Happy

HT: Bruce Van Horn @BruceVH

Unknown Blessings

For all Your blessing,

Heavenly Father,
known to me,
and for all unknown,
accept my thanks.

May I not murmur at Your providence,
or dread the future.

Whatever happens,
help me to believe in Your unfailing care
and to know that in the Valley of the Shadow
You are by my side.

- F. B. Meyer

HT: Trevin Wax

Cultivating Joy

"7 Ways to Cultivate Joy in Your Life" - From Bible Study Tools:

Want more joy in your day? Cultivate it! Joy springs from viewing the day's events from eternity's perspective. With this intentional focus, you're sure to see today differently — with more joy and conviction that God is at work in your life.

1. Rehearse with God the reasons you trust Him. Tell Him which of His attributes is your favorite right now. Read the praises ofScripture back to Him — begin with Psalms 103:1. Join with another believer in prayers of thanksgiving, and delight yourself in His character.

2. Keep a "joy journal." Record the reasons you have to rejoice and the reminders of God's faithfulness that you encounter in your everyday life. In addition, why not press a leaf from your prayer walks into its pages or include a photo of a person that brings you joy each time you remember him or her? Think big — expand your journal into a "joy box" or a "joy drawer" that brings floods of joy each time you open it.

3. Surround yourself with joyful people. Joy is contagious — so build relationships with friends whose lives exhibit their confidence in God. Pray for each other that your joy in Christ would continue to increase.

4. Approach life's challenges and trials redemptively. God doesn't waste the difficult circumstances of your life but uses them to develop His character in you. Review Romans 5:1 and James 1:1 for help in processing pressure productively. Joy will sneak up on you when you view your hardest lessons as gifts from God.

5. Make praise and gratitude a habit. Has God met a need? Praise Him! Have your challenges given you greater opportunities to see Him work? Thank Him! Joy flows from a grateful and responsive heart. Before you turn in at night, write down three to five blessings in your "joy journal." Make it a habit, and watch your joyful attitude grow.

6. Fill your mind with music. Listen to, sing, and meditate on music that draws your heart nearer to God and His Word.

7. Take the long view. Investors advise their clients not to worry about the daily ups and downs of the stock market — what matters is the long view. Does life present incredible challenges today? Are your reserves at a low, or are you enjoying a content plateau? Regardless of today's events, take the long view. Remember that God remains in charge of your days and will faithfully develop His character in you.

Remember, joy springs from viewing the day's events from eternity's perspective. Trust that God controls your life's details (Romans 8:28), that He hears your every request (Psalms 116:1), and that His joy will be your strength (Nehemiah 8:10).

Nothing But Thanksgiving

"The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise." - Richard Sibbes

HT: Dash House (picture and quote)

Greatest Source of Happiness

HT: Ziglar.com

Grateful Happiness

In His Hands

Gratitude Over Entitlement

From Pete Wilson:

Everything that I have and everything in my life is a gift.

One of the things I’ve been focusing on this year is to have more gratitude and less entitlement because the truth is that whatever we feel entitled to, we cannot be grateful for.

Enjoy Grace in 2014

I loved this post from Justin Buzzard - "The #1 Thing To Do in the New Year":

You may or may not have a list of resolutions for the New Year. Whatever goals you’re chasing and whatever you’re facing this next year, I want to make a suggestion: simplify things this year.

Instead of trying to do a lot, what if you focused your full attention on just one exciting objective?

Here it is: Enjoy grace.

Grace is the undeserved love of God. This undeserved love is extended most climactically in the substitutionary life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, a historical reality that changes everything about your reality. And, this undeserved love comes at you every single day of your life. Everything you will enjoy in 2014 is grace, pure gift from God: the oxygen you breathe, the relationships you enjoy, the food you eat, the shelter over your head, the laughter of your children, those amazing sunsets, etc.

“What do you have that you did not receive?” -1 Corinthians 4:7. Everything you have you have received. All is gift. All is grace. The screen you’re reading this on is a gift, as are the fingers you’re using to scroll through this post. Enjoy this grace, this great gift of having fingers, exploring screens, and learning.

Enjoy grace! Focus your full attention and energies here, and everything else will follow: love for God, gratitude, joy, love for others, and good stewardship of the life, talents, resources, time, and opportunities God has given you. Nothing sucks the life out of things like entitlement, thinking you deserve a certain kind of life. And nothing gives life like grace, recognizing that your life and everything about your life is pure gift.

Though it feels like you’re sitting still right now, you’re sitting on a planet that’s hurling through space at roughly 2.7 million miles per hour. This wild orbit and the wild adventure of your life is sustained and empowered by the grace of God, undeserved love that holds the galaxies in place, feeds you breakfast, and puts a fresh fire in your heart.

Happy New Year!

Enjoy grace!

The Power of Gratitude

Gratitude is a powerful thing. From Pete Wilson:

The moment you think you are owed or entitled to something, you stop being grateful for it.

Your spouse.
Your house.
Your job.
Your kids.
Your friends.

That moment that made you laugh so hard your side hurt.
That sunset that made you stop and take a picture.
That moment of worship where you felt God’s presence so strongly.

Each and every moment. Each and every person.

