“Happiness is in Your Hands”
August 3, 2014
I believe that God is a happy God. He is a joyful God. I believe heaven is filled with love and laughter. Angels are singing; saints are shouting in joy; there is a euphoria that we can only dream about. This is the destiny of the Child of God.
Some hear that word “happiness” and go into a long dissertation (at least in their own mind) about how “happiness” is dependent on “happenings” and joy is a fruit of the Spirit and doesn’t depend on what’s happening. You can have joy in your heart in the midst of trials. All that is true but for our purposes I am going to use happiness and joy interchangeably. I hope you can get past that and understand what I am trying to communicate.
The Bible says,
“...what can be known about God is plain...; because God has made it plain... For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse.” Romans 1:19-20 (NET)
This morning as I went on my daily walk, here in the shadow of Mount Shasta, I was awe struck at the beauty all around me. I saw flowers and trees and animals. I saw the sunrise and last night I saw the sunset. There was even lightening flashing through the crimson clouds last night. It all is so wonderful to me. I can’t help but worship my Creator God. I can easily see that He is good. I can see that He is orderly and loves beauty and so much more. I can see God is a happy God, not like the sappy smile of the chubby Buddha statue, but the core of His being is one of happiness (joy). That is not to diminish His holiness or any of his other attributes, but along with the purity and love you will find happiness as a part of His nature. He exudes joy.
The Bible tells us that God created us in His own image. And, as God is a happy God - I believe He wants us to be happy. He created us in a perfect environment that contained everything we needed for our happiness. We had every attribute necessary to make us happy. And then we fell. Adam and Eve made that selfish choice and what was once natural became unnatural and what was unnatural became natural. So the things we were created for do not come easy and the things we were designed for is now a matter of difficult choices and discipline.
Happiness is one of those things. God wants it for us. We want it and try a thousand different things in hopes of finding it. Most people have far less happiness than they want and wander aimlessly through life seeking it. The purpose of this book is to help you find greater happiness that you now have. You do want more happiness in your life, don’t you? If so -I think I can help you.
There are a few things that happy people do. Happy people have a few things in common. The number one thing that determines if you are happy or not is whether you realize that your life has purpose and meaning. You are not here to just fill space or to be a background character in someone else’s movie (as someone put it). Nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Studies show that one of the best predictors of happiness is whether a person considers his or her life to have a purpose. The Bible says,
“It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned (how) we should spend (our) lives...”
Ephesians 2:10 (Living)
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11
You have a purpose. You are not just a mistake of nature. God has plans for you and the sooner you realize that, the happier you will be. That fact changed my life. In fact, that verse in Ephesians two changed my life.
As a young man, my sinful life brought me to a place where I equated life with pain. I felt like life was purposeless and you would be better off dead. If you added all the pleasure you received from any sinful activity with the pain that resulted – the pain outweighed the pleasure. So, I concluded that you were better off dead.
God brought someone into my life who directed me to God’s Word, the Holy Bible, and I found out that I was created for a purpose. That was long before the book, “The Purpose Driven Life” was written by Rick Warren (which I loved). We need to realize that we have a purpose in life.
The second thing scientist have found that contributes to happiness is that happy people have a strategy for happiness. We assume that happy and unhappy people are born that way, but both kinds of people do things that create and reinforce their moods. Happy people let themselves be happy. Unhappy people continue doing things that upset them. Happy people do not experience one success after another and unhappy people one failure after another. Instead, surveys show that happy and unhappy people tend to have had very similar life experiences. The difference is that the average unhappy person spends more than twice as much time thinking about unpleasant things in their lives, while happy people tend to think about things that cheers them up and brightens their outlook. The Bible says,
“Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others. Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about.”
Phil 4:8 (Living)
I have a personal strategy for happiness. There are three things I do that helps me be a happier person? 1. I start my day with prayer and Scripture. 2. I work at memorizing positive Scripture and poems, and 3. I read good books that help me to see things from a positive view.
Here is the place for you to start. 1. Realize that you have a purpose in life. God has a plan and a purpose for your life. As you discover it – it will bring you happiness.
2. Have a strategy or plan for happiness. I encourage you to read the Bible and pray daily; memorize positive and uplifting Scripture, poems and proverbs.
