Presby-Musings

I've been preaching on Happiness for the past two weeks.  So naturally, we had to get around to money. Which supposedly can't buy you happiness.  But by looking at the way most of us live our lives in pursuit of happiness through money, it seems that none of us really got that memo. Let's start with some Scripture why don't we? Hebrews 13:5-6 5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you;     never will I forsake you.” 6 So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.     What can mere mortals do to me?” The epistle of Hebrews was written to a group of Christians in the first century who were trying to figure out how to live the Christian life in a diverse context. So we have nothing in common with them... This discourse at the end of the letter discloses some important things, what I will call the "Signs of a Genuine Christian L...

I am in the middle of preaching a sermon series on "happiness," or more specifically how to discover what it means to find true happiness in life. This week we are venturing into the arena of the workplace, which I think has become the unreachable and unknowable Font of Happiness for many people in our culture.  Most of us live under the mistaken impression that if we just do the right sort of work that we will find fulfillment and happiness. We have been trained by our dominant culture to believe that there is a career out there, a job, a profession that is perfect for  us.  And if we can only find that job that is perfect for  us, we will find fulfillment, we know happiness. What if we're wrong about this, though?  What if instead of thinking of "good work" as something created to give us fulfillment, we found fulfillment in the knowledge that we  were created for good work? I know.  That's pretty deep.  But even though the difference...

Are you happy? It's a simple question.  You have a choice, to be honest.  Either tell the truth, or lay a bold faced lie on me. You could say, "Yes, I am happy."  And you might actually mean it.  Things might be pretty good for you right now.  You're content.  Life is good. Or you could say like most of us, "Yes, I am happy." But you don't really mean it.   In fact, you are lying through your teeth.  Life is not good.  You are not content. You just said that you were happy because you didn't want to tell the truth. Because telling the truth would mean that you would have to say, "No, I am not happy.  I am miserable.  I feel like crap.  Life is pretty awful right about now.  I don't see a way out of the mess I am in.  I am as far from happy as I could possibly get." Like I said... you have a choice. The fact of the matter is that when someone asks you how you are doing, they usually don't want to know h...