Happiness Month! Day 27: Spirituality

Today is Day 27 of Happiness Month and it will be continuing all month long. This all started at the Secret Society of Happy People and if you want to pop over there and become an Amused Member, you can get a Free 31 Types of Happiness poster. As you can tell by my daily #HappinessHappens tweets and Facebook posts, I’ve been a member for a long, long time!

Today, to add happiness to your life: Spirituality! “…the deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life. So take time out today to pray or attend a worship service.

The word “spirituality” is a noun, and it means:

sensitivity or attachment to religious values.
the quality of one’s sensitivity to the things of the spirit.

This day and age, people use that term to mean SO MANY things, but since Affaircare is a site that offers Christian nouthetic counseling, I’m going to focus my comments today on Christian spirituality and how that relates to happiness. One justification that people frequently give for having an affair is something like “I deserve to be happy” and all month we’ve been discussing how happiness is not a feeling, but rather a choice to be happy. This whole month we’ve been talking about ways to increase your happiness every day. But to find real happiness and truly reconcile your marriage requires more than just your will or determination. It requires God.

The Bible tells us that all of us (including me!) are sinners and fall short of the perfection required by God–see Romans 3:23. Yes, God requires perfection–not just “do your best” or “try really hard.” Because we are all sinful, we are spiritually dead–see Ephesians 2:1. II Corinthians 5:21 says that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” so we could be brought back to spiritual life! Romans 5:6 tells us that while we were without strength (spiritually dead) that Christ died for us in our place.

Envision people in a sea who are drowned, and the “sea” is the sin that we live in every day….and the drowning is the spiritual death. We can’t even help ourselves! We’re dead! The consequence for sin is spiritual death–but God loved us and sent His Son to pay the penalty in our place. Justice was served and the price was paid! Christ’s death and resurrection are like a spiritual lifeline, and God pulls us out of the sin we’ve drowned in and brings us back to life!

You know there’s that one verse in John that everyone knows: John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”? Now you know what it means! To find TRUE happiness and TRULY reconcile your marriage after adultery requires God.

Over the next days, we’ll be going over all 31 ways to Add Happiness Every Day. You know too often I hear young people say “He doesn’t make me happy” or “I wish she would make me happy” but you know what? Happiness is not something that someone else “makes” you feel. You make choices in your life that can affect your happiness….and ultimately you CHOOSE whether to be happy every day or not. You can also choose to do things that would add happiness to your life every single today.