Some days, it’s easy to smile. You wake up to the sounds of birds chirping, with the warm glow of the morning sun cradling your face. You take several deep, cleansing breaths standing beneath a perfectly cascading shower, just before drawing a smiley face on the steamed-up glass with your index finger.
You pick up a perfect cup of coffee, just the way you like it. You hit every traffic light. You sing to your favorite tunes. And you arrive at work refreshed, excited, and anxious to create and collaborate.
But not every day starts this way. Sometimes you wake up to chaos, in your head or in the world around you. You hit snags, and bumps, and roadblocks at every turn. You try too hard, or don’t try enough, and things fall apart, or things fall short.
You struggle, you fight yourself and other people, and you find yourself wishing you could stop the world so you could get off for a while.
But there is an alternative. When things go wrong, you can fall down or look up. You can shut down or wake up. You can accept that the days won’t always look bright, but commit to finding something worth smiling about. Not sure what that might be? No worries, I have a few ideas….
Today I am going to share with you why we smile. You see, when you have Christ, you have hope, and that makes it possible to smile even while suffering. And today we are going to talk about 1 very important reason we have to smile.
But first, let’s have some fun. I want you dig down deep into your happy place and tell me in a word or two, what makes you smile: (give time for interaction)
Did you know that smiling is good for you?
Did you know that your face has 44 muscles in it that allow you make more than 5,000 different types of expressions, many of which are smiles. But smiling happens without much thought. Like when you watch a friend do something silly or embarrassing. Or when a police officer lets you off without a ticket. But did you know that smiling triggers important and healthful activity in your brain? Yep, there’s a serious mind-body connection there.
Let me give you seven reasons why smiling is good for you![i]
- Smiling can make you happy (even when you’re not). It turns out that the simple act of smiling sends a message to your brain that you’re happy. And when you’re happy, your body pumps out all kinds of feel-good endorphins. So the next time you feel sad or upset, try smiling. It just might make your body—and therefore you—feel better.
- Smiling can make others happy. “When you’re smilin’, the whole world smiles with you.” Research shows that smiling is contagious. Studies show that something as simple as seeing a friend smile can activate the muscles in your face to make that same expression, without you even being aware that you are doing it. Crazy, right?
- Smiling makes you more attractive. Ever wonder why we always smile in photos? Because people usually look their best—when smiling.
- Smiling can help you de-stress. Smiling helps reduce symptoms associated with anxiety. When that smile signals to your brain that you’re feeling happy (even though you’re not really feeling happy…yet), your body will usually slow its breathing and heart rate. Smiling can lower blood pressure, improve digestion and regulate blood sugar. smiling can do wonders!
- Smiling can help your heath. Some have enen suggested that you should laugh yourself well. This concept was popularized most spectacularly by Norman Cousins who became very ill with a collagen disease in the mid-1960s. Even though he was in constant pain and felt like crying all the time, he embarked on an experiment using laughter to stimulate his healing. He found movies, jokes, and stories that were funny, hilarious, and just plain silly. The more he laughed, the less pain he felt. He used joy to activate his immune system and endocrine system into proper functioning.[ii]
- Smiling can help you land a job. If you’re about to go on a job interview, you may think that your appearance is just about wearing nice clothes. Wrong! you have to wear a smile. In a study published in the December 2009 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, interviewers think people who smile are more likeable, confident, conscientious and stable.
- Smiling can lead to laughter. Have you ever laughed without smiling? It’s pretty impossible to do. Numerous studies have been done on the health benefits of laughing, including how it acts like a mini workout that burns calories and works the abs. Laughter also helps blood flow, lowers blood sugar levels, reduces stress and improves sleep. It may also raise the level of infection-fighting antibodies in the body, which helps boost your immune system. So the moral of this story is smile—and laugh—often!
Smiling just feels good. Go ahead, smile now. Doesn’t it Make you feel happy to be alive? It sure does beat the heck out of a frown.
So the next time you’re feeling down or out of sorts, try a smile. If you can’t find a reason to smile I’m going to give you one today. Here it is; We smile because we are born for glory!
When we were born the first time we were not born for glory! But verse 2 tells us that as sad as we were, God was smiling, because He had a plan for us:
“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.+ 1 Peter 1:3
Here is God’s plan of salvation for lost sinners. – We were chosen by the father, purchased by the son and set apart by the Spirit. As far as God the Father is concerned, I was saved when He chose me in Christ before the foundation of the world. As far as the Son is concerned, I was saved when He died for me on the cross. But as far as the Spirit is concerned, I was saved one summer day in August 1962 when I heard the gospel and received Christ.
