Monday June 25, 2017

 

When you are least expecting it, life throws you a curve. I was fourteen years old when my parents moved from Puerto Rico to Colorado Springs to join Evangelist Nicky Cruz’s ministry. I was initially happy about the change. However, after a few weeks I realized that the culture change was far more than I had anticipated. I went from extreme tropical weather to extreme cold, from beaches to snow, from Spanish to English, from a Hispanic island culture to an American Western culture. After just a few weeks of this change, I began to feel unhappy and was ready to return to Puerto Rico. My unhappiness was obvious to my parents, but in the midst of that unhappiness, my father told me the following words: “Son true happiness has nothing to do with what is happening around you. True happiness has everything to do with what is happening inside of you. Happiness is a choice.”

 

Life is tough. All of us will eventually experience difficult situations in our lives. We will be hurt and we will hurt, we will develop bad habits and some hang-ups along the way. There are some that will experience financial difficulties and others will go through relational difficulties. Some will suffer physical, emotional, and even spiritual advertises, but no matter what we go through, happiness will always be a choice. The choice to be happy begins by admitting that we are not in control and admitting that God alone is in control. Our problem is that we act as though we were God and so we attempt to control everything, from our image, other people, our problems, and even our pain. However, the harder we try the more we come to the realization that we are not in control.

 

Matthew 5:3 GNT

“Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them!”

 

Jesus looked at a large crowd of hopeless and unhappy people during His sermon on the mountain, and the first words out of his mouth were, “happy are those who know they are spiritually poor…” I would venture to say that after living for many years under the occupation of the Roman government, the thing these people felt the least was happiness. Thankfully, Jesus proceeds to tell them why they should feel not only happy but also blessed while in the midst of their great difficulties. The reason being that “the kingdom of heaven belongs to them”. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of heaven, he was not speaking about a physical kingdom but rather the agenda and purpose of God’s kingdom. Jesus was saying in effect, that those who realize they are not in control of their lives, and who feel as though their spirit has been broken or depleted, God’s agenda is to rescue them not just by transforming what was happening around them but by also transforming what was happening inside of them. They would however have to choose to trust that God was in control or they would have to continue living as though they were in control.

 

True happiness is a choice. The first step in obtaining happiness is to recognize that you are not in control and that your good intentions and will power are not enough. Happiness begins when you acknowledge that you need another source of power, it begins when you acknowledge that you need God.