Tag: love

How Joy, Authenticity and Happiness Work Together

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Being happy and being authentic are not synonymous. However, happiness and authenticity work symbiotically. When you are living your authentic self, you are naturally going to have more moments of happiness.

Living authentically produces something even stronger than happiness. Living authentically produces joy. Joy is spiritual, it’s deep, it’s philosophical, and it doesn’t change with the seasons or the environment. Joy is steady. It’s calmer and more reliable than happiness. So what we really want, crave and need is joy because when you have joy you have something that is coming from the inside out, rather than happiness which is often produced from the outside in.

When you are authentic, you naturally have more joy in your life. Joy is a byproduct of living the life that God wants you to live and being who He created you to be. Living authentically produces joy and happiness.

Eccentrics are an excellent example of how joy, happiness, and authenticity merge. Scientific studies and researchers who’ve investigated the lives of eccentrics have discovered that eccentrics are happier than other people. Famed psychologist David Weeks spent years studying eccentrics and found that eccentrics live more freely and fearlessly. They have more excitement in their lives, are more mindful, but most importantly they are themselves – these traits make them happier than the average person.

When you live a life of authenticity and embrace who you are and not care what anybody else thinks, you live a happier and more joyful life.

Of course, there is a downside to living a more authentic life – you may upset the people around you by not living how they want you to live. You might disrupt their peace, but you’ll have peace within, and inner peace is priceless.

There is nothing more disturbing than a restless, chaotic spirit. Confusion is a natural enemy of man. When people are confused, they make bad choices; they get depressed, they stagnate internally and sometimes they just stand paralyzed in their confusion.

One of the ways that you keep confusion out is to stay true to who you are. If you pretend to be someone else, an inner battle begins to rage, and a byproduct of that battle is confusion. Many people are deprived of their peace because they’re confused. And a lot of people are confused because they are not living authentically.

Joyful people aren’t confused. Joyful people live in clarity. They don’t live in a fog with their vision blurred by the past or future. They live in the present. One of my digital mentors taught me that joy is the reward for discerning the divine gift camouflaged in the immediate moment. I would also argue that joy and happiness are the divine gifts camouflaged in living authentically.

Tithing Your Time

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Giving isn’t a command – it’s encouraged. And it’s encouraged with good reason because when we give, it transforms us. We evolve into better people when we are generous and unselfish. The doctrine of tithing often focuses on money, but another area that we often overlook is time. While being generous with our money transforms us; giving our time is also transformative.

Many years ago after getting my first “real” job in a corporate environment, God showed me that He wanted me to tithe. I soon realized that money wasn’t the only area of my life that I needed to surrender to God. Time was a part of my life that I had kept entirely to myself. I went to church on Sundays, but God wanted more for me. And so, I began the habit of tithing my time. There are so many different ways to tithe your time, but below are just a few.

Serve in your church – if there are areas of ministry where your church needs help, jump in. Many churches need help with the children’s ministry, or perhaps the church is looking for volunteers who are willing to pray for others or greet visitors at the door. Church is an excellent place to tithe your time.

Volunteer – Homeless shelters, foster homes, crisis centers, hospitals, libraries, and many other places need volunteers. We are all put on earth to help each other. Helping others fulfills our purpose, and is a beautiful way to tithe our time.

Give God the first of your day – In the Old Testament, the Israelites were commanded to give a tenth. Before they paid workers, bought property, or did anything else, they tithed. You can tithe the first of your day by dedicating your mornings to God. When you wake up in the morning before you do anything else, pray.

3 Simple Ways to Become a Better Christian

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God loves you where you are, but He loves you too much to let you stay there. He doesn’t want you to stand still, stuck in time – He wants you to be better, know better, and choose better. God wants us to become more and more like Him. Below are just three things we need to do if we want to look more like Christ, and less like ourselves.

  1. Pray – Christians without prayer are like fish without water. Prayer isn’t an option on the Christian journey – it’s a necessity. Prayer brings us closer to God and His Will for our lives.
  2. Trust – This sounds so simple, and yet it’s so hard, and it’s so necessary. Peace comes when we remove trust in others, ourselves, and the things around us, and trust in Him. God has asked us repeatedly throughout scripture to trust Him.
  3. CHOOSE to be faithful, Godly, and filled with love – Life is full of choices. We can choose blessings or cursings, and God wants us to choose blessings! Make the right choice, daily.

4 Beliefs You Need to Ditch if You Want to Be Happy

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Happiness experts all agree that it’s not what you have that makes you happy, but rather what you do and who you know. Despite evidence that things don’t make us happy, people still reach for stuff as if it might bring some joy to their lives. But the idea that stuff makes us happy isn’t the only belief that holds people back from happiness. There are a few other beliefs that keep people in a place of discontentment. Below are four beliefs that you need to ditch if you want to be happy.

The belief that you aren’t good enough. Low self-esteem and feelings of unworthiness bring unhappiness. In scripture, Satan is referred to as the “Accuser of the brethren.” He is a finger-pointer who attempts to bring shame and condemnation into the life of God’s children. If you want to be happy, you can’t live under condemnation. Instead, you must live in freedom, believing that the grace of God is sufficient for your weakness.