3. Expose yourself to positive material. Good books; helpful articles; movies; DVD’s and music that will lead you to your goal. If your reading and what you expose yourself to is made up of depressing, discouraging, and negative material and you listen to the nightly news – you have a receipt for depression.
I want to share some more things you can do to have more happiness in life. The Another thing is to cultivate friendships. Do you have one or two good friends? If you do, you are very fortunate. A lot of people don’t - especially in this day and age. It is possible to work alone, live alone and be alone - and many people do that. I believe sin separates us from, not only God, but from each other. I remember a dark time in my life when I didn’t have one single friend in the world. Not one person cared if I lived or died – at least that is how I felt. Life is so difficult and hard when faced alone. When I came to the Lord, one of the wonderful side benefits was friends. He taught me how to be a friend and how to have friends. Once I dealt with my self-interests and self-centeredness, I was able to have friends.
But friends don’t come easy, do they? Friendship takes work. You have to cultivate them. Real friends go through the tough times as well as the good times with you. In a “Critical Incident Stress Debriefing” class I took, we learn that “a pain shared is a pain divided. The positive side of that is “a joy shared is a joy multiplied.”
We have all found that to be true. When we are in pain and when our heart is hurting and life seems so hopeless, if we have a friend we can go to it helps. Over coffee or tea, as we share our hurt and pain and frustration and hopelessness, we find that the pain is not nearly as great.
On the other hand, we have experienced times when we are full of joy and go to our friend and they rejoice with us. They say, “Way to go! Atta boy! Good job!” And our joy is even greater.
Friends do that for us. David and Jonathan in the Bible is a wonderful story of friendship. They loved each other. They shared trials together and they shared joys together. They weren’t always together - but they were always ‘for’ each other. I wish we all could have a friend like that. David’s son, Solomon wrote,
“Two can accomplish more than twice as much as one, for the results can be much better. If one falls, the other pulls him up; but if a man falls when he is alone, he's in trouble. Also, on a cold night, two under the same blanket gain warmth from each other, but how can one be warm alone? And one standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer; three is even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”
Eccl 4:9-12 (Living)
If you want to be happy - cultivate friendships. Work at making one or two or three good friends. Life will be so much better, so much easier, if you share it. In a study of happiness, the experts have found that close relationships, more than personal satisfaction, is the most meaningful factor in happiness. If you feel close to other people, you are four times as likely to feel good about yourself than if you do not feel close to anyone.
Along with cultivating friendship, here is another thing you can do experience more happiness in your life. That is to share with others how important they are to you.
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29
We don’t do that enough. One mother said she didn’t want her son to “get the big head” by giving him too much praise. Many people of my generation never heard their parents verbally say to them, “I love you.” It left many of them insecure with feeling of insecurity.
Relationship are built on mutual appreciation, and there is no better way to show that appreciation than to tell someone how much you care. Researchers at the University of Houston have studied the question of why we don’t tell people how important they are to us. One area they studied was reaction to sad events like funerals. It reminded me of the young man who was the subject of the graffiti on a bridge a few years ago. You can’t believe how much work was put into expressing love for that young man who committed suicide! If they only would have expressed that love while he was alive - maybe he wouldn’t have taken his life.
Researchers caution that we don’t win at relationships. We win by having relationships. David and Jonathan were manly enough to express their love and friendship. The Bible says,
“David met Jonathan, the king's son, and there was an immediate bond of love between them. Jonathan swore to be his blood brother, and sealed the pact by giving him his robe, sword, bow, and belt.” nnnnnnnn 1 Sam 18:1-4 (Living)
Today we are the product of the “John Wayne” mentality. That’s where if you hurt you don’t share it. If you are weak you don’t reveal it. You don’t say you are sorry and you don’t say you love anyone. And under no circumstances do you cry! And as a result, we have crippled a lot of people. We need to tell our friends we love them. We need to express it.
Research has found that it is important to a person’s self-esteem. Support from friends is one of the most important qualities in happiness. I know what you are thinking. “Nobody supports me!”
First, we must support others. We must put others first in our relationships - and then, as we cast our bread upon the waters, it will come back to us.
