Talk
BRO. BO SANCHEZ:
Welcome to the last talk of our series, FEELS. In the past five weeks, we discussed the more difficult emotions such as Shame, Fear, Anger, Sadness, and Jealousy.
Thanks be to God, today we’ll be talking about Happiness.
Are you happy? I want to warn you that not all are happy with happy because there are ways by which we can be toxic about happiness and that’s what we’ll unearth later on.
What Is Happiness?
I’m going to preach on this message that it’s truly about the goodness of God.
What’s the definition of happiness?
For me, it’s a feeling of goodness.
Popular illustrator Lynn Schulkins has this bunch of doodles that describe what happiness is…
Happiness is a good cup of coffee.
It can be a cup of hot choco or a hot matcha too. For a friend of mine– whom I will not disclose because it’ll be hazardous to my health– happiness is a soju bottle (Korean alcoholic beverage).
Happiness is a back scratch.
How many of you can relate? I can relate. If somebody is giving me a back scratch, it’s my first installment to Heaven. I feel so good.
Happiness is an extra hour in bed. I cannot relate. I love waking up early. But I have friends who feel they won the Lotto if they have an extra hour in bed –and they do not have to wake up to the sound of the alarm clock.
Happiness is travel.
As my auntie would say,
“You have a mole on your foot.”
Happiness is a foot massage.
When my wife and I got married, I told her that there are five languages of love according to Gary Chapman. The first one is Words. The second one is Gifts. The third one is Service.
The fourth one is Time.
The fifth one is Foot Massage.
My love language is foot massage.
Happiness is growing old with you.
I’m not just talking about couples.
I’m talking about old friends.
When I’m with my old friends whom
I’ve served God with for 20-40 years, it feels so good.
Happiness is a mother’s hug.
This is bittersweet for me.
My mom passed on many years ago. She’s in Heaven.
The older I got, the more I realized that you cannot replace a mother’s love. No one can give that to me anymore. I miss it.
One day, I know that I will receive that again.
Feeling of Goodness
That’s what happiness is.
The ones I mentioned are the simple joys of life. My suggestion is that when you go home, make a list of the simple joys that God has given to you and thank Him for each of them. Happiness is also about the fruit of our work– such as graduating from school. Happiness is accomplishing goals. Happiness is a birthday. Happiness is closing a sale.
How many of you just love your work? You love your work– and it’s good.
It’s a gift from God. This overflow of goodness, when did it start?
We’ll find out as we read God’s Word:
Thy Word is a Lamp unto my feet and a Light unto my path.
Read with me:
My Friends, we just read at least selected verses in Genesis 1.
The word “good” repeats itself seven times in the Bible.
That was deliberate. Whenever ancient authors repeat something, it means that you must pay attention because it is important.
The reason it is deliberately repeated seven times is in Hebrew, the number 7 is very special. It means complete. The goodness of God is complete.
Nothing is lacking in God’s goodness.
I want you to think about this: God created a good world for you. He created a world where there are back scratches, foot massages, champurrado and salted dry fish on a rainy day, pizza with friends, and just lying down and just laughing and talking about mindless stuff.
He created a world where there is goodness. But we don’t thank God enough for that. Our minds are always on the bad stuff.
This is my message for you
God doesn’t want you to just theorize, read, and talk about His goodness. God wants you to taste, to see, to hear, and to feel His goodness.
Pray with me:
Thank You, Lord, for your goodness that flows into me like a rampaging river.
I am sorry that many times I’m blind and that I don’t see or taste Your goodness. Help me to open my eyes and to open my taste buds so that I can really see and taste your goodness. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Give the Lord a big hand, Everybody. Love Him.
The Power of Goodness
By its design, goodness must be shared. That’s the power of goodness: you can’t contain it.
Is your mother beside you? Get a hug from her. That is the goodness of God.
I can’t experience that anymore, but you can. Don’t take that for granted.
Do you have your father beside you? Get a hug from that guy who’s not expressive.
Do you have your friend beside you?
Get a hug from that friend.
That’s goodness right there.
Thy Word is a Lamp unto my feet and a Light unto my path.
The Special Gift of Happiness
Every time we talk about difficult, troublesome emotions, we learn that they carry a special gift.
Happiness. What is the special gift of Happiness?
You’ll be blown away by this: The Special Gift of Happiness is to be in the present moment.
Whenever you are happy, it is a call to be present in the moment.
To be here. To be now. We tend to live with the regrets of our past or to think about the worries of the future.
Happiness says, “Stop. Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
I have a personal opinion. You can disagree with me and it’s okay. Our greatest weakness is not pride, lust, or greed. Our greatest weakness is our lack of gratitude. All our sins come from there. When we do not say thanks to the goodness of God, we tend to be proud.
Happiness says, “Be here now. Stop going elsewhere. Enjoy God’s goodness.”
Are you here right now? One of our joys in life is to be at The Feast to worship the Lord. Can you just imagine how wonderful it is to worship God at The Feast and be surrounded by happy Feasters, be led by the most amazing worship team, mand be preached by this handsome and amazing… priest in the Mass?
Give a big hand to Fr. Albert for that powerful homily a while ago.
The preacher is also okay.
Happiness has a beautiful gift but there is the temptation to think of what’s happening next week and of the mistakes you made last week.
