What’s on Your Mind?
"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!"
Are you happy? Do you know it? Does your face know it?
What does it take to make you happy? Is it based on how your day is going, or how people are treating you? Is it conditional, depending on your circumstances? Or might it even be the disposition you were born with, "just the way you are"?
Back in the 1980's, Dr. Frank Minnirth and Dr. Paul Meier wrote one of the most popular books in the world of Christian psychiatry, entitled "Happiness Is a Choice." I always thought it was a response to the notion that was prevalent then--and is even more so now--that we are all victims of our surroundings, and we are really not responsible for how we feel. The authors made the case that we can choose our response to our circumstances, and no matter how bad things get, we don't have to be unhappy.
A study from Stanford University backed that up. It revealed that happy people and unhappy people tend to have similar life experiences. It's not that happy people experience one success after another, and unhappy people experience one failure after another. Their lives are pretty much the same in that respect. The difference, the study concluded, is that the average unhappy person spends more than twice as much time thinking about unpleasant events in their lives, while happy people tend to think about things that will brighten their personal outlook.
The book of Philippians is one of the "happiest" books in all the Bible, though the apostle Paul never uses the word happy in the entire epistle. He does refer often to joy and contentment and peace in that letter, and he called his friends in Philippi to "Rejoice in the Lord always; and I again I say, rejoice." What some would find surprising was that Paul wrote that letter from a Roman prison, not exactly the kind of environment conducive to happiness.
What was Paul's secret, and how do we make that choice to rejoice ourselves, even in such a negative world? Well, on the one hand, we know from Paul's writing in Galatians that joy is also a fruit of the Spirit, so when we are properly attached to the Vine, and getting our spiritual nourishment from our relationship with Christ, joy will be part of the "produce" that spring forth from our lives.
Another key, as the Stanford study suggests, centers around our thought lives. Ralph Waldo Emerson may have been making a similar point when he famously said, "You become what you think about all day long." Just a few verses after Paul commanded his readers to rejoice (Phil. 4:4), he wrote this in 4:8: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things"
For most of us, our life experiences aren't all that different from the experiences of everyone else. The difference-making difference can be found in how and what we choose to think about in each situation, and, ultimately, how we choose to respond. What's on your mind?
I am praying for you, as I hope you are for me, and I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
--Pastor Ken
