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Company, family and friends

Spending time with your family and friends reminds you of where you came from and gives you a sense of belonging and interconnection. These relationships are intrinsic to your well-being.

Whether it’s having a silly conversation with a friend or enjoying a cookout with your family, these are your people. They know who you are and how you’ve grown, and what your struggles and joys are. Having people in your life who understand you, and simply being with them, provides an abundance of joy when you need it the most.

Being childlike, play more

Even as an adult, you’re allowed to play! Remember staying out as late as possible to play until you were called in for dinner? How about jumping rope, riding bikes and using your imagination to create whole new worlds and possibilities? It’s a real joy to get so caught up in what you were imagining that time passes by without you noticing.

Children today play eight hours less each week than two decades ago, and adults are much worse. When’s the last time you ran around – for fun? Or started up a playful game in the back yard?

Becoming playful applies to any area of life, from exercise routines to how you see your day. Play is a reminder that you can actively create and take steps toward your dreams, that you can relax and have fun. When you’re spontaneous, the world opens up to you and offers unique perspectives.

Smelling the coffee, being alone but not lonely

Not enough people give themselves space for solitude, to deeply discover and appreciate their own unique heart and way of being. This comes in the form of taking naps, reading books, working on a hobby or taking a walk in nature. You may be alone, but you don’t have to be lonely.

Throughout your life, you will experience and witness many struggles and sorrows. A family member, friend or pet will pass away. Tragedy will strike. These experiences leave you feeling the most alone, but can also provide opportunities to remember the good times, and to see the good acts that people around you do.

Gifts of small kindnesses

Do unto others as you would do unto yourself. It’s the Golden Rule taught to all children: To treat people as you’d expect be treated.

When you’ve had a bad day, every little thing that goes wrong adds to your frustration. When it’s been one of those days, a small kindness from a friend or stranger really lifts your spirits. When you do a kindness for another, such as opening a door or paying a compliment, that kindness spreads.

Comedy the best form of entertainment, laugh more

Humor is such a clever and unique gift from God. He gives you the ability to laugh at yourself and the ironies of life. Every person has an individual sense of humor, and a dark day is quickly made light with a good laugh!

Recall Genesis 21:6 when Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me, everyone who hears will laugh with me.” It is true — laughter is contagious!

When you hear the sound of laughter, your brain responds and triggers the muscles in your face to interact. You find you can’t help but laugh, too! In fact, new research claims positive emotions may be contagious, just like laughter.

Association of happiness with good fortune

Going back to ancient Greek, in all Indo-European languages, the word for happiness has the same linguistic derivation as the word for luck. This linguistic pattern implies that even our ancestors knew happiness was something you couldn’t control, trade or buy. When people think of happiness, they associate the word with a feeling of being fortunate for what they have.

That doesn’t mean you get happy out of the blue, but there’s definitely something to surrounding yourself with joy and feeling appreciative for the good things in your life.

Dynamism, motion boosts positive emotion

You may think of exercise as routine maintenance, but it’s known to improve your well-being and help with depression and mood shifts.

New research suggests that exercise and activity affect the structure of the brain itself through neurogenic effects. That means exercise triggers the release of a compound called cathepsin B, which sparks the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus (the area affected by depression and dementia).

Even a regular walk or bike ride will help elevate your mood, as you get out and participate in life, witnessing nature and all of creation that surrounds you.

Spirit of discernment, being able to see God’s “small miracles”

Seeing your daughter get married. Getting your first apartment. There are big, important milestones you’ll remember for life, but it’s often the little details that you carry with you. What your daughter whispers in your ear before you walk her down the aisle, or that feeling of creating a home for yourself for the first time. Some memorable little moments are found within others you’d think would be quickly forgotten. Seeing the most beautiful flower or the smell of a freshly baked pie. Details overwhelm your senses with beauty and power. Appreciate the small stuff, and let those experiences take residence in your heart.

Happiness blooms in unexpected places, in small still moments where a stranger or family and friends share their stories and lives with you. Happiness is found in enjoying your time with yourself, trying new activities and getting active.

Money may assist with buying your first apartment, but the happiness you feel in that apartment comes with the feeling of being home, of creating a space for yourself. Money isn’t everything, and happiness requires no down payment.

(Reference: https://www.crosswalk.com/family/finances/debt/8-key-reminders-that-happiness-has-nothing-to-do-with-money.html?utm_source=&utm_campaign=Integrity%20Moments%20-%20Crosswalk.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2924676&bcid=6fd36d2c4984deb491599514588ab2ed&recip=528989851%20)

Romans 2

We need the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and our surrender to him as Lord and Saviour, to clean our lives of sin and make us fit to live in Heaven.

Romans 3:23; since all have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God.

In Romans 2, the apostle Paul shares with us the seven factors of judgment that Jesus will use when he opens the Books of Works at the Great White Throne Judgment. From these books Jesus will prove why good people are not fit for Heaven.

