Go with the Flow | What Makes Us Happy

Welcome to Trinity Sermons on this Thanksgiving weekend here at Trinity Church, St.

Here at Trinity Church, St.

We want to share biblically based sermons that inspire and encourage you in your daily

life while rooting you in the truth of scripture and the good news.

This is episode 4 of our sermon series, What Makes Us Happy, and Rob Hurquhans will be

looking specifically at gratitude.

After all, where gratitude flows, happiness grows.

Now before we begin, we'd like to invite you to follow our podcast, check us out on

social media, and visit our website trinitystreepsville.org.

On our website you can find our weekly sermon questions that can help you and your friends

and family dive deeper into the sermons each week.

Hope you enjoy the message today.

God bless.

A reading from Philippians chapter 4, verses 4 to 9.

Philippians 4:4–9

Rejoice in the Lord always.

I will say it again, rejoice.

Let your gentleness be evident to all.

The Lord is near.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition and thanksgiving,

present your request to God.

And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your

minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right,

whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or

praiseworthy, think about such things.

Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice

and the God of peace will be with you.

The words of the Lord.

Good morning, everybody.

How's it going?

Water you looking at?

No, of course, I should let you know right at the very beginning here that if you're

sitting in the first front rows here at Trinity, you are might get a little wet this morning

because you know how this kind of things works when you hook up a hose to a high pressure

faucet like this one and then you put on the good old sprayer there and then you turn it

on, then what happens?

Of course, the water courses through the hose there and sprays out this wonderful, beautiful

stuff.

Water comes flying out the other end.

And of course, we've been doing this this summer all the time.

We've had some dry spells this summer where we've had to water our lawns and water our

gardens.

And you've done so you've done this exact step, right?

You hook up the hose, you turn it on, you press the trigger and boom and away it goes.

Now what can happen, though?

What can sometimes happen is you do all those steps, you hook everything up, you get it

all you think you're all ready to go.

But then when you you go to press the button, there's actually just this little pathetic

little trickle that just comes out and you'd be like, why?

Why is that happening?

Why the trickle?

Or you might say, well, maybe maybe there's something going on here in the sprayer.

And you look and you say, no, no, the sprayer seems seems just just fine.

And then so you go back to where it's connected and you'll say, did I turn this on?

Yeah, I turned lefty loosey, righty tighty.

Yes, I turned it on.

So you're like, oh, the water should be flowing, but the but the water is not flowing.

And if that happens, then there's there's one other thing that could be going on.

And that is that you've got some kind of a kink in the hose.

And whenever there's a kink in the hose, of course, the water can't flow through it.

So what you're going to have to do in that case is you're going to have to go all the

way over to where you were and then you're going to have to go back and check the hose

and check it.

And oh, there it is.

There's the kink in the hose.

And then when you realize where the kink is, you can kind of work it out and bend it out

and then the water is flowing everywhere and it's beautiful.

And you've you've sorted it all out.

That's how it works.

So today we're continuing a teaching series we've been going at now for a few weeks.

It's called What Makes Us Happy.

And another way of describing what this teaching series is about is you could say that what

we're trying to figure out is what is it?

How do we grow a garden of happiness in our lives?

How do we grow a garden of happiness in our relationships, in our family, in our marriage,

in our workplace, in our careers?

How do we?

What what is it that makes us happy?

And it's actually a good question because sometimes when we look at the lawn of our

lives or we look at the garden of our lives, we don't see something that's green and growing

with happiness.

We see something that looks like dead and dying.

There's not much happiness there.

In fact, especially when the heat comes down and when the pressure is on, man, our happiness

can like totally, totally evaporate.

So it's a good question to ask, you know, what is it that makes us happy?

And the answer is and what we're going to learn today is that just like a garden or

a lawn, it doesn't just grow by itself, but it needs something added to it in order to

make it grow.

The same is true of happiness.

Happiness also requires us to spray one thing, one thing in particular, I must say, onto

the onto our lives.

And if we spray that one thing into our lives and onto our lives, then actually happiness

is able to grow.

