Whatever Happened The Good News

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Whatever Happened The Good News?

Be Joyful . . . .

It is said that as Benjamin Franklin concluded a stirring speech on the guarantees of the Constitution, a heckler shouted,  "Aw, them words don't mean nothin' at all.  Where's all the happiness you say it guarantees us?"  Franklin smiled and replied, "My friend, the Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness; you have to catch it yourself."

   People are like potatoes.  After potatoes have been harvested they have to be spread out and sorted in order to get the maximum market dollar.  They are divided according to size ‑ bit, medium, and small.  It is only after potatoes have been sorted and bagged that they are loaded onto trucks.  This is the method that all Idaho potato farmers use ‑ all but one.  One farmer never bothered to sort the potatoes at all.  Yet he seemed to be making the most money.  A puzzled neighbor finally asked him, "What is your secret?"  He said, "It's simple.  I just load up the wagon with potatoes and take the roughest road to town.  During the eight‑mile trip, the little potatoes always fall to the bottom. The medium potatoes land in the middle, while the big potatoes rise to the top."   That's not only true of potatoes.  It is a law of life.  Big potatoes rise to the top on rough roads, and tough people rise to the top in rough times.

   Tough times never last, but tough people do.  (Robert Schuller

I believe that one of the great needs today when it comes to our ability to impact the world with the gospel message is for Christians to find and manifest the joy that we ought to know with regard to our faith.  Unfortunately the message that we communicate non-verbally is often so loud that it overrides the words that we have to say.  What we say in non-verbal ways is always the more powerful message.

We communicate:

q       Paranoia

q       Suspicion

q       Legalism

q       Dead Orthodoxy

q       Condemnation

q       Disgruntled with life

q       Joy-less-ness

Kaufmann Kohler states in the Jewish Encyclopedia that no language has as many words for joy and rejoicing as does Hebrew.   In the Old Testament thirteen Hebrew roots, found in twenty‑seven different words, are used primarily for some aspect of joy or joyful participation in religious worship.  Hebrew religious ritual demonstrates God as the source of joy.  In contrast to the rituals of other faiths of the East, Israelite worship was essentially a joyous proclamation and celebration.  The good Israelite regarded the act of thanking God as the supreme joy of his life.  Pure joy is joy in God as both its source and object.  The psalmist says, "Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence there is fulness of joy, in thy right hand are pleasures forevermore". (Psalm 16:11)

q       Negativism


How You Can Tell When It's Going To Be A Rotten Day

‑You call suicide prevention and they put you on hold.

‑You see a "60 Minutes" news team waiting at your office.

‑Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.

‑Your son tells you he wishes Anita Bryant would mind her own business.

‑You turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes out of the city.

‑Your twin sister forgot your birthday.

‑You wake up and discover your water bed broke and then you remember you don't have a waterbed.

‑Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.

‑Your boss tells you not to bother taking off your coat.

‑The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard.

‑You wake up and your braces are locked together.

‑You call your answering service and they tell you it's none of your business.

‑Your income tax check bounces.

‑You put both contact lenses in the same eye.

‑Your pet rock snaps at you.


 

There is real weakness when there is no joy.  Joy is the spontaneity factor.  It frees people to follow their hearts.  That is not to say that they lose their heads.  Merely to say that reason does not always need to be our central guidance system.  It would be neat if that were the case.   However there are times when God calls us beyond reason.  It is probably in this area of life where God delights in showing his power and his glory.  It is here where man loses himself and his respectability and god takes over in power.  (I'm not sure that I will ever be able to preach this because there are so many who would not exercise balance?  Help me Lord to be more concerned with seeing your power at work in me than in having people applaud my staid behavior.)

Joy is something that exists independent of circumstance.  Our immediate mood may be affected by external circumstances but never controlled.

One of my good spiritually interested buddies told me the other day that in his mind Christians needed to learn to show the world that a person could be a Christian and still have a good time.  I am convinced that he is right.


