February 2019 – justsomegoodthoughts

I don’t know about you, but there are more opinions on finding happiness than there are stars in the sky. Some suggest that you turn your focus to yourself, prioritize yourself and choose yourself first. Others promote gratitude as the answer. A majority report it comes from doing the things you love. Many say that happiness is not a destination you reach, but rather something that occurs along the journey. Some offer that happiness is found in favorable circumstances. Indeed there are a multitude of theories and ideas, but do they really work? Can you find the happiness you so desperately seek?

There are few things you can directly control in life. Circumstances change, people change, events ebb and flow. Some days you are on top of the world, other days nothing seems right. At times you feel totally in control and other times completely out of control. Try as you might, control as much as you can, take no risks, choose maximum safety and still things go wrong; sometimes disastrously wrong. It doesn’t seem to matter if you are a good person or a bad person, though we like to assume that bad people have it coming. Yet, bad things happen to good people as well. So, what is it? What are you supposed to do?

The only thing you can have total control of is your mind. Often the missing key lies in what you choose to do with your mind. I don’t mean you should try to be happy when things are going bad for you. No, that’s not realistic or reasonable. I’m talking more about your mindset. What is your default mindset? What do you think about when no-one is watching? What thoughts, ideas and expectations are you rehearsing in your head? Do you even know? Or have you bought into the crazy idea that your mind thinks and concludes with or without your permission? It’s sort of like when people say they can’t shut their minds off in order to go to sleep. I’m here to testify that you can turn your mind off or better quiet it down, once you begin to learn how to control your mind. Happiness is a result of consistently controlling your mind.

Think about the times in your life when you felt happy and blessed. Maybe it was a family vacation or on your wedding day or when you graduated from college. Was it really the vacation in the tropics that made you happy or was it your anticipation and expectation? I would suggest it is the latter. There are many folks living in the tropics that aren’t working and are free to play who are miserable still! Why? Because of their negative expectation. How many people do you know who are always waiting for their happiness as if it is on a train and they are awaiting its arrival? They are waiting to be happy. They feel that once such and such happens they will finally be happy. Maybe when they get the money or the job or the perfect spouse, maybe then the happiness will follow. In the interim, they remain suspended, waiting and waiting for some circumstance to finally line up or for their lucky break to at last arrive. You see, there are 260 workdays in a year, but only 52 Saturdays if you get my drift. That’s a lot of waiting…

There is a far better strategy than waiting! The best plan of action, yes action, is found in choosing to be happy right now, no matter what your circumstances are promoting as reality. Being enthusiastic and optimistic, indeed expecting good things is a function of your mind. The action is to control your thinking. Stop being run about from pillar to post being blown about with every wind of doctrine. Stop basing your happiness on what things look like! Stop waiting and hoping and wishing and just decide to be happy. You might not have recognized it before but it is the same thing you did the last time you felt happy, only you assigned your happiness to the pleasant circumstances. You don’t need pleasant circumstances to feel happy. All you need is to control what you are thinking and when your thinking goes south, as it necessarily must, you have to change your mind. Your feelings, those great natural barometers, are simply responding to your thoughts. It’s not magic or predestination, good luck or bad luck. It’s not some mysterious force outside of you picking you for one or the other. It’s you, my friend, and what you are doing with your mind…

Allowing your thoughts to default to your experience and taking life as it comes is a recipe for misery. The world we live in is fraught with negativity. Letting your thoughts run where they wish will lead you down the rabbit hole of mental defeat. Instead your solution, God’s solution for you, is for you to take charge of that unruly mind and line it up with the things you actually want. You line it up! You control it! You make it get in line with the life you so desperately seek and then experience the joy of seeing it coming to pass. Do you know why life works so well for some people? Because they expect it to and you don’t have to look any deeper than that. Do you know how to get blessed by God? Become blessed first and then the blessings will follow. Stop waiting on God. God is waiting on you!

The ability to control your mind is one of the greatest things God ever did for you. It is His solution in a world that seems chaotic and out of control. There’s no need to beg God to change your life around. You change your life around by changing your thoughts around, not later on when it looks favorable, but now in the midst of whatever! When the negative thoughts come, recognize them and change them. And, if you really want to excel, if you want to tap into the abundant life, instead of the ordinary life, then find some positive promise of God that counters your negativity and change your mind to that! Say that, rehearse that, announce that, claim that! Soon you’ll find your happiness increasing exponentially…

Are you desperately seeking happiness in your life? Have you already tried all the theories? Learn to focus and control your thinking. Decide first you are going to be blessed and enthusiastic and happy. Decide it right now today in this moment and keep deciding it though all hell should try to drag you back down. Don’t spend another second waiting… Your feelings follow your thoughts and you are in charge of your thoughts! Be happy…

Just some good thoughts…

Do you find yourself amidst what seems like an endless stream of difficulties? Have you suffered some recent loss which causes you to question your existence or for that matter, the existence of God? Do you feel like you are always paddling upstream and can’t seem to catch a break? Do you feel like, for reasons presently unknown, life has gone south on you?

