[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word]

Happiness Point #90: Have Specific Prayer Days

       There’s no doubt that we all have a lot to pray for. People present us with prayers, when we are at church or Bible study. People tell us about things they need prayer for, whether we are talking with them on the phone or meeting them for coffee. And then there are the prayers that we ourselves need, which can be a vast variety of things. Perhaps we are praying for certain family members to come into personal relationship with God. Maybe we are hoping for help with a certain project we are facing in life, or perhaps a specific goal we wish to achieve on down the road. So, there are prayers for others and even prayers for ourselves.

       One thing I like to do is sometimes use specific prayer days, where, on this day, in addition to the regular stuff I prayer for, I will pray for a certain group of people. One common one I do is praying for the leaders of my church. Let’s say I do that on Sunday’s. So, on Sunday’s after I complete my regular prayer time, I will spend, say five minutes, praying for the leaders of the church, the pastors, the elders, the deacons, and whoever else comes to mind. By doing this on Sundays, I know that every week when Sunday comes around, this is the group of people I will pray for.

       Another group I have often prayed for is government leaders. So, let’s say I do that on Thursdays. Again, after my normal prayer time, I will pray for Federal leaders, like the President, Vice President, House, Senate, and Supreme Court justices. I will also then pray for local leaders, like the Governor, Ohio justices, nearby government officials, and even local school boards. This way, again, these people get their proper prayer time on a weekly basis. Now, I’m not perfectionistic about this, but I think it is a good way to easily remember to pray for certain groups of people the Bible tells us to pray for.

Happiness Point #91: Try the Truman Approach

       I think President Harry Truman is a president we don't hear a great deal about much anymore, yet there is an important lesson we can learn from him. It is so interesting how a guy with such humble beginnings and upbringing, and after so many failures, could enter into politics and raise all the way to the top, to becoming President of the United States. And he would use that ‘hometown’ wisdom in dealing with things in the White House, whether it was the Marshall Plan or his recognition of the State of Israel. It’s just cool to see that a person who seems like an everyday, average citizen rose to the Presidency.

       Anyhow, Truman had a way of going about things in his life and that was through persistence. For instance, the girl he liked from grade-school he sought diligently. He would send her letter after letter trying to win her over to his side (see Truman, 1997). Bess even turned him down the first time he proposed to her, but that didn’t stop him. He would continue to court Bess until he entered The Great War. After the war, all that persistence paid off when they finally married (see Wikipedia). I’m sure Truman thought about giving up many times, but he never really did. He had decided that he wanted Bess, and his persistence paid off.

       This attitude of persistence also demonstrates itself in his various business endeavors that he did after the war. He worked for a railroad company, in the mail room of a newspaper, at a national bank, as a haberdasher, and he even did farming and mining (see Wikipedia). So, he sort of jumped from job to job, much like a lot of people do today, though he never seemed to gain success at any of them. After jumping from job to job, then, Truman finally figured out an occupation that fit him well, and one of which he would succeed in. We know that was politics.

       So, anytime you find yourself failing in one endeavor, try another. Do what Harry Truman did and do not give up. Keep doing something until it finally works, and once it works, you’ll be happy you didn't settle for less or give up entirely.

References:

Grubin, David. (Writer and Producer). (1997, October 5). PBS American Experience Presents: Truman. David Grubin Productions, Inc.

Harry S. Truman. (2021, February 10). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harry_S._Truman

Happiness Point #92: Beware of False Love

       Sometimes people think they are in love, but there is a difference between actually, truly loving someone and that which is perceived as love but isn’t. What I mean is that there is real love and then there is what we can call ‘infatuation.’ This second feeling, infatuation, isn’t love because it doesn’t last forever. Generally, at first, it is intense, but then after a period of time, whatever that period is, weeks, months, or even a year or two, it generally seems to fade. And sometimes I think that infatuation is do to our internal drive to find a mate. There really isn’t any reality in it in the first place.

       You see, real love should be love that actually grows over time. It should be love that can be measured as greater, say, six months later than when it first began. It should not be driven by intense attachment, in that one cannot be away from the person loved for a period of time without worrying about the relationship. If one worries that the relationship will be damaged by a temporary separation, then it could be that the relationship might be built more on infatuation than love. If two people really know where they stand with each other, then a temporary separation isn’t going to matter all that much.

       Romantic love is good; God created it. A careful reading of the Song of Solomon in our Bibles will show us that much. It is fun and luring, again, the way God made it. But it, just like anything else in our lives, should never take precedence over our relationships with God. Love between two people on the earth should never come to place where it is seen as more important than the practice of one’s relationship with God. Though, I’m sure, like with anything, that can be a great temptation, to hold one’s partner as of higher importance than God himself. And this very point ties into the reason that one should not marry one who is outside of relationship with God. To do that that obviously means a person is valuing another person more than God.

