Encouragement

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In her book The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin posited that doing things we love would make us happy. So for one year she did monthly projects that made her happy and shared it to the public. The market is full of books and audio-visual materials like this, featuring self-help methods to make people become more productive, successful and live a stress-free life.

Christians have the advantage of the Bible, the ultimate guide to successful living in this world. Inspire of it, many are still gloomy and downcast. The heavy countenance becomes our testimony and people look at us and ask whether being a Christian makes a difference. We justify our gloomy attitude with the troubles that choke our daily life. We feel helpless and we brood. At times like this, we presume we are smart enough to respond to our problems based on our strength and our abilities. We think that we can handle petty problems and we only call God if the problem is gigantic and beyond our capacity. That is where our problem lies. We are choked by our problems because we thought it is only us who can manage it. We are unwilling to cast our cares, not even to God. Psalm 55:22 says, “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.” There is no differentiation between big and small problems. The statement is simple, cast all your cares.

We do not say we should not be sad. There is a time for mourning and being sad, but that time has to pass and we have to move on. The fruits of the Spirit should be seen in our lives, transforming us from being vanquished to victor and from sadness to happiness, because God sustained us. A line in Michael Jackson’s song Happy goes, “let sadness see what happy does, let happy be where sadness was.” This is precisely what the Scriptures tell us. We read in Ecclesiastes 3:12, “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.” If we cast our burdens to God, we should forget about them anymore. We let God do the rest and be happy knowing the God is faithful in His promise.

So how can we counter sadness and maintain happiness in our lives? Psalm 90:14 gives us the secret to a happy life. It says, “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” Simple but powerful! All we have to do is recount God’s blessings and faithfulness and it should be enough to make you happy – every day. Life is a celebration of God’s goodness and faithfulness. Be happy!

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