Making Our Life The Best - Part 2
Matthew 11:28
Are most people happy with their life?
Dennis Wholey, author of “Are You Happy?”
reports that according to expert opinion, perhaps only 20 percent of Americans are happy.
Those experts would probably agree with the definition of happiness
offered by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who said,
"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the
dead, now usually attributed by adults to children and by children to adults."
Six weeks before he died, a reporter asked Elvis Presley,
"Elvis, when you first started playing music, you said you wanted to be rich, famous and happy. Are you happy?" "I’m lonely as hell" he replied.
Most of us have discovered that happiness is not found in things nor in accomplishments.
Things don’t thrill and accomplishments don’t achieve.
When we lived in Tulsa I bought my first real computer.
It was an Epson Equity III+.
It had a 286 processor that ran at 12 mhz.
That’s 12 million operations per second.
Today they are running at over 7 billion operations per second.
It had a 20 megabit hard drive and 1 megabit of memory.
That’s 20 million bits of memory.
Today they have hard drives with well over 1 trillion bits of memory.
It had 1 megabit of memory.
That’s one million bits of memory.
Today our computers have from 1 to 4 gigabits.
That’s 1 to 4 billion bits of memory.
It also had a 12 inch monochrome green screen monitor.
Today I have two 20 inch LCD screens on my computer.
I payed $2,400 for it.
At the time it was fast and it was powerful.
But things don’t last.
Something new and more powerful comes along almost everyday.
When I was in my teens, I loved to enter the tractor pull at our local county fair.
That was when they still pulled regular farm tractors.
And I was pretty good.
One year I borrowed a garden tractor and entered it into the garden tractor class.
I entered our old M/M Z in the 5000 pound class.
I entered our Massy Ferguson 175 into the 7000 pound class.
It worked out that all three of those classes pulled the same night.
That night I won two firsts and a third.
It was a good night and I really enjoyed it.
But the next morning I had to get up and pull weeds out of the soybean field.
I had to help put up hay.
I had to help take care of the cattle and do other things around the farm.
Happiness is not found in things nor accomplishments.
And on the other side of the coin we find that many people
are not very happy with their lives for one negative reason or another:
family troubles, kid problems, work life,
financial struggles, poor health, fear, etc.
Are you happy?
You may never be completely happy in this life or with your life.
If there is any happiness or joy to be found,
it’ not in the things of the accomplishments of this
world.
I like the story about the 92 year old lady who was very contented with her life.
Another lady wrote these words about her:
"She is
fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair brushed, and her
makeup perfectly applied, in spite of the fact she is legally blind. Today she
has moved to a nursing home. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away,
making this move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby
of the nursing home, where I am employed, she smiled sweetly when told her room
was ready.
"As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description
of her tiny room, including the eyelet curtains that had been hung on her
window. ‘I love it,’ she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having
just been presented with a new puppy.
"’Mrs.. Jones, you haven’t seen the room ... just wait,’" I said. Then she spoke
these words that I will never forget. ‘That does not have anything to do with
it,’ she gently replied. ‘Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time.
Whether I like my room or not does not depend on how the furniture is arranged.
It is how I arrange my mind. I have already decided to love it. It is a decision
I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice. I can spend the day in bed
recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work,
or I can get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do work. Each day is a
gift, and as long as my eyes open, I will focus on the new day and all of the
happy memories I have stored away...just for this time in my life. Age is like a
bank account. You withdraw from what you have already put in.’"
Right on, lady!
It’s not how our lives are arranged that makes the difference,
but how our
minds are arranged that will help us to get the most out of life!
Last week I shared two Biblical principles about how to make the best of our lives.
They were: 1- Walk by faith 2- Focus on people.
In other words, get your focus off yourself!
Instead, focus on the Lord and on people!
I want to share several more Biblical principles to help us make the best out of life.
I.
SEE THE POSITIVE.
Phil. 4:8 "Finally, brothers, whatever is
true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think
about such things."