And this this thing that that we put on our lives is something that researchers even now

are starting to realize, oh, that's the secret to happiness.

It's the same thing that the Bible has been saying for thousands of years, which is the

secret to happiness.

So what is this one thing?

Well, let me share it with you.

And we can maybe even say this together.

But the thing is where gratitude flows, happiness grows.

Let's say that together.

Where gratitude flows, happiness grows.

So if you want happiness in your life, if you want to be truly happy and have a green

garden of happiness, then you need to flood your life.

You need to spray your life.

You need to water your life with thanksgiving, with gratefulness and gratitude.

Gratitude is the stuff that makes a life into a happy life, makes it flourish and grow.

You can't actually have a happy life, I would say, if you aren't in your heart, a deeply

grateful person, because happiness doesn't just poof grow or you can't just decide I'm

going to be happy or I'm going to be joyful and just make it happen.

No, no, no.

It's a byproduct.

It comes when something else is poured into your life.

When you flood your life with gratitude, then you'll find that that's when happiness grows

up all around you all by itself.

Now like I said, even researchers are figuring this out.

You can read that happiness or that gratitude is good for you.

Grateful people record higher levels of positive emotion, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism.

It's even good for your heart.

Grateful people have better heart health than those who are not grateful.

So psychology has figured it out.

Science has kind of figured it out.

But thousands of years before that, philosophers and theologians already knew this to be true.

The great Roman statesman Cicero once said, there is no quality I would rather have and

be thought to have than gratitude, for it is not only the greatest virtue, but it is

the mother of all the rest.

And what he's saying essentially is this.

There is one hose.

There is one tap.

There is one thing that if you throw that onto your life, that all the other virtues,

joy and peace and patience and kindness and happiness all grow out of that.

And that virtue, that thing is gratitude.

Another ancient writer that you may have heard of, he wrote half of the New Testament.

His name was Paul.

He wrote something very similar.

He said, in every situation you find yourself in, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,

with gratitude, make your requests known to God.

And what will happen when we do that, Paul?

There will be this peace that transcends all understanding and it will fill your heart

and it will fill your mind.

Paul is saying the very same thing.

Throw gratitude on your life and you will see the happiness grow.

And the good news is there is always, always, always an opportunity right in front of you

to give thanks for something and to express gratitude for something.

You don't have to look very far.

In fact, some of the happiest people that you know in life, you know what's true about

them?

They're also the most grateful people.

It doesn't matter how much they have.

It doesn't matter what their situation is.

They could be lying in a hospital bed and yet they're still finding something to be

thankful for.

They're still finding something to be grateful for and they're happy.

Why?

Because where gratitude flows, happiness grows.

That's a very helpful thing for us to remember if we find we're not happy.

Sometimes we're not happy.

Sometimes we go through big long stretches where we're not happy.

If the lawn of your life, if the garden of your life looks a little more like this, brown

and dry, devoid of happiness, then maybe the thing that's missing, maybe the thing you

haven't done is turned on the hose of gratitude and remembered the importance of thanksgiving.

Because if you don't have gratitude, if you don't have thanksgiving, how can happiness

grow in your life?

It's the essential ingredient.

And here is the thing.

Guess what?

Just like when you are gardening, you can run into this problem where a kink in the

hose will prevent water from flowing.

The same is true when it comes to gratitude.

There are certain things in our life that can cause a huge kink to form in our ability

to be grateful, in our ability to be thankful.

And the result is, of course, there's nothing coming through to create a happy, happy life.

In fact, today what I want to talk to you about is three kinks in particular that you

have to watch out for and that you have to work out.

That's the goal of today.

I want to mention what these three kinks are.

They all start with C, by the way.

And the idea is that we can go back through our lives.

We can go back down the hose of our life and we can work them out and get the gratitude

flowing and therefore get the happiness growing.

Let me just say one thing, though.

As we go through these, I don't want you to be thinking of somebody else, right?

When you hear about these kinks and these problems we run into, the temptation will

be to say, oh, I know somebody like that, or I know somebody like that.

