[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word]

Happiness Point #69: Blessings in Disguise

       There have been several times in my life where I didn’t get what I wanted. I remember, back when it happened, I thought, “Man, I’ve really lost out on something truly great. I’ll probably never have an opportunity like this again.” That’s what our minds often do. They convince us that whatever didn’t work out, whatever we didn’t get, that because of that, we have lost out on something truly big, truly great. There is that feeling of doom and dread that comes upon us at the feeling of loss. We think we have damaged our lives with this loss, and certainly opportunities just as good won’t come in the future.

       All this being said, in reality, I don’t think there has ever been anything I have lost in my life that I truly cannot obtain again, or in another way. We can like a person, and things may not work out with the person. However, another person just as good always comes along. A couple can go house hunting and think they’ve found the perfect house, but they don’t get it. Nevertheless, the perfect house is still yet to come. The couple eventually finds a house they like more than all the previous ones. We can miss out on that good deal, or sale at the store, but we all know another good deal comes, and still yet an even better sale.

       What I am trying to say in all of this is that there is always more good to come our way. It isn’t that the world is limited on the good available, and it isn’t that God has scarce resources from which to give. Any mindset believing otherwise turns out to not be true. And if a person believes he or she truly has lost the good and is not seeing the better, it is probably because they are so focused on the past loss that they cannot see the good that is coming. In fact, there may be good right in front of them that they are currently missing because their minds are stuck in the past. That is a truly miserable place indeed—to be trapped in a past lost with no hope for the future.

       Sometimes in life, losing something we think is good is the best thing that can happen to us. These loses are blessings in disguise; they aren’t really loses. This is because we end up with something just as good, and even sometimes something better in the end. God tells us in the Bible to have patience. The word seems to be more and more foreign in this day and age. Patience, however, is our friend. We should love it and embrace it. That way, instead of ending up with something good, there can be times where we end up with something even better. It’s as the saying goes, “Good is the enemy of the great.” I can bear witness that this testimony is true.

Happiness Point #70: We Choose to be Happy

       We’ve heard it said before, and that is that happiness is about our perspective on things. It’s cliche, and it’s true. It doesn’t mean that every moment of life will be, or can be happy. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t certain life circumstances of which happiness really is absent. It just means that in the normal, everyday way of life, that our happiness level is our own choice. It’s all in how we ‘see’ things.

       For one, we can use the act of comparing things to gain happiness. I think often times people use the comparative game to reduce their happiness, though, not really intending to do this. That’s what getting on social media can, though. People compare their lives with others, and many times after doing that they aren’t happy. It’s all a matter of perspective, however. Sure, I can look at someone who has four times more money and think, “Man, I really don’t have a lot of wealth to my name.” But I can also look at someone with four times less money and think, “Wow, I am rich.” And, that four times more wealthy person may have four times the worries than I have. But, we don’t see that part.

       I remember a situation happened to me where I was traveling, and being out in the countryside, I had my heart set on some good old country cooking. However, the restaurant I wanted to go to, which was a sort distance from where I was staying, was closed for the evening when I arrived. I thought, “Oh well, no big deal. I’ll drive up to another country restaurant I like” which was about ten minutes away. So, I drove there, and guess what, it was closed too. That left me with only the choice of pizza, and that pizza was about twenty minutes away. I had to make a decision right then and there, and I did. I was going to get pizza the next day, so I decided I would just get pizza tonight, and eat at the country restaurant the next day. And that’s what I did. By not being too attached to what I wanted, I was able to still have a good night on this particular night.

       And that brings me to my final point, and that is that we should not be too attached to anything so as to let that attachment cost us our happiness if whatever it is doesn’t pan out. By building this kind of mindset, we are able to exercise self-control within ourselves, and not be controlled by our external circumstances. Most people do in fact let their external circumstances control them. But Jesus was our perfect example in this area, where even in the most intense moment of his life, where most of us would have been crying and screaming, Jesus kept his cool. He endured what he had to without any word of complaint. Rather, he looked forward to what was to come after that moment in time. And this is what we need to model in our own lives.

Happiness Point #71: Do Not Judge God for Bad Happenings

       One thing that unfortunately took me a long time to learn in life is not judging God for bad things that happen. And that is no matter what. My mind always wanted to go quickly to judging God—to putting blame on the Author of the Universe simply because he had the power to stop whatever it was. There was that prevailing thought, “God, you could have stopped this bad thing from happening! And because you didn’t, you are at fault!” Yes, we forfeit the model Job provided for us from way, way back and instead make God out to be the guilty one. And, this is exactly what Satan wants us to do. The enemy wants us to do this because it places us at odds with God, the only one, ironically, who can truly help us.

