[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word]

Happiness Point #22: God Isn’t Limited on Resources

       For many, many years of my Christian life, I believed something bad that I didn’t even realize I believed. That was, I believed that God was limited on his resources. There was the prevailing belief in the background that God only had so much good, and once it was taken up, you would either have to take the leftovers, or not get anything at all. What I didn’t realize at the time, and what I have come to understand now, is that God is infinite in his ways, and abounding in his resources.

       Perhaps we are searching for a new job. We find that job that seems to match very well with what we are looking for. We apply for it, and we get called to go in for an interview. We go in for the interview, and all goes well. A couple weeks later, we call back and find out the position has been filled and we didn’t get the job. It used to be, in this kind of situation, that I would have put my head down, figured I’d lost an opportunity at something great, and that any other job opening that came along would never match it. The reality is, though, that even though we didn’t get this job, there is a better one out there still yet to come. As with we anything, there is always one better.

       The thing is, when we become too attached to something—that new job—we can build up the idea in our minds so much that we think that nothing else matches or compares to it. In effect, we deceive ourselves. That’s what strong attachment does—it deceives. The truth of the matter is that when we are not too attached to anything or anyone we can see things on their proper level of importance or glamour. We can also see that if this particular idea doesn’t come to pass as we hope, there is nothing to worry about because another new opportunity will come to us in due time. Attachment blocks new opportunity. Letting go allows new opportunity to come.

Happiness Point #23: Lower the Bar of Accomplishment

       When we have our bar set too high, we just make our lives miserable. We add a lot of unnecessary struggle to them. We all have different levels of accomplishment as pertains to what we feel is a finished product. Those who struggle with perfectionism are really going to have a difficult time because they like everything to be as perfect as possible. They want every ‘i’ dotted; ’t’ crossed. No room for even the slightest hint of a mistake. Any sign of a mistake means the whole is ruined for the perfectionist.

       The truth is, we can spend too much time on a task in order to try to make it perfect. For me personally, I could go through each of my sermons and proofread them two or three times, perhaps even four before delivering them. The problem with that is, that would take a lot more of my time to go through all those drafts. Normally, I play a sermon as it lies. That is, I normally don’t even read through it a second time before I deliver it. I have trained myself while typing to immediately cut something that doesn’t seem right instead of letting it linger on the paper for a second proof-read. By doing this, I don’t waste time on concepts that aren’t going to make it to the delivery anyway.

       But by allowing myself to deliver a sermon without going through multiple drafts, I am able to get much more accomplished with time. Sure, there may be a few spelling and grammar errors that get posted with my sermon. In my mind, that’s worth it because making it near perfect would mean less sermons would get written, or less resting time for me so I am in a place where I can write better sermons! The truth is, there is usually going to be at least one error, no matter how hard you try. So, why not two, three, or four spelling or grammar errors. What’s the difference? It’s not worth an extra hour of work to get rid of those. And most people aren’t even going to notice them.

Happiness Point #24: Loving Our Neighbors Instead of Ourselves

       Awhile back, I had a friend of whom I noticed it seemed like she spent most of her timing helping others. One might ask, “What’s wrong with that? Aren’t we supposed to love others?” Certainly, we want to be of some service to others in our lives because service makes us happy and always comes back to us. We really aren’t fulfilled in life if we don’t serve in some way. But, my friend was doing it too much, at least that’s what I felt, and I told her that one day via text message. I told her I felt she was spending too much time helping others and not taking care of herself. I said to her, “Jesus said, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, not instead of ourselves.”

       In my opinion, this is one of the core things that helps us in our lives when we come to understand it. If you go to certain churches around the city, you will leave that church feeling like the whole point of life is to love your neighbor instead of yourself. In fact, it would seem in some places that if you’re not doing that, you not making God happy. The reality is, though, that Jesus told us to love our neighbors ‘as’ ourselves. That is quite different than ‘instead’ of ourselves. ‘As’ versus ‘instead.’ When we love our neighbors as ourselves, this is what we do: we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Remember that saying?

       Indeed, the Golden Rule shows us the true meaning behind loving our neighbors ‘as’ ourselves. Really, we have to love ourselves first in order to even love our neighbors. If we were to ask any practicing psychologist today, or a person with a degree in psychology, he or she will probably tell us that this is the case. To put it another way, we can only give when we have, right? I mean, if we don’t have, we can’t give. That’s only common sense. Well, so it is with loving our neighbors. We give love toward our neighbors from the love we already have for ourselves. We know how to love ourselves; we know how we would want to be treated in a given circumstance. So, in following that, we do that for our neighbor.

