Are you happy?

I'm speaking at Westerford CU today, kind of a spur of the moment invite. They are looking at the fruit of the Spirit and asked me to talk about the difference between happiness and joy.

Huh?

Considering I'm giving the talk in 3 hours, it's way to late for my blog brothers and sisters to help, but let me tell you what I've got so far.

Happiness is FEELING good about life
Joy is KNOWING your life IS good.

Don't get me wrong, happiness is good, really good. But it is unpredictable (is what makes you happy now the same thing that made you happy when you were 15?), really circumstantial (and so to a big extend out of your control) and usually only lasts a short time.

And that's why people spend their whole life try to chase happiness, because it DOESN'T satisfy. It's like trying to nail jelly to a wall. I reckon in the evolution of stuff, when happiness grows up, it wants to become joy.

Joy is knowing who you are and where your going. It's knowing your forgiven, accepted and heaven bound. These facts of life might bring you hardship, but you will still have a peace, calmness, contentment, satisfaction that happiness alone can't deliver.

Happiness is just joy with amnesia, trying to drown out the uncertainty with sound and fury.

Where do you fall.? Happy, or joyful? Or both? (or neither?)

Scott

I love Cape Town. I really do.
But at times it starts to scare me.

I heard yesterday that in the last month 53 police men and women have been killed in the line of duty.

My question for the non Ct'ers is: If 53 policemen were killed in your country in the last month, what would the response be?

Scott

We are one, but we are many

My brothers blog has gently rebuked me. In two ways.
1. It has been used to share some great thoughts.
2. It shows that he is having great thoughts.

Lately this blog has been suffering a little decay, achieving neither of the above. But, good things are on the go. I've been spending a lot of time in Ephesians, a book I've never really gotten into because, I know this sounds childish, everyone one else was always into it. Well, now I can see what all the fuss is about. As great things hit me, I will blog them. (Not in any specific order or importance or chronology).

Jump to Eph 4:1-16
Paul tells us to keep the unity that we have in God's Spirit. Feeble attempts to create unity miss the point that he makes in verse 4. Christians are already one in the faith, and the togetherness of our body (the church) should reflect the one God, one Spirit, one faith we share. But at the same time God is the Father of many, who is over many and through many and in many. Unity with diversity, not uniformity.

In v11 we read that God spreads around the the teaching gifts so that the diversity of the body might prepare people for works of service, which in turn, build up the oneness of the body. How's that for tidy! So God gives these gifts to make the many 'one' in the church as they are alreay one in the Spirit. Or to spin it around, the gifts of v11 are there to make those who are one in the Lord become one in the church.

Cool!

Thoughts:
1. Can someone help me with how v 11 becomes v12. In other words, how does teaching the gospel result in works of service? When I teach the Bible I don't see crowds of people flocking to serve. am I doing it wrong?! (Let's take as a given that God's spirit works to convict people etc. I'm wondering about the mechanics of that conenction, humanly speaking.)

2. How does your church plug into peoples diversity and use those different gifts to build up the body? An good ideas?

Scott

Back

I'm back and to be honest I'm struggling to leave the holiday behind. So I'm going to try and drag the lingering memories into the week and see how that works for me. Staff meeting today was cancelled, so that helped a lot.

We all know that a holiday is more than just the sum of it's parts, but here are some of the parts that made it great . . .

• We had the one spot in Betty's Bay which had heaps of trees (I like trees)

• The house we were at was unreal! Verandah all the way around, a stream running by the house, fireplace in the main bedroom, beatuful garden and view of the mountian from the kitchen window (and all the other windows too). Very 'House and Garden'

• Found a great pie shop.

• Lots of chocolate and red wine.

• Numerus trips to the Harold Porter National park with walks up to the waterfall

• The discovery that Ash collects the BBC History magazine - I devoured about 20 of them.

And lots more, but I don't want to boast.

Scott