It’s obvious that the apostle Paul is telling us to think about good things in life.
I think he is also telling us to see the good, the positive things in life
instead of always looking at the negative side of things.
A school boy brought home his report card.
It was loaded with poor grades.
"What do you have to say about this?" asked his father.
"One thing for sure," the boy replied,
"Dad, you can be proud. You know I haven’t
been cheating!"
Max Lucado tells the story about flying on a plane one time with a certain lady.
He said,
"She sat in 14E and I sat in 14D. She was rural and I was urban. She was homey
and I was professional. But she could see and I was blind.
"I groaned. I had a bad attitude. My week had been hectic. The plane was late
and over booked. I had a toothache and had left the tooth medicine at the hotel.
I wanted to sleep, but I had work to do. And now I was sitting next to Gomer
Pyle’s mother.
"‘Oooh, boy, look at that one!’ She pointed at the plane ahead of us on the
runway. ‘Is this one that big?’ ‘Yes,’ I hoped my brief response would show her
that I wasn’t up for chitchat. It didn’t. ‘I’m hoping to see my boy in Dallas.
Do you ever go to Dallas? I hope he’s OK. He had a stomach flu last week. He’s
got a new dog. I can’t want to see it. It’s a Labrador. Do you know what that
is? They are big and lovable...’
"She was uncanny. Not only could she add a syllable to every word, she could
answer her own questions. As we were taking off, however, she got quiet. For
several moments she said nothing. Then she suddenly let out a sound that would
have called the pigs for dinner. ‘Oooooeeee, those trees down there look like
peat moss!’ People around us stared like I was E. F. Hutton.
"’What river is that?’ I told her I didn’t know, so she flagged down a
stewardess.
"When the drinks came around, I asked for a Coke; she asked for the list. ‘Tell
me again?’ So the stewardess told her again, ‘Oh, it’s so hard to choose,’ she
giggled. But she finally chose.
"When they brought her the drink, she exclaimed that she didn’t know apple juice
came in cans. And when they brought her a sandwich, she opened the box and
proclaimed loud enough for the pilot to hear, ‘Why, they even put mayonnaise in
here.’
"When I pulled out my laptop computer, she was enthralled. ‘Now isn’t that
clever.’ And that went on the whole flight. She didn’t miss a thing. If she
wasn’t staring out the window, she was amazed by a magazine.
"If she wasn’t talking, she was ‘ooohing.’ She played with her fan. She turned
her light on and off. She toyed with her seat belt. She savored her lunch. When
we went through turbulence, I looked over at her to be sure she was all right,
and she was grinning. You’d have thought she was riding the Ferris Wheel at the
county fair!
"It occurred to me, about mid-journey, that she was the only person enjoying the
trip. The rest of us, the ‘sophisticated,’ were too mature to have fun. And as I
was staring at a computer screen -- eyes tired, mouth hurting, stressed-out,
trying to find a message for stress-filled people and never noticing that the
message was sitting beside me.
"And I might never have noticed had she not leaned over and said to me at the
end of the flight. ‘Son, I may be out of place in saying this, but you’ve worked
the entire trip. You need to relax, boy. You need to put that machine up and
enjoy the journey.’ GULP."
"I smiled weakly and mumbled some excuse about needing to get the work done
before tomorrow. But she wasn’t listening. She was squeezing her hands together
in excitement as we landed. ‘Wasn’t that a fu-un trip?’ she asked as we were
leaving the plane.
"I didn’t say anything. I just nodded and smiled. Off she walked, bouncing down
the concourse as curious as a six-year-old. I watched her as long as I could,
then turned to go to my next flight with a lesson learned. I resolved to keep my
eyes open."
Lucado concluded, "It does little good, I decided, to make the trip and
miss the journey."
Most of us are so caught up with the negative stuff of life
that we fail to see the good, the positive, the blessings,
the
excitement and the enchantment of life.
Look around you.