       Wasn’t it Fred Rogers that had this imbedded into his wonderful TV show, ‘Mister Roger’s Neighborhood’? It was my favorite TV show as a child. I use to watch it all the time, and I mean everyday. What did Mr. Rogers always ask? “Won’t you be my neighbor?” is what he would ask the millions of children watching his show. Gee, I wonder where he got that from? We know where he got it from. We do this for others around us because we understand that we ourselves want to be included. So, if we love others, we seek to include them because we know it is what we would want. And if Mr. Rogers hadn’t taken care of himself first, taken care of his house, adorned himself with those classic sweaters, then he wouldn’t of felt like inviting anyone in, right?

Happiness Point #25: Rename Your Parks

       There is nothing like going for a nice evening walk on a sunny day that is winding down. Personally, I like to go for walks in the park at least once a week. Sometimes, if I have the time, I will go two or three times. When I walk by the trees, my feet crunching the gravel beneath me, I like to listen to sermons and audiobooks. But one practice I have personally come up with is developing that habit that when I go to one particular park, listen to a particular teacher on my headphones. That is, I have linked one park with one teacher. I know when I go to that park, I will listen to that teacher. In my own mind I have actually renamed the park with that particular teacher.

       There is nothing like immersing yourself in one particular teacher for a long period of time. You get to know that person well. If they are talking about the Bible, you become familiar with how they approach different topics, and it can even be fun to try to predict what they are going to say. I know sometimes I am right, but sometimes they say something I wasn’t expecting. There is always the opportunity to learn new things, and of course, to be reminded of things we’ve heard many times before. And sometimes, just a different angle on a verse or passage can give a whole new insight.

       So, put your ears to better use by listening to something that will make you wiser. Invest in a nice pair of headphones if you want to, but really, you don’t even need to do that. It’s not that quality of the headphones or earbuds that really matter, it is the quality of what you are listening to. By habit-stacking, we are able to grow in our knowledge and expand our minds. Hopefully, as we do this, we find that we are not only growing closer to the Creator by observing all the he has created, but we are also becoming more acquainted with his ways by understanding new insight into various topics.

Happiness Point #26: Use Pictures to Think About Good Things

       The Scriptures tell us we should be thinking about, contemplating on the good things of life. This is what keeps our minds in the right place. We all carry smartphones on us these days. Sure, we take pictures with our phones of various life events as they transpire. But one of the benefits to having a smartphone with us at all times is that we can store pictures on them—not just new ones, but old ones as well. We can fill our photo albums with good memories of the past, those beautiful vacations we have taken out West, the sandy beaches we enjoyed ourselves at, or even the historical places we’ve visited.

       You see, when we pull out our smartphones and look at those pictures, we can instantly transport ourselves to a different place for a moments time. It can be a great way—even if for only five minutes—to get our minds off of what is currently going on, issues that we are perhaps facing, and instead focus on something good, something positive, a nostalgic thing. Our minds are very visual, and the visual can often do more for us than just merely reading about something. Those good images will get into our minds and float around in them for awhile. Indeed, we are focusing on good things and this produces good feelings.

       Even if you don’t have photos of any particular vacations or events that you can look at, there is always your favorite search engine to take you there. Want to go to Utah, what to check out a certain National Park, well by searching for it, you can draw up a number of images and take a virtual vacation. Perhaps you want to visit websites of places you want to someday go. The point is that we are getting positive flowing feelings flowing through our heads, and this certainly produces more happiness for us. I have done this countless times, and it really works. I can spend five or ten minutes in Utah anytime I want to, and since I have been there, it brings up those memories in even greater detail.

       Now you can also take this one step further, and that is through the use of videos. To shift gears here a little bit, one thing I like to do is go back and watch press conferences from one of my favorite Presidents, John F. Kennedy. You can find archives of them online. What I find is that during difficult times of news, if I go back and watch his conferences, it takes me back to a time where the problems didn’t seem as magnified. The problems they did have, you will see, are problems that were eventually solved. Though surely they seemed really important at that time, and they were, they eventually had their conclusion. And that gives encouragement that the problems we face today, one will be able to look about on those 50 years from now and see that they, too, had their conclusion.

