The Keys to Enjoying Life

Building Blocks

One of the first toys we got as kids, and what we buy for our grandkids, is a set of building blocks.

Alphabet cubes of primary and secondary colors.

We stack them, line them up, build pyramids.

A tall stack of blocks, one on top of the other, falls over easily. Unstable. Can’t get real high.

But, a pyramid, w/ a large foundation, will be much sturdier.

That top block will stay there versus the top block on the single stack will topple easily.

Then, we take the design of a pyramid into adulthood and use it to accomplish important things.

Like retirement. We can’t just stack year on top of year and expect at year 65 to be able to quit work and live comfortably.

A decision to retire starts much younger, with a foundation of saving money, an investments strategy, and a spending strategy.

Then, the next level, we make adjustments as we age so when we get to an appropriate age, we have built our finances to a point we can quit and live comfortably.

A healthy, pleasant attitude in life is the same way.

You can’t just decide one day you are going to start enjoying life w/ a good attitude. B/C you’ve been stacking your experiences and choices on top of each other and they won’t support your new attitude.

It will topple over.

But, if you build a solid foundation, that will support important choices, then you will find it is much easier to support a good attitude in life.

We had a friend in Indiana who beat cancer 4 times.

But, the 5th time it beat her.

She was in her 30s when she was first diagnosed w/ breast cancer. But, she beat it, for a while.

It got into her bones, back and shoulder.

It got into some organs,

Then, it got into her brain and by that time she had received as much radiation as her body could take and she had to stop treatment.

One thing about our friend Christine, she always had a good attitude thru it all.

Smile on her face, good mood, warm hug when she’d greet us at church. We knew she was hurting, didn’t feel good, but you’d never know it by looking at her or talking to her.

You really had to stop and think about who it was and what she was going thru or you’d have no idea.

She’d pick you up.

Between her bouts and treatments, she’d go to the chemo lab and visit w/ those in treatment just to encourage them.

The nurses loved her, the patients knew her, and the doctors appreciated her for lifting everyone’s spirits.

If anyone was justified in being mad at God, mad at the world, and just nasty it would have been Christine.

Life dealt her a bad hand. Her kids graduated from high school after she died. She didn’t get to attend her daughter’s wedding. Her husband remarried and moved on.

She was able to enjoy the life she had.

She didn’t waste her time angry, regretful, or tearing others down.

How is that possible?

How is it possible, when your world is falling apart, a virus is threatening your health, decisions by politicians and bsns owners are costing you money which threatens your house and finances and future you’re part of a race of ppl who’ve been unfairly treated by others just b/c of your skin color, you’re in law enforcement and bing unfairly blamed for the bad actions of a few others...

How is it possible to have and maintain a good attitude and enjoy life under these circumstances?

B/C we know there are building blocks of a good attitude that allow us to enjoy life even when nobody else around us is.

We’re in 1 Peter 3:8-12.

He wrote that there are 5 characteristics that promote 3 important decisions that support a good attitude allowing us to enjoy life even when nobody else is.

Start w/ the goal. The top block. That is, for those of us who are trying to enjoy life even in a pandemic virus crisis and all that goes w/ it.

Enjoying Life

1 Peter 3:8–12 NIV

Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

The goal is right in the middle. And, it comes from his quote of Psalm 34.

Whomever wants to love life and see good days.

That’s it.

Remember who he’s writing to and what their circumstance is.

They have lost a lot and are adjusting to a new normal.

It’s not going back to the way it was. They are not going back to where they were.

Unfairly treated and accused b/c of their faith.

Politicians made decisions that cost them everything, from financially to their very lives.

They ran for their lives and left everything behind.

And, here’s Peter, quoting this Psalm making this statement, or question:

“Are you trying to enjoy your life and see good days?”

Is there a disconnect here?

Is Peter nuts?

They are angry, hurting, grieving, struggling, and afraid.

Enjoy life? Is he serious?

Yes. He is.

This is the goal and it is possible.

He builds his case how it is.

And, he starts w/ 5 characteristics as the foundation that make a good attitude possible.

The Foundation

The most important part of every structure or every argument is the foundation. You have to build a solid foundation first.

These 5 characteristics are a solid foundation.

He is writing primarily to the Christian community. There is application outside the church. But, first they had to get together as believers.

Maybe they knew each other before, maybe they didn’t.

Maybe there was already a small village church when they arrived. Maybe they started one.

The neighbors and surrounding villagers would have been, at the least standoffish, at worst hostile toward these new residents who were being blamed for the riots in Rome.

Context. Who, in the media is being blamed for the racial unrest? If you have any connection to who is being blamed, you can be seen as guilty, too.

So, the believers who make up the church have to get together and on the same page.

Be like-minded

That is, agree on 1 common purpose.

The NT church, ekklesia, was not a building, but a gathering of ppl who share a common purpose.

