Become Happy
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There are, however, ways to raise our happiness score. One approach is to make a decision, make up our mind, to find more pleasure in the day. It involves setting aside some of our serious concerns, our worries and perplexities. We can choose to look at the sunset, enjoy the hummingbirds, read the comics. 
We can slow down a little to taste and enjoy food and drink, listen to fine music, plant flowers. These activities can elevate our spirits and make us score higher on the happiness barometer. There are countless other pleasures that can elevate happiness if we work at it a little.
Another recently researched and documented way of bringing a great deal of good feelings and basic satisfaction into one’s life is through gratitude, and recalling basic satisfactions in one’s life. Regular, systematic remembering, and even listing, small and major joys, benefits, positive experiences and pleasures profoundly elevates one’s sense of well-being, and contentment levels. Thankfulness, worked at, has been proven to be good for our happiness.
The care and kindness formula is another way to find happiness. It may be the most beneficial of all! Such activity can be spiritually and theologically heart-stretching. Looking at and remembering good things that have happened, after you have done them, no matter how small they might be, are spirit lifting. A mere handful in a week can have month-long benefits in our hearts and minds. Careful research has discovered, and now emphasizes this. Just doing good, on the simplest level, is spiritually beneficial and inflates our sense of well-being and happiness.
What is emerging in all this is that we are seeing the love of Jesus, and the God of Scripture, in a wonderfully fresh way. Instead of merely being appropriately grateful people, or those who show loving kindness to please the Lord, we are seeing the phenomenal truth that God calls us to such Christ-like compassionate and care-full living for our personal happiness—for our own good. The Lord Jesus wants us to be happy people and the “love one another” formula is a basic life-enhancing prescription for our satisfied living.
It is time to change our thoughts about God.
Many of us grew up strongly believing that we were called to good behavior to please God and that is why we should be nice, loving, fair, honest and kind people. Consequently, our notion has been that God wants us to be good people like a parent wants her children to behave and keep the rules. It is the right thing to do, we are told, and it is God’s direction for our lives. So we believe that we should live accordingly, as obedient people.
However . . . 
we must see God differently than that. God urges and even commands us to love one another. We are pushed, advised, urged, to deliver love and helpfulness for the brightening of lives, and the healing of brokenness, so abundant and prevalent around us. But it is not just to be good men and women. It is not just to fix the brokenness around us. Giving loving-kindness, caring for others, is prescribed by God to make us happier people.
Let me say it again: The Lord Jesus is not simply concerned that we be obedient men and women. No, his directions are the keys to our happiness, the recipe for pleasant and even joyful hearts. This is Jesus’ (God’s) formula for our spirits to be lifted.
When the Good Samaritan reaches out and helps the forsaken and injured man, Jesus says to the people around him, “Go and do likewise.” The reason Jesus says this is, (1.) You will help the hurt person, and that is part of what we are here for. (2.) But also you will feel happier, and better about yourself. Two powerful motivations: healing and encouraging others and building up our own reservoir of confidence, feeling valuable, and just plain enjoying life more.
Behind all this is the profound truth that God is Love and that as we express and demonstrate loving kindness, in any form, we are conduits and networks of Jesus. That is, Jesus, or Love, is flowing from us into those around us and this not only brings joy, encouragement, healing and other positive qualities to others—it also activates joy, happiness, satisfaction and meaningfulness in ourselves.
Few, if any of us, have literally helped someone who has been beaten up and injured 
by robbers, thieves or thugs. So, obviously, what Jesus is talking about when he says “go and do likewise” is something bigger, more diverse. It is a principle he was presenting— that we should demonstrate and activate compassion, helpfulness, tender-heartedness and loving-kindness in any form it might take. The community in which we live needs that kind of behavior. But there is more to it than just helpfulness. This call from God is the key for finding meaning in life and happiness for ourselves.
It can be so simple or it can be complicated and difficult:
• This week a car-full of older women drove about 80 miles, round trip, on busy highways to visit a slowly recovering cancer surgery patient.
• Last week my neighbor swept the leaves and grass and whatever else was there away from the curb in front of his house. Then he came over and did it in front of our house.
• An older single woman missed her Sunday School class two weeks in a row. Linda did her utmost to get in touch with her to see if she is okay.
• A new habit I have started is my reply to employees, and clerks, in all sorts of businesses. When they say, “Have a good day,” I always reply, “Your niceness just made it better.”
Here are a few gems from the Biblical book of Proverbs (taken from a variety of translations) that encourage living lovingly toward those around us:
Proverbs 15:13 - Kind words bring life….
Proverbs 15:30 - Smiling faces make you happy, and good news makes you feel better.
Proverbs 16:24 - Kind words are like honey, sweet to the taste and good for your health.
Proverbs 17:22 - Being cheerful keeps you healthy. It is slow death to be gloomy all the time.
Many additional verses could be added that point us toward the enormous varieties of ways in which we must “love one another”. And the bottom line is to raise and deepen the health and well-being of ourselves and those around us. That is the good Lord’s plan and intention for all of us—happier living. Not that happiness is always a feeling.
It can be described in many ways. It can be peace, satisfaction, feeling needed, having a purpose in life, or meaning, and a sense of well-being or hopefulness, and an awareness of being safe in the arms of Jesus in this life and the life to come.
That is what we are here for. That is the good Lord’s hope for this world—happier people and a more beautiful world.
Our life prescription is that we must die for others. The ultimate form of this is Jesus literally giving his life on the cross for us. We must see that anytime we interrupt our personal agenda to help someone else, no matter how small, we are dying for them. When we stop doing what we are consciously doing and reach out to assist, encourage, appreciate, care for someone else we are dying for them. That is ultimate goodness. It lifts the hurting and creates well-being in the giver’s heart.
We must trust that every one of us is a treasury of love, Jesus’ love, even if we don’t know about him, or know him. We are all created in the image of God. Since Jesus is God, we all are reservoirs of Jesus’ love. Inasmuch as that is our true nature, our personal well-being and happiness is enhanced when we express ourselves in deliberate compassionate deeds, attitudes and actions of loving kindness, in any form imaginable.
Everyone is an eligible recipient of our love. No matter who they are, how they live, what they believe. They must receive our love. As far as we know everyone we meet, someday will be in the arms of Jesus in heaven. We must treat everybody that way here and now, no matter what their future might be.