Happiness Point #27: Breaking the Habit of Checking Things

       Some of us have the problem of checking things. And not just checking them once. We may feel that we don’t feel comfortable until we check something multiple times. There is nothing wrong with checking something to see if it’s okay. But when we keep checking it, that shows we have an issue with fear. We are afraid that if we don’t check it, and if it isn’t absolutely secured, then there is real danger lurking ahead. But the problem isn’t with what we are checking, the issue is inside our minds. It is a fear problem, a doubting problem. And we know that doubt is something that we don’t want to have growing inside of us.

       Psychologist David D. Burns, in his book titled ‘Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy’ talks about this (see Chapter 14, pp. 360-62). He said he advises people to just refuse to check something twice. He notes that though the pressure will certainly continue to mount when something isn’t checked, if one has the endurance to pass through it, the doubt will subside after a while. And, from my personal experience, I found this to be true. I use to have the habit of checking my apartment door twice to ‘make sure’ it was locked. Now I am to the point where I can turn the key and not even check it once, knowing that it is locked. I just decided one day to follow Dr. Burn’s advice, and it has worked very well for me.

       As bad as this is going to sound, I came to realize that I also had a problem with ‘fact checking’ people. That is, someone would tell me something, and I wouldn’t necessarily believe them at face value. I would need some verification that what they said was true. What I was coming to find over and over again, was that if I knew the person was trustworthy in general, then what they said would turn out to be true. My fact checking was pointless and in vain. I was wasting my time checking things said from people that weren’t going to lie to me in the first place. It’s not that everyone is just waiting to tell that next lie, that next deception, as our minds can trick us into believing.

       So, with the elimination of checking things has come more freedom and greater peace of mind. When we don’t double check the door to make sure it is locked, when we don’t fact check our neighbor to make certain he or she isn’t lying to us, we find that we become more at ease. And this freedom of not checking branches to other areas of life. Now since we don’t check the door to our residence, we find that we don’t check to make sure our car door is locked either. Now that we don’t check our friends, we find that we trust the people at the dry cleaners or the coffee shop. As it dawns on us that most of the time everything is going to be perfectly okay, we rid the nagging doubt from our minds.

Reference:

Burns, David D. (1980, 1999). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Harper Collins Publishers, New York: New York.

Happiness Point #28: It May be Time for a Reboot

       As the flow of life goes along, it may be noticed that one particular area is lacking. Perhaps it is your church, or perhaps it is your workplace. Something just isn’t working the same for you as it used to. It could be that you’ve personally grown in your own life, and you have left behind the people you are currently around. Perhaps your spiritual growth is at a high level, and you're finding that you're just around way too much negativity. We know if we stay in that negative environment, we’re going to be miserable. Sometimes all that can be done is a reboot, and the restarting toward new things.

       With our families, usually we have greater control. The husband and wife can grow with each other in spiritual things, that is, if they both believe in those things. When they do, amazing things can happen. The parents also lead their children in the right direction. That all being said, there’s only so much we can do, when we are growing, to help those at our church or workplace to grow in the same direction. We can try to have a positive influence on them, but sometimes no matter how much we shine our light, the light just bounces off of them and comes back to us. Sometimes people aren’t willing to grow, and aren’t willing to embrace positive influence in their lives.

       When we find then that we are stuck in a rut, sometimes all we can do is shut down and restart to something new. Sometimes we need to get out. We are only responsible for ourselves and our families. We cannot be responsible for others changing their ways. Perhaps we used to be a very negative person ourselves, but we’ve spent years becoming a more positive person. As we’ve done this, we look around and see that the people around us represent where we used to be, and not where we are now. That’s okay, though. That can happen. If it does, we can move on to find people that more closely align with what we now are. This isn’t sin, it isn’t wrong; it’s just reality.

       God wants us to grow. He wants us to increase our faith. At the beginning of our Christian lives, we may not have been that full of faith. Jesus’ disciples sure weren’t in the beginning days. As they grew, though, so did their faith. And it’s the same with us. As our faith increases, our negativity and doubting decreases. This is good for us, but not everyone grows at the same rate. Just as a child outgrows his or her shoes after a while, if we are actively growing, we outgrow ours. Simply put, we may just find that we’re no longer compatible with the church we’ve been involved with, or even the place where we currently work. It may be time for a change. And while the change may not be necessarily comfortable, it will lead to comfort in the future.

- Daniel Litton