Another important thing we can do to be happy is to have realistic expectations. People who are happy don’t get everything they want, but they want most of what they get! In other words, they choose to value things that are within their reach. People who are dissatisfied with life very often set unreachable goals for themselves, and therefore set themselves up for failure. Yet people who set high goals for themselves and reach them are really no happier than people who set and reach modest goals.
When you are assessing your job at work or your relationship with your mate, don’t begin with fantasy pictures of the world’s richest person or the world’s ideal spouse. Stay with reality and strive to make things better - not perfect.
Remember that story that Jesus told? He said,
“A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops. In fact, his barns were full to overflowing--he couldn't get everything in. He thought about his problem, and finally exclaimed, 'I know--I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones! Then I'll have room enough. And I'll sit back and say to myself, "Friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Wine, women, and song for you" '!
"But God said to him, 'Fool! Tonight you die. Then who will get it all?' "Yes, every man is a fool who gets rich on earth but not in heaven." Then turning to his disciples he said, "Don't worry about whether you have enough food to eat or clothes to wear. For life consists of far more than food and clothes. Look at the ravens--they don't plant or harvest or have barns to store away their food, and yet they get along all right--for God feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than any birds!” Luke 12:16-24 (Living)
The rich man had unrealistic expectations. Researcher say that the more realistic and attainable people’s goals are, the more likely they are to feel good about themselves. People who conclude that their goals are out of reach are less than one-tenth as likely to consider themselves satisfied with life.
Many years ago we founded Desert Son Christian School in Hawthorne, Nevada. We learned that the way to motivate students was to make their goals “bite size and achievable”. So we would let the students themselves set their own goals (with just a little supervision). They could set however many pages a day they thought they could achieve in their math, English, science, social studies or whatever subject they were taking.
When they accomplished their goals, they could spend the rest of the day doing fun activities. We realized that the object of school was not to work - but to learn. And the kids did great. Sometimes we had to challenge them to up their goals if they were achieving them too early in the day, but generally they got the work done and had fun doing it. Their goals were not unrealistic.
When they got their books at the beginning of the school year, it looked impossible. It look unattainable. But when they broke it down into bite size goals, a couple pages a day in each subject, they weren’t overwhelmed. Sometimes some set unrealistic goals and were frustrated and needed a little help - but when they had realistic expectations, moral was high and learning was accomplished, and they were happy. You must have realistic expectations to be happy.
Let me share one more help for happiness. If you are not sure, “guess positively”. Error on the positive side if you must err. Unhappy people take a situation in which they are not sure and come to a negative conclusion. For example, if they aren’t sure why another person is being nice to them, they assume that the person must have a hidden agenda. I remember being like that! I thought surely they must be using me!
Happy people take that same situation and guess the positive possibility - in this case, that the person really is nice.
I heard about one old guy, who always had a good word for his neighbors. He wasn’t very well off and lived in a small home with only a wood stove for heat. Over the years, his home began to deteriorate, but he was too old and had too little money to fix it up. Then one of his Christian neighbors organized a group to virtually rebuild his house. They gave it modern heat and plumbing. Old Henry was stunned by this. Why were these people taking such an interest in him and his house? He wondered what they stood to gain. Were they trying to change his house so theirs were worth more?
Any situation can be seen as an act of selfishness, if that’s how you want to look at it. When you take that perspective it make you cold, critical, and cynical. And there’s no way out of that trap, because a person we view negatively can’t do anything to improve our impression of them.
We need to think about the perspective we have of people. It can either be a source of comfort to us or a source of fear. Happy people and unhappy people explain the world differently. When an unhappy person interprets the world, most of the time he or she will see the negative in an event. When a happy person interprets the world, most of the time he or she will see the positive. The lesson? Be positive to be happy!
I think it is important for the Christian to learn how to be happy. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit – but it doesn’t just happen. We have to choose this fruit. We have to learn how to be happy and apply what we have learned.
God, by His loving nature, wants us to be happy. Why should the world want what we have if it doesn’t even make us happy? An unhappy Christian is a poor evangelist. A happy, Spiritual-filled Christian oozes out joy. He lets his light shine. Let’s do that as we go out and live for Him.