Stop and really look at what you have and what is around you.
God has given you more than you realize.
Think on these things.
They will help you to make the best of your life.
II. ALWAYS BE THANKFUL
I Thess. 5:18 "Give thanks in all
circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."
This idea is very similar to the last point.
Look for the positive and the good in life AND BE THANKFUL!
If you see the good and the positive, give thanks!
Be thankful to the people around you.
Express it.
Say it.
Say it right now!
And most of all, be thankful to God.
Express it.
Praise Him!
Bless Him!
Out West, a cowboy was driving down a dirt road,
his dog riding in back of the pickup truck,
his faithful horse in the trailer behind.
He failed
to negotiate a curve and had a terrible accident.
Sometime later, a highway patrol officer came on the scene.
An animal lover, he saw the horse first.
Realizing the serious nature of its injuries,
he drew his service revolver and put the animal out of his misery.
He walked around the accident and found the dog, also hurt critically.
He couldn’t bear to hear it whine in pain,
so he ended the dog’s suffering as well.
Finally he located the cowboy --who suffered multiple fractures--off in the weeds.
"Hey, are you okay?" the cop asked.
The cowboy took one look at the smoking revolver in the trooper’s hand
and quickly
replied, "Never felt better!"
There was a thankful cowboy.
He had a lot to growl about, but considering
his circumstances, he was thankful!
God is pleased with us when we are thankful to Him and to others.
God is not pleased with us when we complain.
And most of us complain far too much.
A monk joined a monastery and took a vow of silence.
After the first 10 years his superior called him in and asked,
"Do you have anything to say?"
The monk replied,
"Food bad."
After another 10 years the monk again had opportunity to voice his thoughts.
He said,
"Bed hard."
Another 10 years went by and again he was called in before his superior.
When asked if he had anything to say, he responded,
"I quit."
The Superior said,
"It doesn’t surprise me a bit. You’ve done nothing but
complain ever since you got here."
The truth is, most of us complain too much.
We don’t like this.
We don’t like that.
We gripe, complain, scowl, screech, squawk, scream, and squeal.
But it doesn’t do us any good, nor anyone else.
All it does is make us more negative and nasty, and push people away.
The aroma of Christ
in us is gratitude, not griping.
Mark Twain is reported to have said,
"Don’t complain and talk about all your problems--80 percent of people don’t care; the other 20 percent will think you deserve them."
A young man was proposing to his girlfriend.
"Honey, I love you, but I wish I could give you the things my friend Benny has -- boats, cars, airplanes -- but honey, I really love you."
She replied, "I love you too, baby, but tell me more about Benny."
We may not have boats, cars, airplanes, and lots of money,
but we have plenty and God wants us to be thankful!
I Tim. 6:17
"Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put
their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who
richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment."
We’re all blessed!
But some people are more aware of it than others!
One lady lives in a house trailer with no electricity.
But she’s thankful.
She’s thankful that her neighbor ran an electric extension cord to her trailer,
so she
could have electricity to her frig and to a fan.
That lady didn’t have a job, but she was thankful.
You see, the next day she was going to work in
the mall for $6.50 an hour.
We all need to be more thankful!
And being thankful is something that God wants out of us
and it will help us to make the best out of life.
CONCLUSION:
In England, there is a paper factory that makes some of the finest stationery in the world.
One day, a man touring the factory asked what it was made from.
He was shown a huge pile of old rags,
and told that the rag content, was what determined the quality of the paper.
The visitor couldn’t believe it.
In a matter of weeks he received from the company a package of paper,
with his initials embossed on it.
On the top piece were written the words, "Dirty Rags
Transformed."
The same is true of the Christian life.
Only Jesus can transform our lives from what we were,
into something new and wonderful.
And once we experience the transformation process, life begins to get better.
Through Christ we can make the best out of our lives.
We will see the positive in Jesus Christ,
we will become thankful in Jesus Christ.
In Jesus our life will be the very best it can be!