Romans 2 does not show folks how to be saved. This passage shows folks why they are lost! These are not the principles of salvation. These are the principles of evaluation.

1. God will judge everything according to truth because we all are in the habit of comparing ourselves with others.

On Judgment Day God will say to those who died without Jesus Christ as their Saviour, “Let’s judge you for who and what you really are.”

2. God will evaluate according to His kindness. Romans 2:4 God’s judgment will be in proportion to the amount of kindness that God has poured out to people during their lifetimes.

God expends his kindness to us that he might lead us to repentance.

Christians often wonder why lost people seem to have it so good. The answer is that it’s just God’s kindness to turn them to repentance – the longer they reject his kindness, the more inexcusable they will be when they stand at the Great White Throne Judgment.

3. God will evaluate according to His accumulated wrath. Romans 2:5. Hardening of arteries can take us to an early grave – but hardening of the heart, spiritually, will take us ultimately to the Lake of Fire.

If the grace and kindness of God have not led us to repentance, then every day, moment by moment, hour by hour, we are storing up drops of the terrible treasure of God’s wrath which will break forth at the Great White Throne.

God is allowing us to live and he is holding back punishment – giving us kindness – so that we might turn to him in repentance.

Our judgment for eternity will be in direct proportion to the amount of kindness that God has given to us to which we ignored as coming from God.

4. God will evaluate according to deeds. Romans 2:6-10. This is the deal breaker, this is why even Apostle Paul with everything that he did for the spreading of the Gospel, was told in 2 Cor.12:9 “My Grace is sufficient”. Standing before God now is the person who says, “Look, God, judge me according to my deeds. I’ve lived a good life. Take my good works and put them beside my bad ones and certainly the good will outweigh the bad!”

But the problem with the moral man is that he thought that his good deeds will be weighed against his bad deeds or at least be compared against the deeds of others.

That will not be the case. God will take the best works of the moral man or woman and compare them with Jesus’ deeds. Jesus raises the lame, gives sight to the blind, and heals the sick. He takes on the sins of the entire world and by his death and sacrifice brings salvation to those who commit to him as Saviour and Lord.

No person in his or her right mind wants to be judged on works. He or she wants mercy.

5. God will evaluate without playing favourites. Romans 2:11; God offers salvation to everyone because everyone needs it. God is no respecter of persons. He shows no favouritism. Regarding the issue of sin, no one is better than anyone else from God’s perspective. An analogy goes this way;

Go to the top of the 10-story building, look down, and all the cars will look like toys. Then “Look at the people.” You’ll notice that “They all look small.” You cannot tell the difference “between the five-foot-tall people and the six-foot-tall people”. However down on the sidewalk or street level “you can tell the difference between a tall man and a short man easily”. So, it is in our human judgments. On the human level we see all sorts of variations in wealth, culture, education, character, goodness, and badness.

But, from God’s point of view from the 10th story, everyone looks alike! Without being irreverent I can almost hear God saying to some individuals,

“You dummy. Do you really figure that you have calculated some shifty plan that will let you go up against me and get away with it? You don’t have a ghost of a chance.”

God doesn’t like to judge. He definitely says that judgment is his “strange work” (Isaiah 28:21-22).

Nevertheless, he will judge: “He who spared not his own Son but delivered him up” will certainly not hesitate to judge those who reject his free offer of grace in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:32).

6. God will evaluate according to how well we’ve lived up to the light we have received. Romans 2:12-15; There are two types of people: Those who have heard the gospel and those who have not. Both are judged according to how they respond to what they know. In other words, they will be judged on the amount of “light” which they have received.

Those who have heard the gospel have seen the “light” and by receiving Christ are living up to the level of the light they have received. But there are many people who hear the gospel and reject it. They have not lived up to the light and therefore stand condemned for God.

Of course, this begs the question regarding the natives in remote parts of the world who will never be exposed to, or hear, the gospel during their lifetimes. This is certainly unfair to send people to hell and have never had the chance, and most likely never will have the chance, to hear the gospel and respond positively to Christ.

Paul teaches us that these folks will be judged according to how well they live up to what they know, and they know much more than we realize. They have an internal conscience which guides them as to what is right and wrong behaviour. They can look at the stars at night and see the universe and know that there must be a God who created all.

In a startling way, Paul seems to be teaching us that salvation is available to those who never heard the gospel if they live up to the light they’ve received.

“To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger” (Romans 2:7-8).

This idea of living up to the light brings up some intriguing thoughts. Do you know anyone who’s lived up to the light they have received? Is it possible that God accepts for salvation those who have lived up to the light received, then, perhaps, it’s best that we not share the gospel because those who hear it may reject it and be lost. They might have a better chance to live up to the light that you have received.

People who have greater “light” have more responsibility to live up to the “light” (Matthew 11:23-24).

