King Solomon was known for his great wisdom, and one little tidbit of his wisdom is found in Proverbs 17. The first half of verse 22 says, “A cheerful heart is good medicine.”
In a Better Homes and Gardens article entitled “Laugh Your Way to Good Health, ” writer Nick Gallo said, “ Humor is good medicine – and can actually help keep you in good health.” He quoted William F. Fry, M.D., who described laughter as “inner jogging” and good for a person’s cardiovascular system. Laughter is also a great “prescription” for stress and anxiety.
Dr. Fry concluded, “An enduring sense of humor, especially combined with other inner resources such as faith and optimism, appears to be a potent force for better health.”
Christians, above all others, should benefit from laughter because we have the greatest reason to be joyful. Our faith is firmly rooted in God, and our optimism is based on the assurance that our lives are under His wise control.
If laughter is so good for our health, I thought we’d make today a day for sharing some short videos that have triggered our sense of humor. Let’s “laugh our way to good health!”
As we enter our third month of living with the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have become very familiar with the precautions being made to slow the spread of this disease. Washing our hands repeatedly during the day, social distancing, stay at home orders, no large gatherings, closed businesses and schools, online church services and using gloves and masks anytime we are in public are all a part of keeping this contagious disease from spreading even faster than it has.
This morning, I had an email from Grace Fox, one of the ladies who writes for Proverbs 31 Ministries First 5 app. Her Connecting the Dots blog is one of my favorites, and today the title caught my attention right away: How to Spread Contagious Joy.
Grace said this virus is just one of many negative things that have been contagious during this pandemic. She wrote,
“COVID-19 isn’t the only negative thing that’s contagious. Fear spreads easily, too. During this time of media saturation, we read or hear the news that scares us, and we tell others about it. Trouble is, the news might not be accurate, or we hear only part of it and assume the rest. Nevertheless, we pass it on to others believing it’s fact, and the fear grows.”
One thing I’m trying to learn in our current situation is to make sure I’m seeing what we’re going through with a healthy perspective, one that reflects the fact that God is still in control, that He has promised never to leave or forsake us, and that He’s good and always faithful to His children, even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. We may not know why God has allowed these circumstances, but we can know God has a purpose and it will be fulfilled. I’m not saying this is easy; it’s a struggle for me to not get so focused on the instability we are currently facing that I get overwhelmed. But with the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within each of us who have come to know Jesus as our Savior and Lord, it’s possible.
Before I started writing this afternoon, I looked up the meaning of contagious in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. I was surprised to find one of the actual definitions has to do with the power of our emotions and conduct. Yes, contagious refers to transmitting infectious disease to others. But a less familiar definition is exciting similar emotions or conduct in others. When we lean on God in the midst of our trials and choose to walk in joy and rest in the goodness of the Lord, our attitude is capable of being easily spread to others. In essence, we cause those who observe us to “catch” our attitude and behavior!
As we move into May, let’s make it our goal to rest in the Lord and choose joy in His presence. Let’s start this today, by focusing on how God has revealed His goodness and lovingkindness to us during this season. Remember, Proverbs 17:22 tells us, “A joyful heart is good medicine…” Let’s draw close to the Lord, for King David wrote in Psalm 16:11, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy…” Remember God’s presence brings joy, and joy renews our strength to keep moving forward. “And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10b)
Grace Fox ended her article with a challenge that I’d like to share with you.
“Choosing joy amidst the most difficult circumstances benefits us and blesses others. Our attitudes, words, and actions no longer breed fear. Now they speak encouragement and spark hope… Imagine how different the world might look if everyone spread contagious joy during this time. What’s one action you can take to start a ‘Contagious Joy’ movement in your home, neighborhood, and beyond?”
SOMETIMES LIFE HURTS. That’s definitely been true in my life during the last fourteen months. First, we lost our special-needs son David, then I found myself dealing with a long list of new health issues that seemed to have no simple solutions. During such times, it’s easy to become disheartened.
As I was praying this morning about this Wednesday’s RECLAIMING YOUR LIFE post, one of the first books we studied in God-Living Girls came to mind. Choose Joy:Finding Hope and Purpose When Life Hurts, is the life story of Sara Frankl, co-written by Mary Carver.
Sara Frankl knew what it was to live with chronic pain. As a young woman, she was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease and form of arthritis that primarily affects the spine but can also attack other joints. As Sara’s disease progressed it became clear that her health was not going to get better.
The pain and loss could have easily become Sara’s primary focus, but she decided this wasn’t how she wanted to live. Sara chose to place her trust in a God Who is good all the time and to find hope and purpose in the midst of the pain. She chose joy, not happiness which she described as being “flimsy as a shirt blowing on a line in the breeze.” She chose “true heart joy, which sustains through obstacles, disease, death.” She lived with an “unwavering trust that God knows what He’s doing and has blessed me with the opportunity to be a part of it.”