Don't work out the kinks in somebody else's hose.

You need to work out the kinks in your own hose.

That's what this is about today.

OK?

So let's begin.

The first kink that needs to be worked out if we're going to have a truly happy life

is the kink of cynicism.

Gratitude cannot flow if we are filled with cynicism.

Because here's a cynical person, this is what a cynical person says.

They say, yeah, you know, life is pretty good, but there's also so much wrong with the world.

And yeah, God's good, but this is wrong and that is wrong.

And that is awful.

And this is broken.

And this is all messed up.

Cynicism occurs when all you can really see in life is the negative, is the bad, is the

problems, right?

Cynicism just sees the bad in life.

And anything that maybe is good, well, a cynical person is kind of suspicious of that.

It must be bad.

It must be really bad, even though it looks good.

It must be bad.

All those bad news stories that we read on television, all those nasty influencers, all

the doom scrolling that we do through our phones, it is a recipe for cynicism.

Cynical people, they look at the world and see only hopelessness.

Cynical people, they look at their situation, they see only bitterness.

Cynical people look at life and they see only meaninglessness.

They see hidden agendas everywhere.

They see conspiracy theories over here.

They see the worst in everything.

And you know what cynical people love to do?

They love to be right.

They love it when people fail because they love to say, see, I told you so.

Now of course, of course, not all criticism is bad.

We need to be critical sometimes.

We need to be wise.

We need to be discerning.

We need to learn the difference between good and evil.

But cynical people, all they see is evil.

And they aren't interested in finding solutions to the problems they point out.

It is like pointing out the problems.

Here's the thing.

If you can't see the good in people, if you can't see the good in the world, if you can't

see the good in yourself, if you can't acknowledge a good idea, a good thought, or a good solution,

how on earth will you ever be happy?

How on earth will the gratitude ever flow?

That's a huge kink in your hose if you're one of those people.

That gratefulness flowing through that hose, you will not be a very happy person and you

will not be a very nice person to be around either.

In fact, the relationship research out there says that the level of criticism in a marriage

is directly related to the rate of divorce.

So cynicism, it doesn't make anybody happy.

Today though is Thanksgiving Sunday and what I want to encourage each of us to do is to

go back and look at your hose, your hose, not somebody else's hose.

Go back and look at your hose and see if you've got somewhere in there that kink of cynicism.

If so, I want to encourage you to adopt a different attitude.

I want to encourage you to adopt an attitude like the apostle Paul.

The apostle Paul had every reason to be cynical about life.

He was abused.

He was betrayed.

He was abandoned.

He suffered great hardship.

Paul could have looked at his life and said, it's horrible.

It's awful.

Isn't everything terrible?

But do you know what he in fact said?

He said, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

You know what he said?

He said, whatever is true and honorable and whatever is just and pure and lovely and commendable

and excellent, think about those things, Paul said.

Paul, he spoke about it in terms of love.

He said, love doesn't give up or find all the faults or just criticize.

They know love bears all things.

It believes all things.

Love hopes all things.

Love endures all things.

Please, if you're cynical today, make the decision to unkink your hose.

Say I do not want to live this way anymore.

I don't want to go through my whole life just fault finding and seeing the negative.

I want to start to see the good in the world, the good in others, and the good in God.

Because let's face it, God was not cynical.

God did not look at your life and only see the negative in you.

No, God looked at you and saw someone worth loving, someone worth saving, something very,

very good.

So that is the first kink in the hose of gratitude that we have to work out.

It's the kink of cynicism.

But it's only the first kink.

There's another kink that can surely cut off our ability to be thankful and be grateful

and just rob our life of happiness.

And that is the kink of comparison.

Whereas cynicism would say, hmm, life could be better.

Comparison says what that person has is better.

Comparison just drives so much of our thinking.

I'm not even sure we're aware of how much it controls us.

It's all about the err, our desire to be richer or better or wealthier or happier or smarter

or funnier or better looking err or whatever.

All those errors in our life.

And we end up using each other as measuring sticks.

Well, if I'm better than them, then I'll feel better about myself.

