God has changed my heart in a good way. I revel in the achievements of others more than I care about my own success. I mean this in the most literal sense. If I win a contest or gain material goods, it’s somewhat nice. But when others win contests, gain material goods or find great relationships, my heart revels in the glory of the occasion. Right now just thinking this and of other people being happy is making my heart well up.
The nice thing about learning to be happier when others succeed than yourself is that it’s a skill that will not fade as you get older. I can be 99 and on my death bed, and if I make someone happy, boom, I’m happy too. People who are selfish enjoy life less because they think life is on a timer. The selfish have to get theirs before the time expires or they missed their chance of being happy. Worse still, they could be as happy as possible, but not enjoy it because they wonder if they could be happier someplace else and so they cannot ever fully enjoy their happiness.
I can enjoy happiness. Today, I saw a little yellow canary fly by me as I exited my car which won’t start. This canary was flying left and right all confused. I think he wanted to fly by me, but I startled it as I exited the car and it was indecisive if it wasn’t to continue flying by me or if I was dangerous. I just found it funny, beautiful and it made me happy. That little confused canary which then flew up into a tree was the spark for this article. I just got done reading the Bible about how David was kind to crippled Mephibosheth.
Happiness is a skill we can train. We tell ourselves to be happy and we’re happy. Enjoy your hobbys. Enjoy small things like beauty in nature, or friends over. If you wait to achieve goals before allowing yourself to be happy, you’ll not be happy very often in life, always waiting for the next thing and realize your life passed you by while you restrained yourself from being happy every moment you could. But what’s really fun about being happier for other’s achievements than your own… No matter how old you are now, you can have exceeding happiness, even happier than a newlywed couple… for with God, it is like you’re married too. We stay faithful to God, are happy some now, and the happiness to come is infinitely more than we can even imagine.
There’s no expiration timer on happiness when you’re in Christ Jesus. We just become more like Jesus and this is enjoying their successes. We understand why God made others, to revel in their joy when they’re happy. Yes, we’ll suffer when following Jesus, everyone has a hard time in life often when self sacrificially helping others… We suffer, but we can endure with prayer. To worry about future suffering is to also sacrifice a share of happiness now, so lets not do that especially since the things we worry about mostly never happen. With Jesus, wedded to God in faith, any happiness down on this fallen world is bonus and we give God thanks. I thank God I am happier when others are happy because when I’m super old, I’m still going to enjoy life by making others happy. And when I die, it is Heaven, glory beyond glory, happiness beyond the sum of imagination of all mankind.
Love is eternal.
Jesus is LORD.
Amen! Amen! Amen!
In ad August 21, 2003, God let me know he is real, in a miracle that you can read and clearly see was an act of God, not something that could be misconstrued. Further more, he continually sent miracles in my life for the past 20 years at the average of 3 miracles per day. 365 days a year*20 years *about 3 miracles/day = around 22,000 miracles I saw. The odds of each miracle probably averages 1/1000. So we’re looking at the odds of it being coincidence at 1000 raised to the 22,000 power. People stop thinking random chance happens around one man hitting the Powerball lottery three times in a row. Imagine a guy hitting the Powerball lottery 7,300 times in a row(the rough odds of 3 miracles a day for 20 years)! There’s a point where coincidence is no longer a real possibility. This is a proof of God you can do if you’re scientifically minded, have a heart for Jesus and can see the odds of your prayers multiplying up. Read more about that and my miracle on August 21,2003 here: www.goodnewsjim.com