       One thing that happened to me in recent times was I lost my job after working it for about thirteen years. It wasn’t anything I did wrong, but my company moved my department to another state. I ended up not leaving Ohio and going to that different state. Nonetheless, I was out of work, and had a short time before I had to find a new job. One thing I didn’t do, however, was blame the situation on God. That was one thing I kept consistent. I thought, “No matter what happens, I am not blaming this on God, even if I can no longer be independent on my own.” There was such peace in that. Anyway, right as I was about to have to make a tuff choice of giving up my residence, God provided me with a new job. Interestingly enough, it was just as interesting as my old one, and one I think that is good in a lot of ways.

       There was this background thought as I was getting the job, that “Wow, this really seems too good to be true. I thought I was done with this field never to return, and here I am returning.” And this was this prevailing thought almost as if this wasn’t supposed to happen. What I mean is that it was almost like I obtained good that I ordinarily wouldn’t have gotten. And, I believe that I got this good position because I didn’t blame God for my negative circumstances, much like old Daniel would have done. Yes, getting the new position was quiet miraculous to me. It’s like my obedience caused my life to go down a better path than it would of had I not been obedient. Sure, God may have helped me if I’d of been negative and complaining, but it would have been for his own sake, and it probably would have been ‘just enough’ for me to get by.

Happiness Point #72: We Don’t Always See the Affect of Our Prayer

       We are a cause and effect type of people. We like to do things and then see the results of those things. Our prayer lists are often full. Truth be told, there is so much we could pray for—perhaps too much. The people in our world have a great abundance of needs. And depending on how wide and far our social circle is, the prayer requests will only pile up. People get sick. Finances aren’t always in the best of shape. Happiness isn’t always were it needs to be for people. And all these things produce prayer. So, that’s what we do. We pray and pray and pray. And then, usually, with open eyes we are eager to see the results of our laboring away in prayer.

       Sometimes we see the effects of our prayer right away. I mean, say, a day or two, maybe three days later, we see that our prayer has been expediently answered. It didn’t take God long. He worked his angels to get what we needed, or what someone else we prayed for needed. Sometimes it is a week, but nevertheless we considered that the prayer was still answered relatively fast. We are happy with the result—the speed. We go back to God in prayer and thank him for doing what we wanted, which is usually what he wanted too (whether or not we believe that yet). We praise God and thank God for his generosity toward us, or toward our friend.

       But then—oh yes—then there are those prayers we speak to God of which we don’t see any physical result. Sometimes we’ve only be praying about it for a couple days, or sometimes we’ve been praying about it for twenty years. Yet, we haven’t seen God answer the prayer. We wonder to ourselves, is God even hearing this prayer? Is God going to answer it? Am I praying out of a wrong motive? Am I somehow wrong in my prayer? These types of questions fly through our minds because we wonder why we aren’t seeing the prayer being answered. Experientially, we know that God doesn’t always answer our prayers—at least, right away. So, we should not be surprised when this happens, when it seems like nothing is going on.

       Yes, if we want to maintain our happiness with ongoing prayer requests, those requests that haven’t been answered yet, we need to keep that in the forefront of our thinking. We need to remember that sometimes our prayers don’t seem like they are making any difference at all. The truth, however, is that they are making a difference. We just cannot see the difference with our own eyes. We know this because Jesus told us to keep praying about things and never give up. Why would he tell us that if our prayer wasn’t making any difference? Now, it doesn’t mean we’ll always get what we want, or that we ‘ourselves’ will see the answer to the prayer with our own eyes in this life. If we are totally surrendered, however, that really shouldn’t be a problem for us.

Happiness Point #73: Create Easy Dictums from Scripture

       A lot of us have been taught that we should memorize Bible verses. Yes, this is a well and good teaching. I don’t think any of us are going to disagree with that. Some folks go so far as to memorizing multiple verses, perhaps big blocks of Scripture all at once. It only adds to the awesomeness of a persons presentation, to the greatness of their knowledge. I mean, I don’t know of anyone ever uses these big memorizations in daily living. I suppose it is possible. Nevertheless, we know the smaller ones are handy. However, one thing we can do is make it even easier, and that is by taking the Scripture and making what I will call ‘dictums.’ These are short saying that we can derive from Scripture for easy remembrance.

       One easy dictum that I have created myself, which I have used quite a bit on this radio show, is that saying, “All that matters is God.” Now, if we search the Scriptures, we will not find that exact phrase anywhere. It is something that I have derived from reading the Scriptures over and over. It is a conclusion I have made, and I have put into a phrase that makes the concept easy to recall. It is like the understanding of God as Triune. The word ‘Trinity’ actually doesn’t appear in the Bible. And yet, we have that word, that concept, to understand that God is One and yet three persons. It is a shortcut we have made for easier understanding.