Sara lived with relentless pain, but she chose to focus on the blessings instead of the burdens. She believed God had a purpose for her illness or He would have taken it away. And she accepted God’s plan, though it was difficult, and focused on what God wanted to do through her life. She wrote, “It’s not about me; it’s about what He can do with me. My job is simply to pay attention and enjoy the rainbows.”
Sara made it her goal to live the best life she could with what she had been given. She knew it wouldn’t be the life she had expected to live before this disease touched her life, but accepted it as the one God meant for her to live. Though Sara may never have used the term RECLAIMING YOUR LIFE, that’s how she lived.
Sara Frankl came up with six life goals which she wrote on her wall. They were a constant reminder of what was most important to her and they became the motivation for every choice she made.
As we focus this year on reclaiming what chronic illness has stolen from our lives, I felt Sara’s Life Goals would be a good launching pad for each of us to come up with our own life goals as we press on to live in the fullness of what God has in mind for our lives. The following verses encourage us to forget what is behind and press on toward fulfilling the goals God has set before us.
“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 NIV
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10 NIV
Sara’s Life Goals:
To not be ashamed to stand before God.
To fulfill God’s plan by living the best life I can live with what I am given.
To be aware and present in every moment.
To love what I have, not yearn for what I lack.
To spread the Joy, not the fear.
To be intentional in all things.
Now, it’s your turn. If you have surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, you will one day stand in His presence. Let’s look beyond our earthly desires for a while and focus on eternity. What are the goals you hope to fulfill before you see Jesus face-to-face? What principles do you go back to over and over again to guide your decisions? Share some of your personal life goals with us in the comments.
I am in a time of waiting. I have been in a time of waiting since shortly after I heard a call from the Lord last spring to write a Bible study for our small Bible study group at church and made a commitment to do so. I was preparing to get started on this project, even got an outline down on paper, when suddenly my health took a deep dive from which I still haven’t recovered.
Suddenly, my life was filled with one appointment after another, trying to figure out what was going on and come up with a treatment plan for hopefully getting back to where I was before things changed overnight. Unfortunately, since that negative overnight change, there have been no positive overnight changes. Instead, there have been a series of small and gradual steps forward, each including extended times of waiting.
Waiting isn’t optional. It’s a part of life, some times moreso than others. But choosing how we will wait is up to us. Will we wait with complaining and discontentment? Or will we wait with trust in the One Who rules in our lives, remembering He is not only in control of our circumstances but also in control of the timing? Waiting well means continuing to look forward to the future we’re moving toward while living faithfully where God has us right now.
How do we wait well? God’s Word gives us several answers to this question. Let’s look at a few from the book of Psalms (all verses in ESV)
To wait well is to wait prayerfully. “Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.” Psalms 25:4-5
To wait well is to wait with strength and courage. “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!” Psalms 31:24
To wait well is to wait with joyful trust in the Lord and in His steadfast love. “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.” Psalms 33:20-22
To wait well is to wait patiently. “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.” Psalms 40:1
To wait well is to wait with hope and expectancy. “Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy upon us.” Psalms 123:2
To wait well is to wait believing God will do what He has said in His Word. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;” Psalms 130:5
One of the best ways to wait well is to turn a time of waiting into a time of worship. Worship causes us to shift our focus off of our limiting circumstances and onto our limitless God. Let’s choose to wait well, and let’s back up that choice by turning our hearts toward the Lord in worship.
“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” James 1:2-4 (from Eugene Peterson’s The Message)
It started on Friday, with another call to my doctor’s office trying to find out why I still hadn’t heard from anyone concerning the home-based therapy my doctor ordered six weeks ago. Finally heard from the office this morning, only to learn the homecare agency had no record of the referral. So the process starts again.
Then on Saturday, car problems were added. My husband just had the car in the shop last week for some routine maintenance, but on the way home from grocery shopping on Saturday, it stopped running. After having a new battery put in on Saturday, it broke down again Sunday afternoon. We had to have the car towed to the repair shop yesterday to get the alternator replaced, and we’re still waiting to get it back and make sure it’s really fixed this time.
In the midst of all of this, on Sunday our internet went out (a broken connection), and this morning our electricity has been going off and on, which didn’t build my confidence that I’d finally be able to get today’s Teach Me Tuesday post written and on line.
None of these have been life threatening problems, but when tests and challenges come at us from all sides, as they have for my husband and me the last few days, I’m grateful God’s Word tells us how to handle it.
