September 11 – The Secret of Being Happy

I have learned the secret of being happy at any time in everything that happens. Philippians 4:12 (Life Application Study Bible)

Jesus Tells Us: Choose to be happy in Me, no matter what is going on around you. Don’t wait for everything in your life to be perfect before you decide to be happy. Too many people waste their lives dreaming about the time when they’ll finally be happy, when they are out of school, when they can drive, when they have their own job or house, and so on. But while they are daydreaming, life is passing them by. Life is today, not “when…” If your life is going great, be happy and enjoy My blessings. If times are tough, be happy because you know these problems will go away. And don’t forget this either: You have the promise of a problem free life in heaven, forever, with Me!

Jesus Concludes: Don’t wait to be happy. Come to Me and I will show you how to be happy today. 

Philippians 4:12; Philippians 4:4; Psalms 102:27

Footnotes Philippians 4:12 Paul was content because he could see life from God’s point of view. He focused on what he was supposed to do, not what he felt he should have. Paul had his priorities straight, and he was grateful for everything God had given him. Paul had detached himself from the nonessential, so that he could concentrate on the eternal. Often the desire for something more or better indicates a longing to fill an empty place in a person’s life. To what are you drawn when you feel empty inside? How can you find true contentment? The answer lies in your perspective, your priorities, and your source of power.

Passage Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, Rejoice!

Footnotes Philippians 4:4 How strange that a man I prison could tell a church to rejoice. But Paul’s attitude reaches us an important lesson: our outward circumstances do not need to dictate our inner attitudes. Paul was full of joy because he knew that no matter what happened to him, Jesus Christ was with him. Several times in this letter, Paul urges the Philippians to be joyful, probably because they needed to hear this. It’s easy to get discouraged about unpleasant circumstances or to take unimportant events too seriously. If you haven’t been joyful lately, let the Holy Spirit remind you that true joy is found in the Lord, and the promise of his second coming.

Passage Psalms 102:27 But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

Footnotes Psalms 102:25-27 The writer of this Psalm felt rejected and tossed aside because of his great troubles. Problems and heartaches can overwhelm us and cause us to feel as though God has rejected us. But God, our creator, is eternally with us and will keep all his promises, even though we may feel alone. The world will perish, but God will remain.

Jesus Tells us is from the Jesus Calling 365 Devotions for kids.

THE WORLD…we see history

Wrestling in Prayer for Gettysburg

Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General. An 1854 graduate of Dickinson College, he entered the Pennsylvania Bar in 1857, and the New Jersey Bar in 1859, and served as the Morris County solicitor just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. When the war erupted in April 1861, he enlisted in the Union Army, receiving a commission of 1st Lieutenant and Regimental Quartermaster of the 5th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry on August 5, 1861.

Brigadier General James Fowler Rusling, a dedicated Christian and a Methodist, wrote a fascinating book, Men and Things I Saw in Civil War Days, in which he related his encounter with Abraham Lincoln following the Battle of Gettysburg. The meeting took place on Sunday, July 5, 1863, which was the Sunday after Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Rusling was visiting his superior, General Daniel E. Sickles, who had been wounded at Gettysburg and was recovering in a private home in Washington on F Street. Sickles was a strange character whose reputation was clouded and unsavory. But at Gettysburg he had fought bravely, and as a result of his injuries had lost his right leg, it had been amputated above the knee. Rusling arrived about three in the afternoon and found his general resting on a hospital stretcher on the first floor. As the two men conversed, Abraham Lincoln strode into the room with his son, Tad. Hearing of Sickles wound, they had come by horseback, escorted by a squad of cavalry.

Rusling wrote:
Mr. Lincoln dropped into a chair, and crossing his prodigious arms and legs, soon fell into questioning Sickles as to all the phases of the combat at Gettysburg. He asked first, of course as to General Sickles own ghastly wound, when and how it happened, and how he was getting on, and encouraged him, then passed next to our great casualties there, and how the wounded were being cared for, and finally came to the magnitude and significance of the victory there.

Genera Sickles, reclining on his stretcher, puffed away on a cigar and answered Lincoln’s questions, giving a full account of the battle from his perspective. Occasionally, he winced in pain as an orderly treated his fevered stump. “But he never dropped his cigar, nor lost the thread of the conversation.” Finally, Lincoln’s questions ended, and for a moment there was silence in the room. General Sickles took a puff on his cigar, looked at Lincoln, and said, “Well, Mr President, I beg pardon, but what did you think about Gettysburg? What was your opinion of things while we were campaigning and fighting up there?” To the surprise of all in the room, Lincoln said he hadn’t been very worried about the outcome of the battle. “You were not?” Sickles exclaimed, amazed. “Why, we heard that you Washington folks were a good deal excited, and you certainly had good cause to be. For it was nip and tuck with us a good deal of the time!” “Yes, I know that,” said Lincoln. “And I suppose some of us were a little rattled. Indeed, some of the cabinet talked of Washington’s being captured and ordered a gunboat or two here, and even went so far as to send some government archives abroad, and wanted me to go too, but I refused…No, General Sickles, I had no fears of Gettysburg!” “Why not, Mr President? How was that? Pretty much everybody down here, we heard, was more or less panicky.”