Here is how to get a smile to spread across your face: Thank the Father that He chose you. That is election. Election and foreknowledge means more than just knowing or planning in advance, in the Bible it’s all about God setting his love on us! Deuteronomy 7:6-8 opines:
“The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you.”
Your smile should spread when you thank the Son for dying for you. He shed his blood to give you grace and peace.
And the smile should keep spreading when you thank the Spirit for sanctifying you! Now the word “sanctification” doesn’t mean anything to most of us, but it should. It comes from a Greek word which mean “to make holy.” We should smile because the Spirit is bound and determined to make us just like Jesus!
But we are just getting warmed up. You see it is because of the work of the Trinity that we are so blessed that we smile! The work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit makes verse 3 possible!
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
We smile because we are Blessed!
There are three blessings that I see in these verses: Let me list them so you can smile with me:
Blessing #1! We smile because we have a living hope. 3.
Blessing #2! We smile because we have an incorruptible inheritance. 4.
Blessing #3! We smile because we are kept safe by the power of God. 5.
Are you smiling yet?
We smile because we have a living hope! 3
The first reason we can rejoice is because we have a “living hope.” It is not simply a “hope so,” but it is as alive as the resurrected Jesus! Believers in Jesus Christ have been “born again” to a living hope because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. When we realize that the ultimate destination on this long, difficult journey is eternity in heaven, it makes the potholes and breakdowns in life worth bearing.
To the unsaved, hope is nothing more than wishing upon a star. But our hope is alive because Jesus is alive! We smile because our hope is alive!
We smile because we have an incorruptible inheritance! 4
The second reason we can rejoice in suffering is that we have an incorruptible inheritance that does not fade away, which is reserved in heaven for us.
It is totally unlike any earthly inheritance! Have you ever had the privilege of traveling? Have any of you, on any of those trips showed up a little late and found that your guaranteed room reservation had been given away? You show up at 9:30 at night exhausted from a long day of travel, give the guy your name and credit card, and wait while he does some voodoo on his computer, then stares through you like you’re a ghost. If your name isn’t on their little screen, you don’t exist! You then give him your confirmation number, but it does no good. In the end you wind up in a flophouse two blocks down with nothing but a halfhearted apology because somehow your reservation just vanished!
When you make reservations to the greatest place in the universe, that is not what happens! They are guaranteed! They are incorruptible – that means that your name will always be legible in the book of life. They are undefiled. In other words, the vacation booking in heaven is better than described. It will exceed your expectations. It is a permanent reservation.
We smile because we are kept safe by the power of God! 5
The third reason to rejoice in suffering is that we “are protected by the power of God.” No matter how acute the persecution, you and I will never be lost in the process. God’s hand of comfort and strength will remain with us. No matter the calamity, no matter the cause of death, the depth of pain, the horror of catastrophe—God is in control. And He is all-powerful, all good, and all knowing.
And here is something that should make you smile. Your salvation is not up to you. If it was, you’d have lost it long ago. Your salvation is up to God. The joyful promise is this; that your salvation is kept secure by God’s power. What did Jesus say about that?
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.” John 10:27-29
No one can tell us all the reasons we go through such hard times. Nobody can explain it to our complete satisfaction. But because we know the kind of God we have, we can accept the mystery of suffering and know for sure that God will protect us by His power from now throughout eternity.
So smile, because you have the greatest reasons in the universe to rejoice.
Now, I can think of some crazy ways to make you smile.
P
op in a funny DVD, read the Sunday comics, buy a hula hoop and act like a kid, Bake something that has a silly face on it, Blast your favorite music and dance around with absolutely no regard for rhythm or appearance, go to your favorite spot, whether it’s a beach, bike trail, or mall, Tell someone how much they mean to you, Create a gratitude list for the day…
Heck, you may be able to even read the word smile and feel better. According to research published in Psychological Science, simply reading certain words may even make you feel better.
But, as good as those are, I don’t just want to give you temporary, fading, short term reasons to smile; I want to give you lasting permanent joy. Here’s why we Christians really smile: We smile because we have a living hope. We smile because we have an incorruptible inheritance. We smile because we are kept safe by the power of God.
Smile on that!
[i] http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/wellness_articles.asp?id=1529
[ii] http://www.theherbsplace.com/content/364-ahmlaugh
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