       So, what is your love built upon if you are dating or courting someone currently? Is it built upon things like passion, desire, or infatuation? Or is it built upon a steady and controlled endurance? Does seeing your partner talk with a person of the opposite sex really concern you or make you particularly jealous? If so, why? Something must be wrong. If you can truly trust the other person, then what is there to worry about in the first place? We do not want to be imbalanced in our love for the person we are seeing, but rather hold them in realistic light, keeping our relationship in proper perspective and not exaggerating it to the point where it is larger than life itself.

Happiness Point #93: When You Pray, Quality over Quantity

       We love our pray time with God. Sometimes in spending that time, I think we wonder how long we should actually be spending. There seems to be that temptation that we need to stretch things out a little bit with God for fear that we aren’t spending enough time with him. But what I have found to be true is that I believe the quality of our prayers is more important than the quantity. What I mean is that I would rather spend five minutes of mindful prayer, than fifteen minutes of prayer that is wordy and just seems to be stretched out. I don’t think God is as concerned with the quantity as much as he is the quality.

       We see this concept in reading the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18. Often what is focused on is the attitudes of the prayers, and certainly, there is a lot that can be said about that. But we can also focus on the fact that the Pharisee’s, or religious leader’s, prayer was a lot longer than that of the tax collector, or sinner we might say. The sinner’s prayer was a lot more basic and humble. It cut straight to the point of what the man wanted to say, and didn’t fluff anything up or make it unnecessarily wordy or long. The religious leader I’m sure was proud of his prayer in the way it sounded. That seems obvious.

       Or, we could jump to the scene in John 11 where Jesus is praying before the crowd right before he raises Lazarus from the dead. If we look at his prayer there, one in which he thanks God for answering his prayer, for what he is about to do before them all, we see that it is very basic. It is simply a ‘thanks’ and doesn’t take a paragraph to say that. Jesus cuts straight to the point, and that is good enough. That’s all there was to it. No need for great eloquence in words like we might think. No need for the prayer to have lasted at least one minute for it count, or some rule like that we have made up in our minds. No. It was simple and to the point.

       Finally, the prayer that we all know, the most famous prayer of the New Testament, the Lord’s Prayer, demonstrates this quality over quantity concept I am talking about. That prayer is very basic, and yet, it conveys a good deal of things, all the necessities in fact. Yet, it accomplishes that without being prolonged and taking forever. What a great model for us, and a good model and reminder for us that prayers don’t have to take forever to be approved and acceptable before our Father in Heaven.

Happiness Point #94: Happiness from Possessions, or Experiences?

       In the most basic sense, there are two different areas of life from which we can derive our happiness. Or, we could say there are two different approaches we can take toward happiness as we live out our lives. The first, and I think this is the most common way, is to take our happiness from the possessions we obtain. This is gaining a new place to live, a new vehicle to drive, a new place to work, making new friends, finding a new spouse, whatever. In essence, it is the belief that happiness is off in the future and is thus achieved by gaining new things. So, we aren’t happy, and then we gain the desired thing, and now we are happy. That is, we are happy until the new thing becomes old. Then we create another goal which we strive for to gain more, or regain, our happiness.

       Yes, this is the way most people approach life, but it is the way that does not work. It doesn’t work because it starts from the underlying assumption, which is obviously incorrect, that happiness cannot be had now but is to come later; the later being after a desire is obtained. So, this approach always has happiness off in the future. It is dependent on circumstances where we can be in certain life circumstances that make us happy, and then also be stuck in a void where happiness is no where to be found. It makes happiness external of ourselves instead of internal to ourselves.

       The second approach to happiness is that we derive it from experiences. This is the correct approach, I believe. What this really means is that no matter what is going on in our lives, we can usually pull some happiness out of it. Even if we don’t particularly like where we live, the car we drive, the place we work at, are having a difficult time with our spouse, whatever, we can still find the positive experiences in those situations and focus on them. We can identify that happiness can and does exist in those circumstances if we become aware of it. The reality is, we probably have an incorrect negative mindset to begin with when we have labeled something as entirely bad.

       I think, when considering anything carefully, all of life’s circumstances have their pros and cons. Sure, some may have more on the pro-side, and some may have more weight on the con-side, like a teeter-totter. But, in most circumstances, we can usually find some positives and come to a place where we can gain some enjoyment, some happiness. This mode of thinking I think is important because it means we can have some happiness in just about any and every circumstance that most of us face. Through proper perspective, happiness can be achieved. It can be had at the busy grocery store, or at the BMV, or when working isn’t going that good, or when relations with your friends or spouse could be improved. There is always a way to identify what is right, or what could be worse, and focus on that.

