When our daughter with Down syndrome, Bekah, was much younger, she would ask, “Are you happy or smart?” It was funny. Sometimes I asked her the same question, and she would always answer, “Yes!” At which her three brothers, my wife, and I would all laugh.
However, there is some truth to her question that we can apply to our own lives. Intelligence is a beautiful gift God gives to us all in differing measures. Being spiritually smart, though, depends on what and Whom you know. This will give us a foundation for inner happiness (joy) even when life is not happy.
- Father loved you when you were his enemy. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Romans 5:8
- Being united with Christ means you are always blameless and holy in His eyes. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Ephesians 1:4
- Father not only loves you, He likes you because you are righteous in Christ. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21
- Father loves you just as much as He loves Jesus according to Jesus’s prayer for us in John 17:26, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
- Even when you are going through difficulty, Father wants you to know that He is with you and for you. If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31 b
- Nothing can ever get between you and Father and His love for you in Christ, including your sins, your failures, your pride, your discouragements, your circumstances, or your relationships. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
Reminding ourselves of these realities can cause us to experience inner happiness (joy) though we might be crying on the outside.
I encourage you to either print this out or copy and paste it as a reminder so you can refer to it over and over.
© Mark Maulding (But feel free to share this.)
