GYC Canada: The Cross Connection: Love & Law Combined

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GYC Canada

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness

Michael Lemon

René Lemon

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness -  Part 1

Father in heaven, I pray Lord that you will speak to us from your heart.

Lord, we are looking for what you want us to have, and that is happiness and joy in this world that seems to be pervaded with sickness and depression and addiction.

That has always been your desire for your children.

I pray, Lord, that you will bless Renee and I as we talk, and each 1 of us who is here that as we participate that we will learn and grow closer to you and that we will experience what your desire is for each 1 of us this morning and as we grow from this point forward that we will hold on to you and grow to the Extent that you want us to grow that is eternally.

This is not a short journey This is an eternal 1 and you will be with us every step of the way We thank you for hearing and answering our prayer in Jesus name, amen.

Our whole series is of 4 talks that we're going to have.

And you will see that it is extremely practical.

And we are basing it on this 1 sentence, which I mentioned this morning from Ministry of Healing and it is, so here it is, the only security for any soul is right thinking.

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Okay, so the word is, is the same as an equal sign.

I was an English teacher for many, many years.

And so I would tell my students, if you're a math brain, think of an equal sign.

The only security for any soul equals what?

As a man thinketh in his heart, so equals is he.

So have you wondered where the dogs actually think, right?

And if they could write a diary every single day, what would this doggy diary look like?

So based on a book that I read called Every Day Deserves a Chance, I was inspired and we are going to go through the diary of a dog for 1 day, Okay, let's go through it.

At 8 o'clock in the morning, oh boy, dog food, my favorite.

At 930 a.m., oh boy, a car ride, my favorite.

At 10.30am, oh boy, another car ride, my favorite.

Oh boy, sleeping in the master's bed, my favorite.

Now, what would it look like if it was a diarrhea cat?

My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects.

They dine lavishly on delicious food while I'm forced to eat dry cereal.

I sustain myself by the hope of escape and the mild satisfaction I derive from ruining a few pieces of furniture.

I attempt to kill my captors this morning by weaving through their walking feet.

Must try this strategy at the top of the stairs.

Seeking to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I once again induce myself to vomit on their favorite chair.

To display my diabolical disposition, I decapitate a mouse and deposit its headless body on their kitchen floor.

They only cooed and condescended, patting my head and calling me a strong little kitty.

During a gathering of their accomplices, they placed me in solitary confinement.

I overheard that my confinement was due to my power of allergies.

Must learn what this means and how to use it to my advantage.

I'm convinced the other household captives are flunkies, perhaps snitches.

The dog is routinely released and seems naively happy to return.

The bird speaks with the humans regularly.

Due to his current placement in the metal cage, his safety is assured, but I can wait.

So the day of a dog and the day of a cat.

The same house, same circumstances, Same master.

How often would the phrase, Oh boy, my favourite, appear?

There is a verse that can prime your brains to think like a dog rather than thinking like a cat.

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness -  Part 2

This is a person who's like on a treadmill or going all the time like a hamster, I guess.

So the Rat Racer believes that happiness comes by suffering now so that he can be happy in the future.

So this is a person who's climbing the ladder of success, right, and they just keep going, going, going, going.

So here's an actor, his name is Matthew McConaughey, and He received an Academy Award as Best Actor.

Here's what he said in his speech when he received this award.

When I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life come and ask me who's your gyro?

And I said I thought about it and it's me in 10 years.

So I turned 25, 10 years later and that same person comes to me and goes, are you a Yaro?

You see, every day and every week and every month and every year of my life, my hero is always 10 years away.

I'm not going to obtain it and that's fine with me because it keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.

So does that sound like a philosophy that works for you?

You just keep, happiness is kind of just beyond the corner, just around the next corner, around the next corner.

And then you get there and then you're running again after him.

He's going around the next corner and you just keep on chasing after happiness.

And it just, I looked this guy up online and I thought, what's he do?

And this is a picture of him after a party.

Something told me that perhaps he's not happy.

And then this verse came to my mind, come unto me all you that are weary and are heavy burdened and I will give you rest.

So he said he's okay with this, chasing, chasing, chasing.

But something in his, what he's posting online is telling me he's not really happy.

He's looking for happiness, but he's not really finding it.

So you can see the hedonist and now the rat races that we're going to be talking about are looking for happiness in the wrong places.

He experienced unprecedented success in his career.

He was an author, a broadcaster, a singer-songwriter, and an academic.