Happiness Point #95: Positive Affirmations Bring Encouragement

       We all wake up on certain days where it feels like we are flooded with negative emotions. Arising from bed, we go to make a cup of coffee and sit down in our recliner. It’s like something opened up the floodgates of negativity. Negative thoughts seem to be flooding our minds, so that all the areas of our brain seem to be eventually effected. We look at certain situations with a negative perspective. Only the negative-side seems to be present, and no matter how much we try to see things differently, nothing seems to change. There are different approaches one could take to this type of situation. One of those, though, is what the Apostle Paul talked about, and that is namely encouragement.

       We are instructed in Scripture to bring encouragement to one another, but did you know that you can actually encourage yourself? Certainly. We don’t always need others to encourage us. As a matter of fact, we can let God encourage us through the Scriptures. One good way I have found to accomplish this task is not be simply reading the Scriptures, but rather by have a list of positive affirmations from the Scriptures on hand. What are positive affirmations? Well, for me, they are Bible verses that I have taken and usually put into the first-person so that I can gain more out of them, make them for personal. They help me gain that encouragement that I need.

       Some verses from our Bible are already in the first person, and with those no modification is needed. Though, many are not, and we can simply put them in the first person on our list. We should pick verses that are custom-tailored to us, ones that speak to us, so that they will have greater impact when we go over them. This will be different for everyone. And I personally like to speak them out loud, as they seem to sink in more when I do it this way. This puts both my mind and my mouth to work. But they can also be gone over quietly, say, if you're sitting in the waiting room for some kind of appointment. That’s another thing. It’s good to have them stored on our smartphones.

       But this list can also contain truths that are perhaps not directly found in our Bibles. Like, for instance, the famous quote of someone who says something particularly profound that is true. Or, like from an author that really speaks to us. I don’t limit my list strictly to the Bible, though doing that would be fine. This way, I can implement those good things I come across in all areas. The point is that we are encouraged, so that when times to get tuff, or we wake up not feeling the best, we can quickly have a method we can utilize to try to pull us out of that. I really believe this practice has produced good results in my life since I started doing it years ago. It’s amazing how our minds can get jumbled up, and sometimes just need straightened out with some truth.

Happiness Point #96: Learn from Bad Experiences

       I wish there was a happiness point that I could present on how to never have a bad experience again, but we all know that’s just not possible, not as long as we are in our current world. So, we do have to deal with bad experiences. Nonetheless, it is true that we can learn from those experiences. Really, there are two different ways people can respond to them. One, people can become all upset and filled with self-pity, and then blame themselves or others, or even God, for the bad that has happened. Two, people can recognize that bad has happened, and after getting past the initial uncomfortable experience, decide they are going to form an investigation. They are going to try to understand the bad experience, and see if there is anything that can be done differently the next time, or if there is anything at all that can be learned.

       In the first approach, where we become all-upset and stay upset, really the problem is that we are self-righteous (that we are prideful) and that we perhaps love self-pity. Self-righteousness comes into the picture when we refuse to admit that we did anything wrong, or is our view that ‘how dare others do wrong to me!’ Either way, we are holding ourselves up on a pedestal. We are saying one of the following: “I am awesome and could not have done anything wrong,” or we are saying, “How dare someone go against my awesome personhood.” Yeah, we are prideful for sure. This also probably means that we love self-pity, because now we are focusing on the wrong done and how it affects us. We are looking at the bad experience and only focusing on how are have been negatively affected, and we have no view for what this bad experience can beget for us in the future.

       The reality is, is that most situations in life are not all-or-nothing. Or, we could say it is not a zero-sum game. What I mean is that usually wrong can be done on both sides of a bad experience. It is true that someone else may have done wrong to us. They may have over-reacted, acting too strongly against us, or have added a few colorful things to what we did wrong. But the point here is that usually we did wrong too. It’s not totally them where the weight of the wrong should lay, but it’s also not totally us either. We can go the opposite direction in a bad experience and believe we are totally at fault, and all the weight is on us. But, usually, that is not that case. Typically it is somewhere in between the two.

       Anyhow, when we move past our self-righteousness and our self-pity about the situation, we can then look at it from the point of ‘What can I learn here?’ ‘How can I do better the next time?’ We can’t control other’s behaviors; we are not responsible for them. But, we can decide how we will act differently the next time. By taking the emotion out of it, we can then see room for growth. We can identify any mistakes we made, or warning signs we ignored, and then make good change for the future in hopes of having a different outcome next time.

- Daniel Litton