Life is a gift.
Grace is a gift.

Be thankful.

In the Proper Order

"That is the order of the gospel: God accepts us, and then we follow Him."

 "..if you add anything to Christ as a requirement for acceptance with God - if you start to say: To be saved I need the grace of Christ plus something else- you completely reverse the 'order' of the gospel and make it null and void. Any revision of the gospel reverses it...."

"To change the gospel the tiniest bit is to lose it so completely that the new teaching has no right to be called 'a gospel'.'"

        - Timothy Keller, Galatians For You, page 38

No Pay Back

"If we are not careful, serving can become a way we try to earn the love we've already received from God, to 'pay Jesus back' for His generous grace. While churches preaching the grace of god would never suggest that serving or volunteering contributes anything to a person's salvation, a subtle tendency among us leads us to believe that serving is a way to stay 'in good' with God.  therefore, unless serving is continually and unapologetically connected to the gospel, it can become a burden, a manipulator, a guilt reliever, or a back-handed method we employ to just keep serving ourselves...."

"...Serving as an attempt to pay God back for His grace is futile - not only because our best efforts would prove woefully inadequate in paying Him back- but because there is nothing to pay back. the gospel reminds us that the debt of our sin has already been paid in full..."

 -Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word: The Jesus Centered Church,  pages 68-69 (italics in the original)

An Unending Enumeration

Hat Tip for Picture:  Thinking Out Loud

Lord of the Dishes

“Jesus Christ is Lord over my heart, and he is Lord over my hands, and he is Lord over what I do with these hands, and he is Lord over what I say in my heart while I’m doing it. In submitting to the lordship of Christ, then, I do not treat washing dishes as wasting time I could be spending doing something ‘meaningful,’ but rather as a service to those who eat in my home, as a service to those who would have to wash dishes if I did not, and as an offering of thanksgiving to God that I have food to eat, dishes to eat it on, and running water inside my home to clean with.”

— Jared C. Wilson Gospel Wakefulness
(Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2011), page 92

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

The Reminder That Grows Gratitude

"The key to becoming more grateful people, then, is knowing more of the gospel that saves us. The gospel has the power to free us from entitlement.  The gospel humbles us before our mighty yet merciful God. The gospel reminds us of the judgement that we deserved, the condemnation which God saved us from - and our response should be gratitude for undeserved grace. God's will is that Christians give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess. 5:18). If Christians are to grow in gratitude, they must grow in the gospel."

         -Michael Chase, The Gospel is for Christians, page 114

Doubled By Wonder

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

                    - G. K. Chesterton

Getting Some Perspective

Jollyblogger (aka David Wayne, pastor and cancer patient) posted a humbling and necessary reminder of our real status today. His comments are partially a response to this old post from Carl Trueman, An Unmessianic Sense of Non-Destiny., which I previously referenced here.

I think it’s time to say goodbye the Christian industrial complex, the evangelical hype and marketing machine that promises life change every Thursday and promises that you, yes, you, and me yes me, can change the world. Hogwash. None of us is required to change the world for Christ, Christ has changed the world permanently, none of us can do anything about it. Everyone wants to change the world, no one wants to do the dishes or take out the trash. I would trade every kid who takes a mission trip to change the world for one who would stay home and clean his room, treat his brother like a human being and help mom around the house without being asked twice. Changing the world is easy, the latter is harder and far more Christlike.

The same goes for adults – I don’t need to become a great leader, I need to prepare a regular ol’ word based sermon for Sunday, make some phone calls to some shut ins, listen to my elders instead of sharing my vision with them and generally be available to my congregation.

Thankful for Laughter

Love this little prayer from The Anchoress. As she says, "Laughter is not just good medicine. Sometimes having the opportunity to laugh segues into a prayer of thanksgiving:"

Thank you, God, for the interruption to a hectic day, and the cleansing effect of a laugh. Thank you God that I can hear and see this, in order to so fully enjoy it. Thank you that my lungs work, so I can bark out “HA! That’s funny!” and it heals me more effectively than a thousand sighs. Thank you for the Holy Spirit, who moves on the air I breath, and therefore on all of my tears and laughter and carries them where you will. Thank you for the good friend who sent this to me, and the fact that I have any friends at all. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for my life, I do not appreciate enough.

Thank you, God, that a few minutes spent in frivolity only led me back to you, who — being all good — can only be my joy.

I needed that. Thanks for the laugh, Lord!

Ingratitude

"I fear that what will surprise us most, when we see our Lord, will be the extent of our own ingratitude."

               —E.B. Pusey

Hat Tip: Challies Dot Com

Cat & Dog Christians

“A cat goes, ‘oh my owner feeds for me, cares for me, cleans up after me…I must be God!’ And a dog goes, ‘my owner, my master, feeds for me, cares for me, cleans up after me…he must be God!’ And that’s why when you come home, your dog is all over you, and unless you have like .0000001% of cats, your cat could care less when you get home. And far too many evangelicals are feline in their theologies…‘Well god loves me, he’s for me…I’m the point!’ And when you’re the point, everything falls apart.”

Matt Chandler, quoted at Christians in Context: from orthodoxy to orthopraxy

My response: Woof, Woof, Bark, Bark!