InsidOut311

Man I love it when the seasons change!  I love when the old is gone and the new has arrived!  I love the Winter when it's here... but when the Spring season starts to show its face, I get juiced up about warmer temperatures, trees and flowers blooming with newness and tossing the warm clothes into a storage box for the next 6 months and pulling out the t-shirts and sandals!  Everybody say it with me:  "CHANGE IS GOOD!!!"

Something else that's about to change for the good that I'm excited about is the series that we've been focusing on for the past two months.  We've been talking deep about being HAPPY, basing our lives on the Beatitudes and learning what it really means to be a follower of Jesus.  Matthew 5:3-12 give us a great illustration of what a Jesus-Follower looks like... which truly leads to Happiness (MC, cue the iPod)... and it's been great!  Just to quickly summarize what we've talked about...

Week 1:  We said, "Happiness is a choice."  We have to choose between following God’s way for our lives or choose the world’s way.  Real happiness is found in choosing God's way.
Week 2:  Happiness is found in learning what it means to be meek and humble.  When we learn that we really need God and position our lives to depend on God, we find Happiness!
Week 3:  Happiness is found when we Love God and Love Others.  The scripture we used that week states, “Happy are those who hunger and thirst for right standing with God”… to be in a right relationship with Him and with others.
Week 4:  Peacemakers are Happy.  Being able to forgive and release people of what they’ve done to offend you.  Not holding people to that offense anymore and forgiving them.  There’s real happiness in doing that.
And last week,
Week 5:  Happiness is found in having a pure heart.  We looked at a part of King David’s life and learned how to have a pure heart and also how NOT to have a pure heart.

And this week (Week 6), we'll wrap up the entire series.  When we begin to apply all of these scriptures to our lives and truly live a life as a follower of Jesus, we'll stand out and go 'against the flow.'  And often, this leads to feeling some peer pressure from the people around us and possibly or probably most definitely leads to some persecution.  But Jesus said "You'll find Happiness in this, even when being insulted or lied about, because your reward is in Heaven, in My Father's Presence!"

That does make me happy! 

So come this week... we'll talk about all of this and bring this series to a close.

See you Wednesday night!