Happiness is a Beautiful By-Product

Happiness is not something to be sought or bought. It is a beautiful by-product of a job well done. It is, as Christ said, the result of doing those things He taught. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “Happiness is like a butterfly. Try to grasp it and you will frighten it away. Sit down quietly and it may alight on your shoulder.”

True happiness has to come from a personal internal Bible orientation.  Make a mental note of some Bible ideals that give you peace, and wisdom, and apply them. The by-product is happiness.

Start every day with the confidence you and your Master can achieve. Together you can search the unsearchable, know the unknowable, and do the undoable. 

Realize you have an invisible companion in all of life. 

“for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure”  (Phil 2:13).

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”  (Philippians 4:13).

Don’t let your feelings govern your attitude. Let faith and facts determine your outlook. When you awake in the morning you might in all honesty be able to say, “Dear Lord I don’t feel like you are here with me.”  Any one of many things may cause such a downer. You may have eaten Paul Revere Pizza the night before, and it got you up in the middle of the night. 

When you don’t feel like the Lord is within a country mile of you, and is looking the other direction then pray:

“Dear Lord, I don’t feel like you are here with me. However, Lord in your Word you said you would never leave me nor forsake me. Therefore, in spite of my nickeled feelings I thank you for the fact you are here with me. Let’s you and me go get ‘um.”

Continue with enthusiasm, “Lord, I’ve never lived this day before and I will never live it again. Help me to live it to the fullest in such a way that I won’t long to live it over or have to live it down. There will not be instant replay or rerun so help me to live it up to your standard.”

Live each day with a purpose. That purpose being to do all within your power to see to it that in your life His will is done.  He’ll help you.

In searching for happiness keep in mind it is a beautiful by-product of a job well done. The initial and primary job that must be well done is to establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

“If you know these things, happy are you if you do them.”

The apostle Paul exhorted his friend Timothy and through him shared the same encouragement with us: “…give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine… Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all”  (I Timothy 4:15).

Meditation is a lost art among most Christians. New Age aficionados have given a bad reputation to the art. However, the Psalmist spoke 14 times of meditating.  New Age teaching is that we create our own reality. That is so close to the truth as to be deceptive. It is not truth, however. 

Biblical meditation is taking a concept and dwelling on it until we become absorbed in it. Before he wrote of them David made a mental image of:

      a shepherd and his fold, green grass and a stream, the cup and oil, and fellowship with God.

Mentally armed with such thought he faced lions and giants.

When he failed to engage in such meditation and instead went up on the roof top and committed transcendental adultery he lost spiritual battles that caused himself and others much unhappiness.

Meditation on the Word of God enables one to replace subconscious conflicts with spiritual truths which produce a happy stable personality. 

“If you know these things, happy are you if you do them.” John 13:17