Recently I attended a Christian
women’s conference where the speaker, Beth Moore, spoke on Taking Happy Back. Here are some of the things I learned:
1.
Happy is not bad in the Bible.
There is a happiness
to holiness when it is in Christ. You have a biblical right and responsibility
to fight for a happy heart in Christ. The world is rough, we need to find a way
to suffer well, and still have joy both inside and toward others.
2.
We have a gospel responsibility to rebel against our
misery.
Our witness is
at stake. It means nothing to share the good news in a bad mood. When we teach
the church is misery, who would want to join? Instead of the world catching our
joy, we are catching the world’s misery. Believers are meant to shine, so
people want what we have. We are the ones who need to speak faith, hope, love
and light to a miserable world. Despite what is going on around us, we need to
shine the light of happiness. After all, we are to be the bearers of Good News.
Having Jesus in our life is supposed to make us happy, and that happiness gets
to show to people.
Without
spiritual joy in Christ people go to worldly pleasures. William Barkley said
“Jesus promised his disciples they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy
and in constant trouble.”
In
the parable about the talents in Matthew 25:31, Jesus told about the two
servants who multiplied the talents their master gave them and the master said,
“Well done good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s happiness.” The
master was happy and wanted his servants to join in his happiness.
3. We are on
our way to happily ever after.
Heaven.
After this life we, as believers, are on our way to heaven, which really is
happily ever after. We have the hope and future of knowing we are going to
heaven, so we can borrow on that happiness. We can be happy now anticipating
when we die we will be at happily ever after.
If we want
to keep going where God has called us to go, we have to put up with what it
takes to get there. When we are too closed, we protect ourselves out of our own
happiness. If we define Christ as Joy, he is happy being Jesus, if we have His
spirit in us then we have it in us to be happy. **This is part of a write31days series called Joy in the Journey. To ready more Joy in the Journey posts click here. **
How happy are those
who can live in your Temple, singing your praises.
Happy are those who are
strong in the Lord, who want above all else to follow your steps. Psalm 84:4-5
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| Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta over the Rio Grande River. |
Have a joy-filled weekend! We will be enjoying balloons all week!
What an interesting reflection. Rebelling against our misery is a good and brings us to hope. And we always have the hope of heaven to focus on. :)
ReplyDeleteSome days are easier than others to rebel against misery. Some days we just give in.
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