He was a star student at Oxford graduated with a congratulatory first class degree, the highest class of degree awarded at Oxford, and won the Prize Fellowship to All Souls College, 1 of the highest academic honors in the United Kingdom.

So Claire also wrote a novel and a collection of poems and he recorded 2 albums of songs, including many of his own compositions.

He then wrote, produced and directed The Heart of the Dragon, a 12-part DVD series on China.

And the series won an Emmy Award, but Alistair Clare was not there to receive the reward.

At the age of 48, shortly after completing the series, Alistair Clare committed suicide by jumping in front of a moving train.

So would knowing that he was about to win the Emmy have made any difference in his life?

And his ex-wife says the Emmy was a symbol of success that would have meant a great deal to him, that would have given him self-esteem.

But, she adds, he had so many symbols of success, much grander than the Emmy.

He needed a new 1 each time he did something.

Ultimately, he never considered anything that he did to be good enough.

Although he was clearly a success, he was not able to see himself as successful.

For the rat racer, happiness is always just around the corner.

However, when they get there, the satisfaction is short-lived because they feel that they are only as good as their last performance.

And so they have to keep on performing and happiness becomes an elusive unattainable goal.

They just keep going and going and going, kind of like a rat on a wheel, right?

So, you can see there are people in the Bible who are kind of driven like that.

And I think Solomon fits into this category.

And then he became a hedonist and he was he just was living for pleasure.

Now it's interesting in the Bible it warns us against deception because pleasure is a deception for happiness.

God gives us ability to experience pleasure.

But when pleasure becomes an end in itself and the means of getting happiness, it's very deceptive and it leads us astray as we've already seen.

A third way that a lot of people look at that's completely a dead end is called nihilist, the nihilist or nihilism.

And the nihilist believes that happiness is impossible to achieve.

He neither enjoys the present nor does he have a sense of future purpose.

And if you read what Ellen White says about him, he was sitting on his throne at the end of his life and he had experienced all of this pleasure, right?

And he had experienced everything that the heart could want.

For all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve.

Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Okay?

This is the person who's crying out for help and saying, it's meaningless, it's pointless, I can't get there.

So here's the big question, can you find happiness?

You're not going to find it down that street.

You're not going to find it in constantly achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve.

And you're not going to also find it in a nihilistic mindset.

So if we could put this all together, put it on a grid, and on the top part you say present detriment, present benefit.

And on the side, you would say future benefits and future detriment.

What would each of these people look like and how would they fit into those categories?

The hedonist would be a present benefit because it's eat, drink, now.

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness -  Part 3

Father in heaven, we thank you that you've brought us all here together and that you are here with us and that you want us to be filled with your joy.

Guide our thoughts and our attention and all that we do interacting with 1 another today according to your will in Jesus name, amen.

So we've been looking at a quote from the book Ministry of Healing that says, the only security for any soul is right thinking.

And so We've been through how happiness is good for you, and showing the medical side of it, as well as the quotes from the Spirit of Prophecy in the Bible, and how a merry heart is good like medicine, and how that is proven from science.

The other thing that we were looking at is how your thinking is influenced by the things that you look at.

And so you can prime your mind in a certain direction right from the time that you wake up in the morning.

And I gave you some suggestions about how to prime your mind.

What was that song that we sang yesterday?

An attitude of gratitude and so writing out 3 things that you're thankful for, at least 3 things every single day And that can be anything.

That can be the food you ate for lunch or the time that you spent with a friend or that you have a wonderful family or that you have eyesight and other people don't.

You know, there's so many things to be thankful for.

If you do that every single day, you're priming your mind in the right direction.

Write a letter to someone expressing your gratitude towards them.

Focus on the power of promises in God's Word.

And so when you wake up in the morning to say to yourself, this is the first text that I'm going to look at, right?

His text, the Bible text, every single day.

For the first hour, you're not going to pick up another device, just this device, God's Word.

Okay, so today we're going to look at, and we looked at a quote from the Bible in John chapter 15 verse 11, and it was quoted today here by Jim Castor, and that is where Jesus says, these words, these words I have spoken to you that my joy might be in you and that your joy might be full.

So we're gonna look at that what does that mean the joy of the Lord and so that's what we're gonna look at today.

So I want to start by asking you a question.

What would you attempt if you knew that you could not fail?

What would you do if you knew for sure that you weren't going to fail?

You could jump off this building and just fly.

What would you attempt if you knew that you attempted it you couldn't fail?

Okay so there was a Canadian blogger by the name of Kyle MacDonald.