Problems come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is true in the midst of it all. GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL. And in His love, He uses the things we go through, big and small, to accomplish His purposes in our lives. So how do we cooperate with God during these challenging times? Here are a few simple steps.
1. Recognize God is at work in your life through the trials you are walking through, and choose to “count it all joy.” Counting our trials as “all joy” is the opposite of living by our feelings. It is taking control over our emotional reaction to the circumstances and choosing to rejoice. I will count this flood of trials all joy, because God is using it to help me grow to maturity in my faith.
2. Spend time in God’s Word, asking Him to show you any special message He has for you in the midst of this challenging time.
3. Take time to thank God in the midst of the circumstances. In our recent situation with the car, for example, we gave thanks that we had money in savings for all the unexpected expenses, that God sent a stranger over to help Mitch on Saturday so he was able to make it somewhere to get a battery, and that God worked out the details so Mitch was able to get home while the cold items in our groceries were safe.
4. Remember to leave the timing in God’s hands. When we walk through difficult circumstances, the natural desire is to make a way for them to be over as quickly as possible. As Eugene Peterson said above, “don’t try to get out of anything prematurely.” Give God the time to do to finish the work He has started in you.
5. Finally, learn to fix your eyes on Jesus, and to remember how He faced a much bigger trial than most of us will ever face. He endured the Cross by focusing on the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2).
On this Teach Me Tuesday, let’s remember that the trials God allows to touch our lives are not without a good purpose. God uses trials to make us more like our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But the only way we benefit from our trials is by walking through them God’s way.
What trials are you currently walking through? How do you typically respond to trials? Is your reaction based on your emotions or on your desire to learn the lessons God has for you? Is your focus on present comfort or on the joy set before you as you mature into the person God has called you to be? These are a few questions to ask ourselves in the midst of times like my husband and I have been walking through in recent days. And if your answers show you’re not handling the little frustrations of life the way God desires us to, review the five steps above.
Many years ago, our daughter Amy had the opportunity to go on a cruise to the Yucatan Peninsula. What promised to be an exciting vacation turned out much differently than expected when the cruise ship was threatened by a hurricane, lost power to one of it’s engines, and had to skip most of the scheduled ports of call to make it to home port ahead of the hurricane.
As the hurricane resulted in a disappointing vacation for our daughter, the storms of life can bring disappointments and hardships into our lives. When that happens, we need an anchor to hold our souls steady until the winds and rain are behind us. God’s Word teaches us that hope is the anchor God has provided to keep us secure during the storms of life.
I recently completed a Bible study at our church on the unshakable hope God provides to hold us steady during the spiritual storms that touch our lives. This isn’t the world’s kind of hope, which is little more than wishful thinking. Biblical hope has as its foundation faith in God. It is the belief that with God anything is possible. Tony Evans has defined this kind of hope as “confident expectation that God is going to do what He says He will do.” Biblical hope doesn’t deny the difficult circumstances we are walking through, but it views them through the lens of God’s character and His Word.
Hebrews 6:18 encourages us to seize or take hold of the hope God has set before us, to grab it and not let it go. Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.”
Without an anchor to keep us steady, when the storms of life hit, our souls – our minds, will, and emotions – will be tossed to and fro. Hope in God and in His promises is the anchor that keeps us steady regardless of what circumstances we might be facing.
Our family been through several intense storms in the past couple years. And in these difficulties our family has walked through, I’ve learned a little about holding onto hope as an anchor to steady my soul. Two things in particular have stood out to me.
First, I’ve learned that the character of our God is a sure foundation I can sink my anchor into. In our recent study, we focused on four characteristics of God which enable us to know He will do what He has promised.
God is unchanging. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James 1:17
God is faithful. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering; for He who promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:23
God is strong. He has the power to do what He has promised. “No unbelief made him (Abraham) waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” Romans 4:20-21
God cannot lie. “So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.” Hebrews 6:17-18
I’ve also learned that for any situation God asks us to walk through, there is a promise in God’s Word we can stand on.
Are you feeling overwhelmed with physical or emotional weakness? Hebrews 4:15 tells us Jesus understands what you’re going through. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:15-16
Are you feeling everyone is condemning you, that no one even cares enough to pray for you? That’s not true. “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” Romans 8:34
Maybe you are in a trial that has lasted so long you’ve given up hope of anything ever being different. Grab hold of the promise in Psalm 30:5 and don’t let it go. “For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
No matter what storm you are facing, God has an answer in His Word. Ask Him to lead you to the truth you need to hold onto about His character. Ask for a promise in His Word you can lean on. Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. Your hope in the character and promises of God is the sure anchor that will steady your soul until you are through the storm.
HOPE & LIGHT 