We have to make sure we all agree on the one thing we are trying to do.

So, who gets to decide?

Philippians 2:5 NIV

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Rather than you adopting my mindset, or me adopting yours, let’s all adopt Jesus’ mindset.

He gave everything up for us so we could get to heaven.

So, our priority is to connect ppl to Jesus.

He is the only one who can ultimate help fix our problems. Beginning w/ the biggest one we have which being lost in life forever.

Once that situation is fixed, all the others can be, too.

We all should agree to sac what we want so that everyone else meets Jesus and grows close w/ Him.

If we don’t agree, then we are all moving in different directions, frustrating each other, accomplishing little or nothing.

The goal is to enjoy life. There is little enjoyment in a life that gets nothing done and is filled w/ frustration.

Once we’re all on the same page, the second thing is to feel at least a little bit of what each other is feeling.

2. Be sympathetic

Everybody was hurting at least a little. So, when the ppl gathered together it was collection of the wounded.

No one had come thru w/out some pain.

So, what he is saying is, don’t get so caught up in your own pain that you fail to recognize and ID w/ the feelings of the others in the church.

Take the time to make the effort to listen so you can understand how they are hurting and why.

When you know someone’s story you understand more about why they are the way they are.

And, in doing that, we all help carry each other’s emotional burden making it lighter and more manageable.

As we do that for each other it helps us all get thru this tough situ together.

3. Be loving to all the believers

This is the second time he’s written this.

Why do you suppose that is?

Probably b/c Christians have been not doing this so well since the establishment of the church.

To love someone is to commit to serve them and sac for them.

If someone knows you have made a sacrifice for them it builds them up. If they know you feel that way about them, it will positively affect how they feel about themselves and encourage them to do the same thing for others.

All believers, including the ones who don’t look like you, worship like you, and are in professions and political parties that may be hard for you to understand.

We may all be like-minded, w/ the same purpose, but we get there different ways.

Love those ppl who take different paths to Jesus.

4. Be compassionate

People who have the same purpose, but are on a different path, and are hurting.

You may not agree w/ everything they are doing, and they may be hurt b/c of something they did that you are not doing yourself. Do and say things that comfort them.

Right after Jesus said to love our neighbors as ourselves, he was asked who our neighbors are.

There was a Jew who was attacked, robbed and injured. A Samaritan stopped his journey, nursed his wounds, carried him into town to an inn, and paid for his stay until he was strong enough to go home.

This story involves severe racial tension, time and money sacrificed, and care for the injuries so they will heal properly.

Compassion.

Took the time to assess his situation, identified w/ his pain, and took action that cost him something and helped the wounded traveler heal.

Stop and help.

When we are so focused on our own grievances and grudges we fail to notice where we can help.

When we are too focused on our own hurt we can’t feel the hurt of others.

We have to venture in a little to be able to understand it and help alleviate it.

5. Be humble

The best definition I’ve heard of humility is, don’t think less of yourself. Think of yourself less.

Don’t put yourself down. Don’t deny what you do well.

Just spend less energy thinking about yourself, what you’re doing, and how you’re feeling.

It’s humility that enables us get our minds off our own stuff and understand the stuff that’s hurting others.

Pain, hurt, loss, stress, grief all empty us. A proud person is incapable of helping others. Their focus is to help themselves. And, they way the do that is by emptying the people around them and bringing them down.

A humble person fills the ppl around the up, bringing them up to their level and above.

So, the foundation is made of these 5 characteristics that are solid building blocks.

Everybody is on the same page encouraging and leading everybody else closer to Jesus.

Taking the time to learn the story that led to the hurt so we can sympathize.

Sacrificing the time and energy to understand and help that is the basic way to show love to each other.

Doing and saying the right things that help out of compassion.

All while taking our minds off of our stuff so we can understand each other’s stuff.

The thread running thru all 5 is taking being less concerned about yourself and more concerned about Jesus’ calling and other’s conditions.

It’s from this foundation of 5 characteristics that we are able to make better choices in 3 important ways.

These choices we make about how we treat other ppl directly affect how we feel about our own lives.

They are life-changing.

3 Life-Changing Choices

When we are hyper-focused on our own stuff and stressed about what will happen to us, these choices are much harder to make.

None are easy. But they are decidedly easier when we’re not stuck in our own stuff.

The first life-changing choice:

Control your tongue.

And, I might add, control your fingers when you type your comments in Facebook.

Jesus confronted the Pharisees when they were making a big deal about what people ate saying that if they ate the wrong stuff it was sinful.

Jesus called them out and said (paraphrasing), It’s not what you put in your mouth that messes you up. It’s what comes out.

B/C, what comes out is a reflection of what’s really going on inside.

As Christians, our inside has been changed, improved dramatically. But, not entirely.