 

Even after Constantine had made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, there came to the throne another Emperor called Julian, who wished to put the clock back and to bring back the old gods.  His complaint, as Ibsen puts it, was:

"Have you looked at these Christians closely?  Hollow‑eyed, pale‑cheeked, flat‑breasted all; they brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition: the sun shines for them, but they do not see it: the earth offers them its fulness, but they desire it not; all their desire is to renounce and to suffer that they may come to die."

As Julian saw it, Christianity took the vividness out of life.   Oliver Wendell Homes once said, "I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers."  Robert Louis Stevenson once entered in his diary, as if he was recording an extraordinary phenomenon, "I have been to Church today, and am not depressed."

BE JOYFUL! 

Don’t tell me what to be.  You don’t turn emotions off and on with the snap of a finger.  If the idea of being joyful is an emotion then this is true.  However, I see it as a choice that we make.  It is an attitude that will determine the quality of life that we enjoy.  It is totally up to you as to your degree of contentedness in life.  Make the right choice.

Attitudes of the Christian

 

   It is the "advance man" of our true selves.

   Its roots are inward but its fruit is outward.

   It is our best friend or our worst enemy.

   It is more honest and more consistent than our words.

   It is an outward look based on past experiences.

   It is a thing which draws people to us or repels them.

   It is never content until it is expressed.

   It is the librarian of our past;

   It is the speaker of our present;

   It is the prophet of our future.

   What is it?

 

   It's our attitude!

The sign on the old Alaskan Highway read: Choose your rut carefully, you’ll be in it for the next 2,000 miles.

Washday 1916

1.  Build fire in backyard to heet kettle of rain water.

2.  Set tubs so smoke won’t blow in eyes if wind is pert.


3.  Shave one hold cake lie soap in bilin water.

4.  Sort things, make three piles, 1 pile white, 1 pile colored, 1 pile work britches and rags.

5.  Stir flour in cold water to smooth, then thin down with bilin water.

6.  Rub dirty spots on board, scrub hard then bile.  Rub colored, don=t bile, just rinch and starch.

7.  Take white things out of kettle with broomstick handle, then rinch and starch.

8.  Hang old rags on fince.

9.  Spread tee towels on grass.

10.  Pore rinch water in flower bed.

11.  Scrub porch with hot soapy water.

12.  Turn tubs upside down.

13.  Go put on fresh dress, smooth hair with side combs, brew cup of tea, sit and rest and rock a spell and count blessings.


!!! We Choose

We choose how we shall live;

courageously or in cowardice,

honorably or dishonorably,with purpose or in drift.

We decide what is important

and what is trivial in life.

We decide that what makes us significant

is either what we do or refuse to do . . .

WE DECIDE

WE CHOOSE

And as we decide and as we choose

so our lives are formed . . .

An optimist looks at an oyster

And expects to find a pearl

A pessimist looks at an oyster

And expects ptomaine poisoning.

A pessimist is someone who feels bad

When she feels good

For fear she’ll feel worse

When she feels better.


 


The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude, to me is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.  It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company . . . a church . . . a home.  The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day regarding the attitude that we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past . . . we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing that we can do is play on the one string that we have, and that is our attitude. . . . Chuck Swindoll


Life is easier than you think.

All you have to do is:

Accept the impossible,

Do without the indispensable,

Bear the intolerable and

Be able to smile at anything.

Most of us miss out on life’s big prizes.

The Pulitzer

The Heisman

Oscars

But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures.

A pat on the back.

A kiss behind the ear.

A four-pound bass.

A full moon.

An empty parking space.

A crackling fire.

A great meal.

A glorious sunset.

Enjoy life’s tiny delights.

There are plenty for all of us.


 

Being joyful then is a choice that you make to find God’s promise in all circumstance good or bad.

Let’s identify the things that tend to steal the joy from us in life:

q       Beyond the shadow of a doubt, people can steal your joy.

