same place but these people bought and paid for pews. Pews with doors that had locks on them. Happiness is not found by sitting on the right pew. If I told you that sitting on the front pew would bring true happiness I am afraid some would say, ‘I’ll stick with being miserable thank you’. Entry point is not a particular pew.
• The entry point for happiness is found in a true relationship with the One who died for you and offers to you a life of meaning and joy. JESUS!!
HAPPINESS CAN BE LOST BY MISSING THE SHEPHERD’S PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE: 8 "All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. (doesn’t’ matter what other plan you choose it is that you miss His)
• There is tremendous loss for a life missing what God has planned for it.
Shepherds eating breakfast outside the town of Gevas, Turkey, were surprised to see a lone sheep jump off of a nearby cliff and fall to its death. Then they were stunned when the rest of the nearly 1,500 sheep in the herd followed, each leaping off of the same cliff.
When it was all over "450 of the sheep perished’
The estimated loss was over $100,000, an extremely significant amount of money in a country where the average person earns about $2,700 annually.
THIS IMAGE CAN BE CARRIED OVER TO WHAT WE SEE WITH SO MANY WHO FOLLOW THOSE WHOSE LIVES ARE GOING NOWHERE OF ETERNAL SIGNIFIGANCE.
If you can tell a people by their HEROES then I am afraid of what our choices of celebrities and role models in America is now saying about our nation. MADONNA a THIEF
• THIEVES and ROBBERS desire an audience with the SHEEP. God’s plan for your life will not be an obvious choice but might even make the least sense and have the least support from those around you.
• JESUS DIDN”T SAY HE WAS A DOOR but THE DOOR. There are others who would come and direct your life in another direction and STEAL your future and ROB you of all that could have been. Maybe that is happening for some of your right now in your life? You have bought into the lie, followed the broad road and are climbing the wrong ladder of life.
DION SANDERS became a born again Christian after a very significant point in his life. It was the night of one of his life’s greatest triumphs. His team had just won the SUPER BOWL and after the celebrations had settled he realized that this had been what his life had been lived for and now that it had happened it wasn’t the true satisfaction he thought it would be. There must be more than what his world had been telling him should matter the most. Probably none of us will achieve at that level in the world’s offering of things but we can know by faith that nothing but a true dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ can ever bring us the kind of happiness and joy that will satisfy our lives.
• What did you live for this week? What are you passionately pursuing this year? What drives your life? What are you going to ultimately find at the end of it all?
• Word for THIEF is kleptos where we get our word KLEPTOMANIAC. The idea is of one who cunningly steals, sometimes fooling themselves not knowing they are a thief and misleading others. Often just little twisting of this truth or that. Sounds like makes human sense.
• Word for ROBBER is one which we have no English equivalent. It describes in a word someone who steals by VIOLENT means.
• Satan has a plan for your life and he will use any means you allow to be effective to steal God’s purpose from your life. His greatest victories come because we don’t realize that he is working in our lives to achieve the greatest loss possible.
Learning some things about the FIRST WORLD WAR. Things like it was a TRENCH WAR in which both sides just looked at each other from trenches for most of the war. Often not seeing one another as enemies. The French would not fire on the Germans when they saw their fires from their cooking for meals. ‘It is common courtesy not to bother them while they are eating’. The Germans talk about how a French soldier would smell their dinner and ask if he could join them. Night after night during dinner he would come over and sit and eat and then go back to his trench. The Generals spoke of the greatest problem in the war was a LIVE AND LET LIVE attitude on both sides. They would rather relax, enjoy the weather, read books in the high grass than to fight with one another. ANYBODY KNOW THERE IS A WAR GOING ON?
AMERICA: Things like it wasn’t the fact that the Germans were attacking England and France that made us willing to fight in that war. In fact when the war started thousands of German-Americans went to join the German side. America was in an economic boom and didn’t want to worry about an overseas war. We also weren’t willing to join the war when the Germans sank the Ocean Liner the Lusitania killing many Americans. And we weren’t even willing to go when German agents came and bombed steel mills in America to try to keep up from producing things for the other side. We decided to get into the war when we intercepted communication from Germany to Mexico which was trying to get Mexico to join against us by attacking our southern border and taking back the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. We finally accepted our enemy was real.
Example of our enemies lie
a. We think that the things we are living for have much greater value than they do.
Max Lucado refers to many as being the “prison of want.” “Its prisoners want something bigger. Nicer. Faster. Thinner. If your happiness comes from something you deposit, drive, drink, or digest, then you’re in the prison of want. Are you hoping that a change in circumstance will bring a change in your attitude? If so, you’re locked up. You’re in a cell of discontentment.”
In a cemetery in England there’s a gravestone with this inscription: “She died for want of things.” Alongside that stone is another, which reads, “He died trying to give them to her.”
Life
