40 MORE DAYS OF JOY - 28
Dr Jim Brown's TruNorth Devotional
40 MORE Days of Happiness and Joy
Day 28 | POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE?
40 MORE Days of Happiness and Joy
Day 28 | POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE?
POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE?
From Ecclesiastes 3
“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to be sad, and a time to dance.
“I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God.”
When you think about it, we’ve all experienced joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, pain and pleasure. It’s life.
And why is that? That’s the way God created us in Genesis 1 – “Let us make man in our image after our likeness.”
In this series, as we look at another 40 Days of JOY… here in Ecclesiastes, Solomon the Wise is teaching again that laughter and sadness are genuine and legitimate emotions God designed into us from the Creation.
So now the application question is: How BALANCED are you? I mean, on a typical day, how much of the time do you find yourself feeling sad, upset, or mad, versus your time spent feeling happy and joyful… perhaps to the point of laughter? Compare the two groups: which set of emotions garners most of your time in a typical day?
Psychologists tell us that MOST people laugh too little because we tend to experience negative emotions more intensely than positive ones. This is known as “negativity bias.” It’s how we are.
But God has offered us a way to defeat that negative bias… by learning to REJOICE in Him as “nothing is better for them than to rejoice and do good.”
Prayer: LORD God, help me to CHOOSE to rejoice always and not to give in to the human tendency of negativity. Amen.
From Ecclesiastes 3
“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to be sad, and a time to dance.
“I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God.”
When you think about it, we’ve all experienced joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, pain and pleasure. It’s life.
And why is that? That’s the way God created us in Genesis 1 – “Let us make man in our image after our likeness.”
In this series, as we look at another 40 Days of JOY… here in Ecclesiastes, Solomon the Wise is teaching again that laughter and sadness are genuine and legitimate emotions God designed into us from the Creation.
So now the application question is: How BALANCED are you? I mean, on a typical day, how much of the time do you find yourself feeling sad, upset, or mad, versus your time spent feeling happy and joyful… perhaps to the point of laughter? Compare the two groups: which set of emotions garners most of your time in a typical day?
Psychologists tell us that MOST people laugh too little because we tend to experience negative emotions more intensely than positive ones. This is known as “negativity bias.” It’s how we are.
But God has offered us a way to defeat that negative bias… by learning to REJOICE in Him as “nothing is better for them than to rejoice and do good.”
Prayer: LORD God, help me to CHOOSE to rejoice always and not to give in to the human tendency of negativity. Amen.
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