First, it’s important for you to understand that life, at some point, takes a negative turn for all of us. The negatives that confront us and challenge us are a part of life not because it is God’s plan, but because of a violation of God’s plan that led to God’s enemy, the devil gaining access (by man’s choice) to God’s creation. God never intended for life to be so full of difficulties as His plan was just the opposite. But, because man has free will he can choose whatever he wills and at one time that choice introduced evil into the world. It is that evil, whether you believe it or not, that is behind every bad thing that ever happened to you. Life is not random and your struggles are not random. They were designed, planned, and artfully and masterfully executed by an opponent you cannot see nor readily discern.

No-one living is exempt from this conflict, though they pray a thousand well-intended prayers. It is just the way it is. God’s believing people are assaulted if not more than those who choose not to believe, because they belong to God. As such, God never promised life would be without the fight, but rather promised that in the middle of the fight, we can always win! There will be times when things go wrong on you or bad things happen to you causing you to wonder where God is… Your temptation will be to foolishly conclude that God isn’t there for you or worse that your own wrong behavior has led to all these difficulties. Well, the reality is that the challenges will come no matter how you behave. Of course, you can do your part to add difficulties to your life, but whether you brought it on yourself or your enemy just sucker-punched you, God’s will is always your deliverance; your recovery; your complete restoration to wholeness! And, He will never allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able along the way.

In order for you to aggressively fight back instead of quietly acquiescing or giving up, you first need know who and what you are fighting. If you think that God is behind your struggles, you could not be more wrong! If you have allowed someone to talk you into some nonsensical bullshit about how God has some greater plan for you and is thereby kicking your ass, or some similar phraseology that subtly assigns the present distressing evil to God, again you could not be more wrong! I can assure you that if God were behind your struggles, there would be no remedy! But, He isn’t behind it in any form or fashion, not even in the most minute detail. The reason you have even considered this notion is because that’s what people say; people wholly unaware of their opponent. It’s no accident however, because in order to whoop you up real good your enemy has to convince you first that he doesn’t exist and next that the trouble must be coming from God (Your only source of help!). Like I said, it is quite the masterful operation and it is causing you a lot of unnecessary pain.

So, here you are wondering what the hell happened to you and questioning your every thought, motive and behavior for the past 10 years. Question no further. Evil sucks and it’s after everyone. Remember the Apostle Paul from the Bible? He probably did this life thing a little better than you and me, right? Yet Paul, when accounting his troubles said, “Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea.” Capisce? You get it? The great Apostle Paul, God’s believing man, was challenged, not because of his sin or wrong, but because God’s enemy hated him and what he stood for in life! I mean come on! Once when he survived the shipwreck, as he gathered sticks to make a fire, a venomous snake came out of the wood and bit him. But, he just shook the beast off and kept on keeping on…

So what should you do when life seems to smack you in the face or gut punches you? Don’t spend a moment of time in consideration of how good or bad you are or worse what the evil lesson is trying to teach you! God doesn’t need the devil to help him teach you anything! Instead, go to God immediately looking for the solution. Whether it be restoration of your health or your finances or a relationship, get yourself to your only real source of help. Don’t fret yourself or allow yourself to be filled with anxiety because everything seems to be going south on you. God can show you and help you to get it going north again! But, like Paul, you have to keep moving forward. Your enemy walks about like a roaring lion seeking who he can devour. So, you can’t sit there paralyzed with fear waiting for the next catastrophe. You gotta get yourself up and move ahead. Don’t rehearse it to everyone you know or glorify the evil work by repeating the story a million times over. Get quiet in your heart, ask God for His help (as many times as you need to), and do your best to move forward. As you move, and not until you move, God will make the path clear for you. And after a time, He will even teach you what led to it so you can be that much stronger in the future.

Life goes south for everyone at one time or another, but that doesn’t mean you cannot prevail. Think good things about yourself and never again consider that God is behind your challenges. The adversary is behind your challenges and if you don’t fold, you cannot lose…

Just some good thoughts…

justsomegoodthoughts

Month: February 2019

Desperately Seeking Happiness…

When Life Goes South on You