Happiness is just staying in the present, but Happiness can also become toxic in two ways:
1. When we make happiness our highest value.
We say this to our friends, “Kung saan ka masaya.” (Wherever you will be happy).
We need to qualify that statement. Here’s an example:
After one Feast, a 14-year-old girl came to me– and she was crying. She asked me to pray for her. I asked her what was wrong.
She said, “My mom parties with her friends every night. I miss her because
I hardly see her. I asked her why she parties every night, leaving me alone. My mom said, ‘I got pregnant with you when I was 21. You stole away my single life. It’s now my turn to be happy.'”
That young girl’s heart was crushed. I thought these things only happen in the movies.
Mothers, please don’t misunderstand me. I will be your greatest cheerleader for you to have your “Me time.”
Take care of yourself because if you do, your love tank is full and you can take care of your children.
What happened to that mother? She made happiness her highest priority.
There are values that are more important than your happiness– like family, love, responsibility, faithfulness, and God Himself.
Here’s another example. When we give advice to single people, especially about their love life. We tell them, “Follow your heart.” We get that from romantic movies and Korean dramas.
Whenever single people ask me for advice, I never tell them to follow their heart. Because the Bible tells the very opposite, as we read in Jeremiah.
I tell them to follow God’s heart instead. You have to discern what God wants for your life– because that’s the best.
You don’t become happy by pursuing Happiness. You become happy by pursuing values that are higher than Happiness.
I’m going to say something that will free you from disappointments– because you have unrealistic expectations of happiness. You think that happiness will solve your problems.
No, it won’t. Stop aiming to be happy 24/7.
When I was a young Christian, my goal was to be happy all the time because I thought that if I was a Christian and I loved God and God was with me, then I’d be happy all the time. I couldn’t be sad, worried, afraid, and angry. I was wrong.
Happy Not To Be Happy
I love the movie, Inside Out.
It’s an animated story that has Riley, a young girl, as the central character.
The movie is so brilliant that it brings out the emotions in the brain of Riley– Joy, Sadness, Anger, Jealousy, and so on.
Joy, the one with the blue hair, is the de facto leader of all the emotions.
She believes her mission is always to make her human owner, Riley, happy.
As the movie progresses, Joy–to her shock– realizes that when Riley disregards the difficult emotions, the entire sections of her life collapses.
Joy– the emotion Joy– realizes that there are times she cannot help Riley.
It’s got to be Sadness or Anger that should help.
At the end of the movie, you get this message that when we push away difficult emotions, we lose our ability to experience deeper happiness.
That’s what God wants us to do.
2. When we become allergic to happiness.
You’re happy now but in your mind, you begin to be afraid because you think this will not last. This is too good to be true. Sometimes, we think that we don’t deserve to be happy. Our mindset is that we believe in a horrible world surrounded by horrible people living horrible lives. If that’s your perspective, then happiness is something you don’t think you’ll ever have.
I also met people whose image of God is distorted. They believe that God doesn’t want them to be happy.
I began my Talk by discussing the simple joys of life. Now, I want to talk about the deepest joys of life.
John 15: 9-12 says:
My dear Friends, do you know what’s crazy about the passage we just read?
The timing. Twenty-four hours after Jesus said these words, He was hanged on the Cross.
If you look at the Cross, is there anything happy or joyful about it? This tells you, however, that happiness and suffering can actually go together.
If you’re standing in front of me and you’re telling me, “Bro. Bo, this talk does not fit me. I’m nursing a broken heart. The person I thought would be with me for the rest of my life walked away…
Maybe there is someone here who just lost a mother. You could relate when
I was saying that I miss my mom’s hug. You’ve been crying this whole talk.
For someone else, you may be buried in debt…
Many people here are suffering right now but my message to you is this: Happiness does not depend on things outside of you.
Jesus is more committed to your happiness than you are.
Not just any kind of happiness but the deepest kind– the overflowing joy that Jesus is talking about– is to remain in His love, to obey, trust, and follow Him even when things are tough and there is suffering.
Right now, there is pain in your heart, but Jesus is saying, “Follow me. Love me. Trust me. Don’t trust your own wisdom. Trust in my wisdom. Follow me and you will have the deepest joy possible even amid that suffering.”
When you pursue God, trust and obey Him. You will find overflowing joy.
Let us pause for a while and just be grateful for how God has profoundly blessed you in small and big ways. God has been good. Thank Him for His love. Thank Him for how much He loves you. Thank Him every day and every moment.
Put your hands on your chest and say, “Jesus, Thank You for your goodness. Thank You for loving me.”
Amen.
Surrender
Let’s just surrender to God. Lift your hands and say this after me:
Lord, Thank You for being so good to me. I’ve taken You for granted. And sometimes, I just live life complaining, grumbling. But today I choose to say Thank You and to surrender my life to You. I decide right now that I’m going to taste and see Your goodness every day. And I will love You and I will serve You and I will share Your goodness to the people around me every day for the rest of my life.
In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Last words You don’t become happy by pursuing happiness. You don’t. It’s very elusive– real joy. You become happy when you pursue the values that are higher than happiness– loving other people, responsibility, faithfulness, kindness, honesty, integrity, and loving God. And that’s my prayer for you. Amen.