The belief that you aren’t loved. God loves you. You are loved. You are cherished by Him. You are not forgotten. We were created to be social creatures, and we are designed for relationships and love – so it is perfectly natural to yearn for love, approval, and acceptance. Thankfully, God loves, approves and accepts us.

The belief that your life needs to be perfect for you to be happy. Life will never be perfect. There will always be messes, bumps in the road, psychological fires to put out, and missteps. No one has a perfect life. If you wait for your life to be perfect before you choose happiness, then you’ll be waiting all your life. Choose to be happy even when life is a mess because perfection is unrealistic.

The belief that a bad past holds sway over your future. When people have a bad past, they are often fearful that their future has already been written, and that it won’t work out for their good. But scripture says the opposite: Romans 8:28 states that all things work together for the good to them that love God, and are called according to His purpose. Do you love God? Are you called to His purpose? Then things will work out for you, and your past has no sway over your future.

Is There a Simple Way to Live a Holy Life?

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The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us. – C.S. Lewis

Is there a simple way to live a holy life? Is holiness something that simply comes to us when we accept the gift of salvation or is holiness something that we must pursue? Hebrews 12:14 makes it clear that holiness isn’t something that simply drops out of the sky. It isn’t something that comes to us because we confess that Yeshua is the Messiah.

Holiness comes when we pursue it. Holiness comes with work. Hebrews 12:14 tells us to pursue two things: peace and holiness. If it were something that was inherently within us, then there would be no need to pursue it.

As we pursue holiness, it’s important to understand what holiness is. The technical definition of holiness is total devotion to God. And in scripture, we learn that God Himself isn’t just Holy… but Holy, Holy, Holy. God is so holy, that His Holiness is repetitive. And so, logically, we become holy when we become like God.

If you want to be holy, live as Yeshua lived. Walk, speak, give, think, and love like Yeshua.

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do- 1 Peter 1:15

Aren’t All Religions the Same? Is Jesus the Only Way?

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There is a dizzying array of options when it comes to religion, and the culture around us says that they are all equally valid. It seems absolutely bizarre to people that someone would say, “This one way is the truth and the only truth.”

The poet Steve Turner describes brilliantly what many think when it comes to religion: “Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves. We believe he was a good teacher of morals but we believe that his good morals are really bad. We believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the one we read was. They all believe in love and goodness, they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.”

Can You Be Christian and Racist?

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I think I should begin by saying that when I met my husband, it wasn’t the first time that I found myself in an interracial relationship. I had dated guys from all sorts of background and races – black, white, Asian, Hispanic – and I never really had any problems with people being negative or hurtful towards my relationships. Nor were there any internal feelings of discomfort.

I have to credit my environment – I was raised in a pretty multi-cultural environment. Even though I was in a small suburban town stuck in the 1950’s, the town was incredibly diverse. I was exposed to all kinds of cultures and races. From kindergarten to high school, I was never just with white, black or Hispanic people – but a mixture of everyone. I never thought that racism was something that I struggled with internally.

With that said, the relationships I had when I was “dating” boys of a different race were in high school and quite superficial. After all, it was high school – you talked on the phone and maybe held hands if you saw each other. The relationships lasted anywhere from a few days to a couple of months.

Years later, I met my husband.

Suddenly, I found myself deeply in love, and I wanted our relationship to evolve. We both felt the same, but then something started to rise to the surface – and that something was racism. I started to realize that I had my own misconceptions and preconceived notions of what I thought people of my husband’s race were like. Even though I grew up around all people, there were parts of me that held bitterness and resentment. I had no idea that this was stuff was hidden in my heart… it was buried deep.

Either I was in self-denial, or I hadn’t spent enough time in an intimate relationship with someone of a different race to realize that it was even there. And then God began to pull back the layers and expose the hatred and all the wrong misconceptions. As the layers were pulled back from the wound of racism, the wound began to breath. As the wound began to breathe, it also started to heal.

As I was experiencing these issues and going through the emotional healing, I was a professing Christian. I know what you are probably thinking. You might be thinking “Well, you weren’t a real Christian because you had racism in your heart.” But I would argue quite confidently that I was indeed a Christian.

In the book of Acts, Peter didn’t have the best perception of Gentiles. He thought of them as unclean, but God came to Him in a vision and removed the veil of racism covering Peter’s heart. God exposed it and then healed it. Peter’s racism and prejudice were erased when it dawned on Peter that God loves Gentiles as much as Jews. Peter was the kind of man who loved what God loved. He couldn’t hate and call unclean what God had called clean.

Can you be Christian and racist? Yes. Racism is a result of imperfect love. The opposite of hatred is love. When you love people, you can’t hate them. You can only love or hate, but you can’t do both – a love-hate relationship is oxymoronic.

When you have a perfect love – the kind of love that God has for people, it’s not possible to hate them. The book of 1 John speaks of perfect love and how perfect love drives away fear because those who fear haven’t perfected love. This is an amazing verse to describe someone dealing with hatred and racism. Racism is driven by fear. People fear what they don’t understand and when people don’t understand or can’t relate to a group of people, the fear often develops into hatred. Much of racism is simply fear and misunderstanding.

Perfect love drives away fear. When we no longer fear, we can finally love.