If they're worse than I feel better, and if they're better than I feel worse, it's a horrible,

horrible thing.

Now, there's just no way you can be happy when the kink of comparison is in your hose.

Our culture actually has two very powerful ways that it kinks our hoses and cramps them

up so that nothing can get through.

The first is advertising.

Every day, do you know, every day, you don't even know it.

Advertisers of advertisements are aimed at you with one goal, to make you unhappy, but

to say you could be happy if you had those shoes or that car or that house or if you

had that haircut or if you had, you know, fill in the blank.

That's what advertisers are trying to do.

They're twisting the hose of gratitude.

They're trying to cut it off.

They have to do that.

If they didn't do that, nobody would ever buy anything from them.

But secondly, social media.

Social media puts a major twist.

It mangles the hose of gratitude through comparison.

Research on social media is just so, so clear these days.

The rise of cell phones, the rise of social media, especially the rise of teenagers using

cell phones for social media is directly correlated like parallel lines with the rise of teen

depression, the rise of anxiety, the rise of self-harm.

Why do these curves follow the same trajectory?

It's because constant comparison devastates your soul, damages your heart, cuts off your

gratitude, destroys your happiness.

The 10th commandment, the last commandment, the one that we probably forget is you shall

not covet other people's possessions.

Don't compare yourself with what others have or who they are.

Why?

Why would God make a whole commandment based around this idea of comparing ourselves?

Because it's so dangerous, because it stops us from being grateful and therefore prevents

us from experiencing happiness in our life.

It's like this thing I said, it's like when somebody is doing worse, we feel better.

When someone is doing better, we feel worse.

Tell me, how can you ever lead a happy life if you go through your days thinking that

way?

The answer is you can't.

It cuts off your gratitude and dries up any hope of happiness that you'll have.

Teddy Roosevelt once said this, he said, comparison is the thief of joy.

And he was right.

So how do we get the gratitude flowing again and get rid of that kink of comparison?

Well, here's how.

First of all, don't fall for the advertisements.

The next time you're at home and you're watching television and some commercial comes on the

TV trying to sell you something that you just know, you just know you don't really need.

Why not just stand up and yell at the TV and say, what do you take me for?

You think I'm an idiot?

You think I'm going to fall for that?

I'm not stupid.

I'm serious.

We have to start recognizing what they are doing.

They're taking your hose, they're doing this.

And we have to say, give me my hose back and then unkink it and not let them do that to

us.

We have to be wise to what's happening.

But secondly, all I would say is let's just be very wary around our use of social media.

Limit our social media because with every scroll and with every tap and with every like

the hose twists and twists and twists.

So put it down and watch what happens.

The hose, the kink untwists, straightens out and the gratitude will begin to flow again.

I guarantee it will happen.

I guarantee it.

So let's remember this too, though, that rather than every time somebody is rejoicing, we

find ourselves mourning because they have more than us.

Or rather than every time someone else is mourning, we find ourselves rejoicing because

we're doing better than they are.

Let's remember what Paul said.

He said, rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn.

Stop comparing yourselves to each other or feeling better or worse about who you are

based on how they are doing.

Instead, pray for each other, do good for each other, and stop competing with each other.

Instead serve each other and you will see the hose untwists.

Your attitude will change.

Gratefulness will flow.

Happiness will grow.

So there's this first twist in our hose.

We call it cynicism.

There's the second kink in our hose that we call comparison.

Let's look at the third and final way that our hose gets kinked up, and that is what

I want to call conceit.

Conceit.

So here's the thing, right?

Whereas cynicism says, oh, what can I be thankful for in a world like this?

And comparison says, well, how can I possibly be thankful when they have that and I don't?

Well, conceit says, you want me to be thankful?

To who?

Right?

The only person around here to thank is me.

Conceited people have nothing to be grateful for because they see themselves as the sole

provider for everything that is good in their life.

I did it on my own.

I earned it on my own.

I made it on my own.

There's this old movie starring Jimmy Stewart.

It's called Shenandoah.

And there's this moment when the whole family is sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner and

they're saying grace.

