Find Happiness

It’s easy to look back on certain points in life and think ‘that year was my best year because___’ or ‘life was better when___’ or ‘I was a better person back when___’  …

What if instead of focusing on why 2013 was your best year, or how you wish it was 2009 again, you turn those thoughts into why 2019 has been an amazing year?  Instead of wishing you have the kind of happiness you had last summer, think about the incredible joy you have/can have now.  How you’ve grown, the people you’ve met, the weird things that happened that turned out completely different than you expected.

It’s easy to look back and think ‘Wow.  Life was good then and I was really happy.’  What if we changed where we got our happiness from?  What if we didn’t let our current situations and circumstances control whether or not we have joy? 

The Bible calls us to taste and see that the Lord is good.  Psalm 34 is layered with ways that the Lord gives us joy and brings us happiness and peace.  I want to hi-light a couple of verses from that chapter.

• Psalm 34:18 – “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

The Lord is with you.  If you’re feeling down in the dumps, not believing in yourself, or completely feel like your life is caving in, nothing is going right, and nothing is worth it any more, God is near you.  He wants to save you who are crushed in spirit.

• Psalm 34:8 “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!  Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!”

If nothing else is good, if nothing else is right, if everything in life is falling apart, take refuge in Him!  Sometimes, our only safe place is with God.  This world is messed up!  Why on earth would we choose anything (or anyone) other than our Lord to take refuge in?

Alcohol, drugs, social media, porn, sports, tobacco, family, friends, work … whatever it is you turn to when life gets rough, that is what you are “taking refuge” in.  Sure, about half of those things are not bad things to be involved in!  BUT, are we turning to God first when life gets tough?  Social media can be great, but if it is something that just numbs the pain, are you really blessed by it?

Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.

I wanna be blessed.  I want an unexplainable joy in the midst of my chaos.  I want a transformed outlook on life.  I want a bottomless supply of joy that never runs out, even in my darkest of days.  I wanna be blessed.

In Christ, we have that.  We don’t have to go looking for something to take the pain away.

I strongly encourage you to go read Psalm 34 in its entirety.  Pray about it.  Read it again.  Pray again.  Read it verse by verse, really focusing to digest the content.  Whatever it takes to really understand this concept.  Over and over again.  You may wind up receiving a little bit of that unexplainable joy.

1 PETER 2:17 Part 4: Honor the King

HONOR ALL MEN.  LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD.  FEAR GOD.  HONOR THE KING.

-KJV

This one verse has four very strong commands.  Because of this, I have created a separate blog for each command; in an effort to keep them short, sweet, and to the point.  Here’s the final of the series.

This is actually take two at writing this blog.  I have no idea where my first draft went.  And I actually wrote it a couple weeks ago.  So honestly, I don’t even remember most of what I had written.  No biggie.  Y’all just get a fresh take on how I feel about “honor the king” now instead of how I was feeling about it when I tried to write this. 

Here’s a little back story.  When I originally started writing this series of blogs, I was going through a very hard time with local government.  I had an outstanding speeding ticket that I had forgotten to pay (yes, my fault completely!).  Due to this, I had my license suspended.  My license being suspended also cancelled my car insurance.  Car insurance wouldn’t re-up until I had fixed the license situation, and that proved to all be a very taxing (see what I did there) and time-consuming process.  My original draft to this blog was written while waiting two and a half hours at the local Department of Homeland Security office.  Writing a blog about honoring and respecting authority while wasting time in a government building was a challenge in and of itself.  How would I, while feeling full contempt towards government, write a blog about honoring it?  Could I possibly write such a thing without being a total hypocrite?  What would I say?

Since that blog got deleted, I guess we’ll never know what I would say.  I can’t even remember what I said.  So, here’s take two.

HONOR THE KING.

I’ve talked a lot about honor in the last few blogs, but I want to reestablish what it is, just in case you haven’t read my others (yet 😉).

• Honor:  Honor can be used as a verb or a noun.  Here it is used as a verb; to be applied to something (or someone).  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines honor as “to regard or treat (someone) with admiration and respect : to regard or treat with honor”.

I’m just going to jump right into it.  We don’t do this today.  The disrespect for our president, and other levels of authority, is substantial.  We aren’t called to like the authority in our lives.  We aren’t called to agree with the authority in our lives.  But we are obviously called to respect and honor it.  Race, religion, political side, stance on certain issues, moral compass, or bad toupee don’t matter.  We are called and have been challenged to honor authority.

Let me explain what was happening when Peter wrote this.  Peter had watched the rulers crucify Jesus.  Peter was watching Nero (the Roman emperor) persecute Christians.  It is said that Nero burned some Christians alive as torches to light his gardens at night and fed others to wild animals for public entertainment.  This was a sick, twisted dude.  Specifically, sick and twisted towards Christians.

But Peter said to Honor the King.

We disagree with someone in power over us on one little topic and slander their name publicly.  But, even in the face of sever, brutal persecution, Peter said we are to honor our authority.  Dude wasn’t dealing with whether or not a wall should be built, or the amount of funding that should go into schools.  HE WAS WATCHING FELLOW BELIEVERS GET BRUTALLY MURDERED.

I believe it is perfectly possible to disagree with and honor someone at the same time.  It’s time we started doing such.  As Christians, and as a nation.