       Another dictum we could create is the saying, “Be kind to everyone at all times, with no exceptions.” That’s an easy thing to remember, and something that seems like it would help us in our daily lives. Howbeit, it is a tall order, isn’t it? At least to me it seems like it is a tall order. Being kind to everyone all the time? Wow, quite the feat. Yet, we know that the Apostle Paul told us we are treat others with kindness as one of the fruits of the Spirit. We are to treat others well, remember, and especially Christians?

       Another thing these short dictums are good for is when combating sinful habits, or even Satan himself. We know that Jesus modeled for us the reciting of verses in the presence of Satan when he himself was being tempted. That’s a hard thing, isn’t it, to picture that Jesus ever was tempted, or to think that Satan would even go there? But he did, and Jesus was, and it’s a good thing because it gives us a perfect example. So, if we have our dictums, then we can cut straight to the root of Satan’s temptation. One dictum we could create is, “Sexual immorality harms the body.” Again, not a direct quote from Scripture, but definitely found in there. This cuts straight to the point both of us and for Satan. We say that a few times and then that sin doesn’t seem so appealing anymore.

Happiness Point #74: Relinquishing All or Nothing Thinking

       If we’ve read Psychologist David D. Burns’ best selling book, ‘Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy,’ we know that one of the cognitive distortions that people can suffer with is ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ (see Chapter 3). This is a particularly bad distortion because it makes everything black and white—too easy, too clear-cut. Things often aren’t that way in our world. Not everything is as clear cut as people can make it out to be. And this is especially true when talking negatively about ourselves, or about another person, or another whole group of people.

       This area has been a particularly bothersome one for me because I have witnessed Christians falling victim to it so frequently in our society. And I am not talking about just naive people. I’m talking about well-educated, perhaps even highly-esteemed people in some cases, becoming deceived by following this distortion, this mindset which is incorrect. One reason I think Christians can so easily fall prey to this is because of what we have been taught about as regards the Bible. We’ve been taught that things are clear cut—that there’s no negotiation with them. These are things like God created the world, Satan is real, immorality is sin, Jesus is going to return, etc. Yes, things like these. And, while these things are all true, this doesn’t mean that we can then take this logic and apply it to everything.

       You know how it is. We hear things like ‘All the media is bad,’ ‘All Democrats are terrible,’ ‘Everyone in Hollywood is immoral’ and on and on. I know there are some of you out there nodding your head. “What’s the problem?” You may be saying. Yet, none of these statements are true. Not one of them. That’s the problem. So, what ends up happening with statements like these is that they end up spreading false statements. They end up making Christians look bad because it looks like we are a bunch of labelers, a bunch of naive followers that really don’t know what we are saying.

       The only way I have found for me to overcome this type of thinking error is to give it up. It is to stop believing every generalization that I am told. To realize that things are often said for ‘shock value’ and have no basis of truth in them at all, or simply, just a small grain of truth. Sometimes people, and yes Christian leaders, want things to be a certain way. But, thankfully, they aren’t that way. The truth is, there are double the good angels versus the bad ones. God has more power than perhaps you believe. Jesus’ love has more control over the power and consciousness of mankind then you may think. Yes, it is in him that all things actually hold together. He is the reason that the world continues to go round and round, that evil doesn’t gain the upper hand and ruin everyone’s lives. The dictum then is shown to be true, “God is in control.”

Happiness Point #75: We Can Work to Serve Others Anytime

       We can always be of service to others. And certainly, being of service to others gives us happiness. That’s right, anytime we want to we can help another person or group of people. And not only that, we can do it easily without much effort on our parts. “Sounds too good to be true,” you might say. “How might we do this?” Well, certainly it is through prayer, right? Prayer is easy. It doesn’t require much effort. We can sit in our recliner in our living room and do it. We can do it while we are walking from point A to point B at work. It’s so easy, so effortless.

       We all know things people need prayer for. We all have a request or two floating around in our heads. Things we’ve heard people say. Things we know people need help with. We think, “I wish there was a way I could help this person, but really there isn’t. There is nothing I can really do to help them.” Hold up. You can pray. We can always pray for others, always throw up the prayer up to God in hopes that he will accomplish what we want for them. (Not to mention, when we are praying like this, we are actually benefiting ourselves. This is because we are storing up rewards of us later when we get to Heaven).

       We want to help others, but often don’t know how to do it. Well, this is the way. We can play off of our desire to help with God’s desire to help them, and then we will see big things happen. Just because there may be times, perhaps a lot of times, where you don’t see the result of your prayer with your own eyes, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray. As I’ve said, sometimes we don’t get to see. But we should know that the loving thoughts that we are sending another’s way are definitely going to have a positive impact on their life. It certainly has to be the case. They will benefit in some way, even it if it is down the road. And we certainly too will benefit, both now by increasing our happiness in trying to help them, and later outside of this world.

- Daniel Litton