And I just want to show you this.

Tell me, have you ever prayed a prayer like this even secretly in your heart?

Lord, we cleared this land.

We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it.

We cooked the harvest.

It wouldn't be here.

We wouldn't be eating it if we hadn't done it all ourselves.

We worked dog bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just same anyway,

Lord, for this food we're about to eat.

Amen.

Yeah.

You know, that's what conceit does.

It is this self-centered approach to life that forgets, as the book of Hebrews says,

that every good and perfect gift comes down from above.

You know, the book of Deuteronomy tells the story of when Israel came right to the brink

of entering into the promised land.

The promised land was truly something that had been given to them.

They couldn't have earned it for themselves.

It was a gift of God.

But God wanted to make sure that when they went into that land, they didn't fall prey

to conceit.

He knew our tendency is sometimes to take credit for ourselves.

And so what God says is, hey, if you start thinking to yourselves, I did all this and

all by myself.

I'm rich and it's all mine.

God says, wait, just think again.

Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength.

We must never mix up who God is and what God does and who we are and our part.

Now how do you work out the kink of conceit?

There's a couple of ways to do it.

One way is way easier than the other, but both of them work.

And I wouldn't advise this first way.

But one way is to simply keep on going with your life.

Keep on thinking you're in charge.

Keep on thinking you're in control.

Keep on thinking you're the master of everything.

And eventually you will, you will fail, you will fall, you will hit a wall, you will crash

and you will burn, and as your life crumbles down around you, you'll finally say, ah, I'm

not in charge of everything.

Oh, and it's not all up to me.

And in fact, it never was up to me.

And I never did do it on my own.

It was always, I can't control any of this.

And that is one of the great wake up calls that we'll have in life sometimes that will

help us work out that kink of conceit in our life.

Like I said, I don't recommend it.

There is a better way.

You don't have to go that route.

The better way is exactly what God told the Israelites in that previous piece of scripture.

He said, remember, he said, hey, remember what I have done for you.

Look back across your life and remember that I gave you the ability.

Remember I'm the one who created you.

I'm the one who gifted you.

I'm the one who decided you would be born in a time like this, in a place like this,

in a moment like this, with the opportunity like this right in front of you.

You did not do that.

You had nothing to do with that.

That was all me.

And also remember this, I think God would say, remember, I am the one who sent my son

to die for you.

You could not have done that.

You could not have saved yourself.

That is all me.

Only God is God.

And only you are you.

Meister Eckhart famously said, he said, if the only prayer you ever said in your whole

life was thank you, that would suffice.

Gosh, but it's such a hard prayer to pray, especially when we have that kink of conceit

in us.

But every time we pray it, every time we pray it, the kinks start to go, it starts to straighten

out, and the gratitude starts to flow, the happiness starts to grow.

So in closing, in closing, GK Chesterton said this once.

He said, the test of happiness is gratitude.

So if happiness isn't flowing in your life, it's time to test.

It's time to test your host.

Go back and see first, is there a kink there, the kink of cynicism?

Have you become so fixated on the negative things in life that you cannot see the good

anymore?

If so, then straighten it out and let the gratitude flow.

Keep going down and see if there's a kink of comparison there.

Are you all crumpled up because you're comparing yourself to other people?

You're so busy looking what other people have that you fail to see what God has given you?

Well, untwist that kink.

Let the gratitude start flowing through your life.

Or is it conceit?

Go down the hose.

Ah, there it is.

Are you the self-made woman, the self-made man, and you don't think you've got anyone

to thank and you take all the credit for yourself?

Don't wait for the crash.

Don't wait for the fall.

Don't wait till the pipe bursts.

But remember all that God has done for you and say, thank you.

Because happiness grows where gratitude flows.

Try it out and watch and see if a garden of happiness doesn't grow up all around you.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

And we hope that you found the sermon positive and inspiring.

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so that we can continue to spread the good news with others.

Come back again next week and thanks again for listening.

Today's sermon was taken from the October 8th, 2023 10 a.m. service at Trinity Church

Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.