"The Key To Happiness..."

I was scheduled to do the devotional yesterday at the Thursday morning breakfast, and I knew I didn't want to get up and say just anything. Here was an opportunity to speak to these kids, to maybe influence them, to hopefully plant a good seed in their mind to grow during the rest of their day.

So I followed an old piece of advice:

"Write (or in this case, speak) about what you know."

I decided to speak on something the Lord has been teaching me lately. Here it is, not word-for-word obviously, because of variations I thought I should make in the moment, but nearly word-for-word. I didn't deviate much. The breaks were so that if I got lost, it would be easy to find my place again :) .


"Pro 17:22 'A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.'

I’d like to focus on the first part of this verse. It talks about how a person’s mindset affects their life. A merry heart… If someone is happy, it does more for them than any medicine.

I heard a quote quite a while back related to this, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. Several things have been happening in my own life lately that have brought it to my mind. It says:

'The key to happiness, is a thankful heart.'

Think about that for a minute. The key to happiness is a thankful heart.

Everyone wants to be happy. It’s just the way humans are! But obviously not everybody is.

People try to buy happiness all the time. Some people think if they just have this thing or that, like a new phone or some other fancy gadget, then they’ll be happy. Or if they get to go on their dream vacation, it will make them really be happy.

But it doesn’t work that way. You can’t buy happiness! Now, you can buy fun, but you can’t buy happiness, and 'fun' doesn’t last. As soon as the vacation’s over, you’ll be looking toward next year. As soon as the new model comes out, your 'new' phone won’t be so great any more.

The key to happiness, really is a thankful heart. You can only be happy if you decide to be happy. What I mean by that is, if you’re always looking for what you don’t have, to satisfy you, you’ll never be satisfied.

You’ve got to make a decision to be thankful for what you have. But you can’t just be like, 'Oh… yeah… you know… I’m happy that I have food… and I’m glad I have a house I can sleep in when it’s raining, and that I’m not like those poor people in down in South America or Africa or somewhere…'

I don’t mean like that. I mean REALLY looking at what you have, and enjoying it. BEING THANKFUL for it!

Just as an example, say there’s this popular person at your school. Or they don’t even have to be popular, it’s just someone you’d really like to be friends with. But they have someone they always hang out with, and are good friends with, and they don’t really seem to notice you that much.

So you’re unhappy, because you can’t have that special friendship. Then say there’s this kid in the grade below you. And for some reason they don’t have a lot of friends, it’s not that they’re a bad person, everyone else just already has their little groups, and this kid has kindof gotten left out. And you don’t really notice them that much either.

But then you realize they always seem to be around where you are. They really seem to pay attention when you give your opinions about something. They seem to look up to you.

So you take the energy you were spending being sad about this person you wanted to be friends with, and instead you take a look at this kid. And you get to know them, and turns out even though they are younger than you, y’all have a lot in common, and boom! you had a really great friend right there waiting to be discovered!

That’s an example of being thankful for what you have. Not focusing on what you don’t have. And that’s just one example!

When you do that, you have made a conscious decision to be thankful, and in doing that, you notice how great the little things are , and it’s made you happy!

Everyone wants to be happy. And right here the Bible gives us the key to it. And this is just one verse in the Bible that talks about this idea.

A merry heart, or a thankful heart, is the key to being happy, to really enjoying all that the Lord has put in our lives.
So, I’d like to challenge you to notice the little things, and be thankful for what you have today."