Has anyone heard of Kyle MacDonald before?

So 1 day he was looking down at his desk and he saw a red paper clip.

And so he thought to himself, I remember this game that people play called Bigger and Better, where you trade something small for something bigger and better, and then you repeat, so you keep on trading.

So he said, I wonder what would happen if I took this red paper clip and I tried to trade it.

So he put this thing on Craigslist, a red paperclip.

And he said, would anyone like to trade me for something bigger and better?

And 2 girls had a pen shaped like a fish.

And so they said, we will trade your red paperclip for our pen shaped like a fish and so here's the picture of the trade so he gave them a red paperclip And they gave him a pen shaped like a fish.

Next, someone offered him a doorknob with a crazy face on it for the fish tank.

And then he received a camping stove for the doorknob.

Now he's got a camping stove and he started off with a red paper clip.

So Kyle received a number of bigger and better gifts.

He traded that camping stove up and he ended up with a snowmobile.

Some of the trades led him to he received a gift for 2, which was a trip to the Rockies for 2.

He ended up getting a big moving truck, a box truck.

And he keeps on putting on Craigslist and he gets bigger and better, bigger and better, bigger and better.

He starts off with a red paperclip and now he's got a moving truck.

Could it get bigger and better than that?

Well, after 9 months, he had 1 year's free rent in Phoenix, Arizona.

I think that's bigger and better than a red paperclip.

And I think I would have stopped right there.

I would think, man, I've got a whole year's free rent in a very warm climate, right?

I'm going to see what I can get out of this in 1 year.

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness -  Part 4

How full are you with life, the abandoned life?

You see, each of us has an invisible bucket.

This bucket is constantly emptied or filled depending on what others say or do to us.

So we want our buckets full because when they are we feel great but when they empty we feel awful.

So there's a book called How Full Is Your Bucket?

It's written by a guy by the name of Tom Rath.

Okay, So he says that every interaction that you have with someone can be a positive or a negative interaction and it can affect your health, it can affect your productivity at work.

So he's really, even how long you live and the effect on your relationships.

But you don't only have a bucket, you also have a dipper.

And you can use that dipper to pour into someone else's bucket and fill their bucket.

Or you can use that dipper to dip from someone else's bucket.

It's kind of like the Bible says, when you bless someone, you know, you're filling their bucket, right?

So, to bless someone is to empower them by speaking well of them, but to curse them is to kind of, I guess, disempower them by speaking evil of them.

And so, so he's saying that when you use your bucket or your dipper, you're either filling someone up or else you're poisoning their life.

Okay, so You don't want to be poisoning people's lives, you want to give them the best possible outlook that you can.

So I guess the question then is how do I make sure my bucket is full?

Because when your bucket is full you feel great, right?

So what do you think the best answer to that is?

How do I make sure that my bucket is full?

This is exactly what the writer Tom Ross says.

He says the single best thing that you can do to fill your bucket is to do something for another person.

Doesn't that go along with what we've been saying?

The joy of the Lord is to share your faith, right?

And so by doing it for others, that's exactly what Jesus did, right?

And so here's what it says in Steps to Christ.

The effort to bless others will react in blessing upon ourselves.

So it goes hand-in-hand with what Tom Rath had discovered.

So the best way to assure your bucket is full is to fill someone else's bucket.

God wants us to receive much in order that we might impart much.

So it's not get, get, get and keep, keep, keep.

And that's the motto of heaven according to Ellen White.

She says the motto of heaven, the motto of Jesus is to give, give.

The motto of hell and the motto of Satan is to get, get.

So we get so that we can give and we continue to live.

Last time we talked about the purpose of Jesus and what was that?

Okay, so how do you fill someone's bucket?

Let's create a scenario of how you fill someone else's bucket.

So, say for example, you meet some person here at GYC and you've never met them before in your life and they're a happy cheerful person and they're smiling and they come up to you and and they say what's your name and then they they greet you as though hey they know you and even though they don't know you but they show that they're really interested in you and then they remember your name next time they see you and then they don't only ask you your name, they tell you their name and all of a sudden you made a friend so that's called 1 positive, okay?

So they have now put something into your bucket.

And then you see another person that you met a year ago but you're not sure if they will remember you.

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Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness - Part 4

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Parts

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness - Part 1

43m

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness - Part 2

59m

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness - Part 3

1h 3m

Right Thinking: How to be Happy and Healthy in a World of Depression and Sickness - Part 4

1h

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