James, writing to Christians, said this:

James 3:7–8 NIV

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

Christians kill things b/c we cannot rein in what we say.

We’re trying to train Jack, our dog. He’s 2, now and maturing. And, he’s smart.

We have 2 problems that get in the way. 1, he’s motivated to do his own thing. And, 2, he might be smarter than me.

But, we’re getting him trained.

As hard as we try, we still will say things that hurt and tear ppl down. Nobody is 100% effective in saying only the right things in the right ways.

And, keeping their tongue silent when appropriate.

No lies, no insults, no cussing to or about anyone or anything.

But, once we’ve laid the foundation of the preceding building blocks one result is better control of what we say.

We know people are hurting and we are working at ID’ing with them so we’re less likely to do further damage w/ our words.

Control like this does not tear others down and makes our life better.

The 2nd life-changing choice is:

Let God get even

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, holding a grudge is like taking poison expecting the other person to die.

It’s killing you and every relationship you care about.

Humbly appreciating the pain that others feel, being sympathetic and compassionate will reduce the urge to get even.

God will repay the right amount, the right time, to the right ppl. He knows more about the situation than we do.

Besides, we should be too busy making up for our own mistakes to worry about making others make up for theirs.

Lay your grievances and grudges at the foot of the cross where Jesus is paying for your mistakes. Let Him take care of theirs.

That poison that was killing you and emptying you out will dissipate and then be filled contentment and satisfaction.

The 3rd life-changing choice is:

Pursue peace

And, Peter means in 1 specific way. When people are critical of you, insult you, gossip about you; he says do not reciprocate or 1-up the destruction.

Bless them.

That southern, “Well, bless their heart.”

Or, compliment them. Speak highly of those who speak insults to you.

Peter has to be remembering Jesus in the sermon on the mount recorded in Mt. 5. Bless those who curse you.

Do not join them in the muck and mud, slinging it around spraying them and everybody else in the vicinity.

That mindset, mentality of mud-slinging comes from a dark place inside of us. And if we feed it, it takes a much larger place than it should.

But, the mindset of Jesus that is considerate of their pain lets the mud dry up and gets washed off.

The result of these 3 decisions is God will bless us, He will speak highly of us.

How does that make you feel? God, Creator, Sovereign, Savior bragging on you to the angels and whoever else might be listening.

And, Peter says, He sees us.

What Peter means is, God sees our needs and is meeting them.

But, if we’re too busy cussing people, getting even w/ people, paying them back insult for insult; then we will miss what God is doing for us.

It’s there. We just miss it.

If we stop and take notice then we don’t need to try to fill the voids in our lives that others create by emptying us out b/c God is filling them up in a way that lasts.

He’s quoting Ps. 34:12-16.

Your goal is to love life and see good days.

Contentment, enjoyment. Not completely trouble-free. But, in spite of the trouble still contented.

Too many saved ppl are not experiencing this kind of enjoyment b/c they spend too much time trying to fill the void they feel and emptying out the ppl around them.

Life is already stressful and hard enough. Don’t make it harder on yourself by missing out on what God is doing for you.

We’ve lost so much already and it looks like it may be a few months before things get back to normal for us..

All that we’ve lost has created void, the stress empties us even more, and we’re surrounded by ppl whose attempts at dealing w/ this complicate things further.

But, we can still find enjoyment is life that’s losing a lot by laying this solid foundation and making these better choices.

Peter’s not nuts. He knows this is possible. That in the midst of tumultuous times we can find a way to love life and see good days.

Applications

Characteristics

Which one of these 5 is God telling you to work on this week?

Be like-minded w/ Jesus and the ppl who are, too.

Be sympathetic to someone who needs to know you ID a little w/ their pain

Act like you love somebody who loves Jesus who doesn’t look like you or worship like you.

Be compassionate and do something to help someone who is hurting.

Be humble by thinking of yourself and your own stuff less.

Pick 1 and work on it this week.

Choices

Which one of the 3 life-changing choices do you need to make?

Control your tongue

No cussing, gossip, or cutting remarks

Let a grudge go

Forgive someone and let God get even

Bless their little pea-picking heart.

Compliment someone who has insulted you

Enjoy your life

This isn’t really an application other than you have to make a conscious choice to enjoy your life.

But, only after you’ve laid the foundation and made the appropriate life-changing choices.

Then, it’s easy. Enjoy your life even in the midst of this virus crisis and maybe a few more of us will join you.

How is it possible, when your world is falling apart, a virus is threatening your health, decisions by politicians and bsns owners are costing you money which threatens your house and finances and future you’re part of a race of ppl who’ve been unfairly treated by others just b/c of your skin color, you’re in law enforcement and bing unfairly blamed for the bad actions of a few others...

How is it possible to have and maintain a good attitude and enjoy life under these circumstances?

B/C we know the building blocks of a good attitude that allow us to enjoy life even when nobody else is.