Habits of Happiness

I often hear people say, “I want to be happy, but I can’t quite get there.” And they ask, “What should I do?” Well, there is a solution, and it’s found in the Scriptures. I’m sure you knew I was going to say that, but a lot of people don’t think the Bible is a place to look for happiness. They think of the Bible as a book about God and sin and judgment, and other heavy things. Very seldom do they think of it as a place to find happiness, but it’s there, and one good place to look is in the Book of Philippians.
Philippians often called the happiest book in the Bible. The words joy, glad, rejoice, happy, and happiness are used eighteen times in different forms in this short book. I would recommend that you get your Bible and see if you can find all eighteen.
The Book of Philippians was written by the Apostle Paul. He wrote to the church he planted in Philippi, which is a city in Greece, and he wrote it while he was in prison in Rome. He was actually chained between two guards at the time – 24/7 – so he had no privacy. It was a very dismal and depressing situation – yet he wrote about happiness and about being thankful.
OK, let me ask you a question. Where do most people start when they are looking for happiness? Well, many people think they can get happiness through the accumulation of money, so that’s a normal pursuit. Other people try to amass as much power and influence as they can, thinking that will bring happiness. And still others try to become as popular or famous as they can be. And so on. Even our US Constitution says that we are all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So let me ask you, what approach do you take in your pursuit of happiness?
Well, the first eleven verses of Philippians talk about four habits of happiness, which if followed will give us the answer. Today we are going to look at the first two habits. Before we do I want you to look at the first eleven verses of Philippians, chapter one, and then we’ll go back and analyze them.
1. This letter is from Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus. I am writing to all of God’s holy people in Philippi who belong to Christ Jesus, including the elders and deacons.
May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.3. Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.
4. Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy,
5. For you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now.
6. And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
7. So it is right that I should feel as I do about all of you, for you have a special place in my heart. You share with me the special favor of God, both in my imprisonment and in defending and confirming the truth of the Good News.
8. God knows how much I love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus.
9. I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.
10. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.
11. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation –  the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ – for this will bring much glory and praise to God. Philippians 1:1-11
In these verses Paul refers to four different habits which can contribute to our happiness. Let’s start our discussion by looking at the first one.
The first habit of happiness is being grateful for people.
That’s pretty straightforward, but it’s difficult to do consistently. Notice in verse 3 that Paul says, “EVERY TIME I think of you, I give thanks to my God.” Why does Paul make a point of saying say that? Well, he’s affirming the Philippians. He says he’s grateful that God brought them into his life. That tells us how much he values them, and he often repeats this same theme throughout the book. Paul is grateful for these people, and he tells them right at the beginning of his letter.
There are many studies that show a direct connection between affirming other people and personal happiness. These studies show that the more we affirm other people, the happier we are. And one of the best ways to communicate affirmation is to tell people how grateful we are for them. Doing that communicates value, and Paul understood that.
Let me ask you a question. When you think of the people in your life – what is usually your first thought? Is it gratitude? Or is it something like: what can they do for me? Or why do they always cause me problems? Or what do they want? Or what am I going to have to do now? And so on. Many times our first thought is not gratitude – it’s something else.
One of the main reasons why that’s true is because we often take other people for granted. The longer we know someone, the greater the chance of this happening. We start to focus on their faults and other bad stuff, and we develop negative attitudes toward these people.And that affects our relationships, which as we have said, impacts our happiness. Paul knew that, so he looked for the good things the Philippians did. Take a look at what he says in verse 5:
“For you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now.” Philippians 1:5
When Paul went to Philippi for the first time, he had a tough time. It wasn’t a bed of roses. In fact Philippi was one of his most difficult church plants.When he arrived in Philippi he was beaten, whipped, humiliated, falsely arrested, and thrown into prison. And then finally he was thrown out-of-town. These are hardly good experiences to remember, but he doesn’t mention any of these things in the letter.
Paul used what is called selective memory. Now I am sure Paul remembered his bad experiences, but he chose to remember the positive ones instead. And that’s what we must do in our relationships.We can choose which past experiences we will focus on, and if we only look at bad experiences, we are going to be unhappy. But if we recall the good experiences, we will be grateful, and that greatly enhances our happiness.That’s what Paul did. He said, “Every time I think of you, I thank God.”
So the point of this passage is being thankful for other people who contribute to our happiness.That’s the first habit of happiness.
A second habit of happiness is to pray with joy for people.
There are many ways to pray for people, but no matter which method we use, we should do it JOYFULLY.  Can you imagine how God would feel if we prayed like this:”Oh, God, my friends are a bunch of turkeys. They are just a bunch of losers……”
That’s not praying joyfully. That’s praying whine fully – if that’s a word. When we whine and complain and accuse, God doesn’t like that. So when the Philippians received Paul’s letter, I’m sure they thought, “Wow, this is really cool”. “Paul is praying for us!” “And he’s joyful about it.” “And he’s thanking God for us!” That’s pure affirmation.
If you received a letter or email from someone who said they were praying for you with joy, how would you feel? I am sure you would be encouraged, and you would want to continue the relationship with that person or persons. Look at verse 4. Notice Paul says, “Whenever I pray….” We know that Paul prayed a lot, because the Scriptures are full of his prayers. So when he says “whenever I pray…” that includes all the occasions when he prays. That’s a lot of prayer. Paul must have had a prayer journal of some kind, so he could keep track of his prayers. That’s the only thing that I can think of, because he was involved in so many things with so many people. And by the way that’s something we need to do too. We need to maintain a prayer journal to help us keep track of our prayer life as well.
I want you to take a moment and think of someone who irritates you. I have two questions for you. First question – do you pray for them? Second question – do you complain and grumble instead? Let me tell you something that’s revolutionary – If you pray for others more, you will find that you will complain about them less. I don’t exactly know how that works, but I know it does. We all have people in our lives that irritate us, so I recommend you give it a try.
Now I am sure there are people in your life that you want to see change in some way. Isn’t that true? And many of us are such good codependents that we try to do the changing ourselves. But that doesn’t usually work very well, because we don’t have the power to change anybody. But we can pray, and we can ask God to change them. And He will do a much better job that we could ever do.
So let me give you a little happiness hint; The quickest way to change a bad relationship to a good relationship is to start praying for the other person. Well, how should I pray you might ask? I have my own agenda, and it’s probably not right, so how should I pray? Paul shows us how to pray for other people in verses 9 through 11. Let’s take a look:
Verse 9. I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.
Verse 10. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.
Verse 11. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation – the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ – for this will bring much glory and praise to God.”
So what exactly is Paul praying? Well, in verse 9 Paul prays that the Philippians will grow in love so their knowledge and understanding will increase. That’s very interesting – he correlates love – with knowledge and understanding. In other words the more we love, the more we will come to know the truth. Give that a try. I guarantee you will be amazed.
In verse 10 he prays the Philippians will understand what really matters. That means he wants them to make wise choices, so they can live with integrity and be pure and blameless. And finally in verse 11 he prays that righteous character will be produced in them by Jesus.
That’s a wonderful prayer agenda. Anybody can use this agenda when praying for someone else. We can pray that they will grow in love, so their knowledge and understanding will increase. We can pray that they will make wise choices, so they will live with integrity and be pure and blameless. We can pray that they will allow Jesus to make them more and more like Him.
These prayers will always be answered, because they line up with God’s will. It’s an effective way to pray for other people – and we should tell them that we are praying for them in this way, because it’s encouraging and affirming.
Well, that covers the first two habits of happiness. We’ll cover the final two next week……………….