The key is – are we living up to what we know? The answer is a resounding “No!” No person performs up to the level of what they know. We all fall short.

7. God will evaluate according to the inner secrets of the heart. Romans 2:16; At the Great White Throne God will open the closet doors and reveal the secrets of the people who stand there. Jesus spoke of this often (Matthew 10:26-27). Skeletons will come out of closets then. Deeds long buried in the depths of memory will be brought up. Unsolved crimes will find their solutions. These are the secrets of men.

As a Christian I know with absolute assurance that I will never stand before this Judgment Bar. “There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

(Anyway, I’ve already settled my case out of court!)

The way to avoid The Judgment Seat of Christ is to settle your case before it comes to trial.

Christ said, “If you meet your adversary in the roadway, you had better settle with him, lest he drag you into court and you have to pay to the uttermost penny!” (Matthew 5:25-26).

In this passage, the adversary will be God. He will be Judge, Jury, and Prosecuting Attorney.

Christ died on the cross to offer us a chance to accept him now and settle our sin issue before Judgment Day comes. If we die without Christ, our case will come to trial and God has enough evidence to condemn every person to Hell – and he will. There is mercy now – settle out of court. The days of mercy are not without end. When we die, our choice is sealed for eternity.

(Reference: https://www.crosswalk.com/slideshows/7-reasons-good-people-go-to-hell.html?utm_source=&utm_campaign=Integrity%20Moments%20-%20Crosswalk.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2924676&bcid=6fd36d2c4984deb491599514588ab2ed&recip=528989851%20)

Jesus focused on individuals, not groups (the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, for example). He was after people’s hearts, hence His deeply personal approach to those whom He encountered.

Of course, Jesus never compromised the truth. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. — Luke 13:3

When somebody is sinning or “living in sin”, what we should do for them or to them is to love them unconditionally and pray for them without ceasing. According to Jesus, the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbour as ourselves. We know what happened when the lawyer was foolish enough to put Jesus to the test by asking who his neighbour was. After telling the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks the lawyer which man in the parable proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among robbers. The lawyer responds, “The one who showed him mercy”. Jesus told him to go and do likewise (Luke 10:25-37).

Billy Graham put it best when he famously said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.”

Reference: Devotionals Daily by Becket Cook, author of A Change in Affection.

Synopsis of the ESV Literary Study Bible

The Bible is not totally a unique book. In general, its literary form functions in the same way that these forms function beyond the Bible. A story is a story whether in the Bible or beyond it. A metaphor is a metaphor. Nonetheless it is possible to make generalisation about characteristic literary features of the Bible, with no implication that these features do not exit elsewhere. Below are four literary features of the Bible described in the ESV literary study Bible.

1. A unifying storyline

Although the overall genre of the Bible is the anthology of individual books and passages, the Bible possesses the unity far beyond that of other literary anthologies. The technical term for a unifying superstructure such as we find in the Bible is metanarrative (big or overarching story).

In the Bible, the metanarrative is the story of salvation history. It is comprised of the events by which God worked out his plan to redeem humanity and the creation after they fell from original innocence. This story of salvation history is Christocentric. It focuses ultimately on the substitutionary sacrifice and atonement of Christ on the cross and his resurrection from death.

The unifying storyline of the Bible is a u-shaped story. It moves from the creation of a perfect world. Through the fall of that world into sin. Then it shifts to falling human history as it slowly and painfully makes its way towards consummation. Lastly, it arrives at the final destruction of evil and the eternal triumph of good.

 

2. The presence of a central character

All stories have a central character or protagonist, and in the overarching story of the Bible, God is the protagonist. He is the unifying presence from the beginning of the Bible to the end. All creatures interact with this central and ultimate being. All events are related to him. The story of human history unfolds within the broader story of what God does. The result is a sense of ultimacy that comes through as we read the pages of the Bible.

 

3. Religious orientation

The subject of literature is human experience. This is true of the Bible too. But a distinctive feature of the Bible is that it overwhelmingly presents human experience in a religious and moral light. Events that other writers might treat in a purely human and natural light – a sunrise, a battle, a birth, a journey – are presented by the authors of the Bible within a moral or spiritual framework. Part of this moral and spiritual framework is the assumption of the biblical authors that a great conflict between good and evil is going on in our world. And further, people are continually confronted with the need to choose between good and evil. People choose between working for God’s kingdom and going against God.

 

4. Variety of genre and styles

Every literary anthology of the Bible’s magnitude displays a range of literary forms, but the Bible’s range may well top them all. We need to be alert to this. The religious uses to which we put the Bible can easily lull us into assuming that the Bible is all one type of writing.

The list of individual forms, if we include such specific motifs as the homecoming story or trickster or love poem, keeps expanding. The variety that we find in the Bible stems partly from the large categories that converge. Examples are: history, theology, and literature, prose and poetry, realism and fantasy, past and future, God and people.