What is the key to a happy life? I once spent several hours with one of the most infectiously happy gentlemen I have met in many a day. At the end of our time together I said, “One thing I would like to ask you before I leave. How did you get to be so happy?”
“Brother,” he replied, “if you could have seen me three or four years ago! I was the saddest, most negative, defeated individual you ever saw.” So what did he do? This discouraged man picked up the Bible and thought, “I wonder if there is anything in there for me?” He didn’t know anything about the Bible, had never read it. “But,” he says, “what else could I do? “
He had read somewhere that if you are up against it and you shut your eyes and open a Bible at random you will find a verse which is a message from God. Now that isn’t the best way to read the Bible. It isn’t very intelligent, it certainly isn’t very orderly, but if you can’t do it any other way then that way is a lot better than none.
The man took the Bible and opened it and with his eyes shut put his finger down on a page. When he looked, what he read was verse 19 of the 16th chapter of Matthew: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”
“That startled me,” he said, “but it fascinated me. God would give me a key—keys, more than one. I said to myself, ‘What is the kingdom of heaven?’ I didn’t know, but I got to thinking about it and I figured that this must be the name for all of the most marvelous things in the world which God wants for His children—and which I didn’t have. There it was, locked away from me—and He was putting into my hands the keys of this kingdom, and if I would open it up I would find these things. That is what I made of it so I put the key in the lock and I opened the kingdom of heaven and all these blessings of love and faith and hope and greatness and cleanness poured out of the kingdom into me and I became a happy person.”
Looking for the key to a happy life? Here are some practical tips to help you live a happy life:
1. Happiness comes from knowing you can handle things. Become confident, and happiness will follow.
2. To be happy, find a human need and help fill it.
3. Be happy about your struggles. They can bring you untold satisfaction as you conquer them.
4. Take Jesus, the greatest giver of happiness the world has ever known, into your heart. His presence in your life will bring you joy and happiness.
PRAYER: Our Heavenly Father, help us to think the kind of thoughts that give us joy and that transmit joy. Help us to get in our hearts the love of Christ, that we may love people, so that they find joy.