People are unreasonable, illogical, self‑centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful you win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only topdogs.

Fight for some underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you've got.

Gordon Macdonald identifies 5 sorts of people who enter our lives.

1.  The VRP’s (very resourceful people) they ignite our passion.  They inspire us to improve and to go further. +3

2.  The VIP’s (very important people) they share our passion.  Teammates, fellow workers. +2

3.  The VTP’s (very trainable people) they catch our passion.  They are people to whom you give time and effort confident that they will in turn pass on to others what they have been given. +1

4.  The VNP’s (very nice people) they enjoy our passion.  +0 contributor.  Vast majority.

5.  The VDP’s (very draining people) they sap our passion.  On the - side.

q       Our joy is stolen many times by our own set of unrealistic expectations. We are sidetracked when we consider what people should do and tend to paint the world gray on their account

Our joy is stolen by the fragility of our ego’s.   We take personally things that we need to learn to overlook.  We are far too easily wounded.

Our joy is stolen by our inability to see that circumstance is providentially for my good even in the worst of times.   

An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian were discussing happiness.  "Happiness," said the Englishman, "Is when you return home tired after work and find your slippers warming by the fire."  "You English have no romance," said the Frenchman.  "Happiness is having dinner with a beautiful woman at a fine restaurant."  "You are both wrong," said the Russian.  "True happiness is when you are at home in bed and at 4 a.m. hear a hammering at the door and there stand the  secret police, who say to you, `Ivan Ivanovitch, you are under arrest,' and you say, `Sorry, Ivan Ivanovitch lives next door.'"

How do we find the “JOY” of the Lord translated into everyday living?

1.      True joy comes from dependence on God for all things.  Our sense of self-worth, direction, purpose, etc.  As we depend on people or fate to meet our needs, we will become more and more disillusioned.

Where Is Happiness?

 Not in unbelief‑‑

Voltaire was an infidel of the most pronounced type.  He wrote:  "I wish I had never been born."

Not in pleasure‑‑

Lord Byron lived a life of pleasure, if anyone did.  He wrote: "The worm, the canker, and the grief are mine alone."

Not in money‑‑

Jay Gould, the American millionaire, had plenty of that.  When dying he said:  "I suppose I am the most miserable man on earth."

Not in position and fame‑‑

Lord Beaconsfield enjoyed more than his share of both.  He wrote:  "Youth is a mistake; manhood, a struggle; old age, a regret."

Not in military glory‑‑

Alexander the Great conquered the known world in his day.  Having done so, he wept, because, he said, "There are no more worlds to conquer."

Where, then, is happiness found?  The answer is simple:  In Christ alone.  He said, "I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man can taketh from you."

2.      It comes from obedience to God.  As long as we attempt to run things our way, emptiness will be waiting for at every juncture.

3.      Don’t take yourself too seriously.  Do all that you can as well as you can and then let God take care of it.

4.       Don’t attempt to change things that God doesn’t attempt to change.

5.       Don’t carry unnecessary burdens.  There are enough real problems and weights in life to deal with without carrying things that are needless.

Dealing with Irritations Constructively ‑‑ The Oyster

 

There once was an oyster whose story I tell,

   Who found that sand had got under his shell;

Just one little grain, but it gave him much pain,

   For oysters have feelings although they're so plain.

Now, did he berate the working of Fate

   Which had led him to such a deplorable state?

Did he curse out the Government, call for an election?

   No; as he lay on the shelf, he said to himself,

"If I cannot remove it, I'll try to improve it."

 

So the years rolled by as the years always do,

   And he came to his ultimate destiny ‑ stew.

And this small grain of sand which had bothered him so,

   Was a beautiful pearl, all richly aglow.

Now this tale has a moral ‑‑ for isn't it grand

   What an oyster can do with a morsel of sand;

What couldn't we do if we'd only begin

   With all of the things that get under our skin.

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