Live a Little
A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all got around to doing a little living while were going through this life doing all the things we think we are supposed to do?
Because my childhood had been stolen from me, I never learned to be childlike. I never learned to “lighten up” and “live a little.” I was always uptight about everything.
But Dave was the type who enjoyed life regardless of what was going on around him. Although I may never have the ability to be like him because of the differences in our personalities, I have learned I can be much happier and more lighthearted than I was.
As a minister of the Gospel, I have a huge responsibility. I have to work hard at what I have been called to do, and I love it. I really do enjoy my work. But if I am not careful, I can become stressed and burned out. That's why I have to make an effort to apply verses like Proverbs 17:22 and develop a happy heart and a cheerful mind.
If you and I are not emotionally balanced, our entire lives will be affected. I truly believe if we don't learn to laugh more, we are going to get into serious trouble. Because, as the Bible teaches, laughter is like medicine. There have been many articles written in recent years stating that medical science now confirms laughter can be instrumental in bringing healing to the body. Laughter is like internal jogging — in many ways as good as physical exercise.
We all need to laugh more. But sometimes we have to do it on purpose.
We have seen how children enjoy life, how they make a game of everything. Another thing they do is giggle all the time. I have seen this in my grandchildren. As they run and play throughout the house, everything they do is punctuated by giggles.
Now I realize that as adults we are not supposed to go through life giggling like children. If we did, we might get fired from our job or, even worse, get sent to a mental facility for examination.
The point I am making is, if we get too serious, we can cause damage to ourselves and to those with whom we come in contact. We need a balance of fun and responsibility.
In my own life, I was so serious I thought I couldn't or shouldn't have anything to do with anything I considered frivolous. It was very hard to get me to laugh at anything. But for a child, it doesn't take very much at all. To him, everything is funny.
We need to find more humor in our everyday lives. And one of the first things we need to learn to laugh at is ourselves. Instead of getting all upset at our human mistakes and shortcomings, we need to learn to laugh at our failures and foibles.
There is nothing funnier than human beings. As Art Linkletter used to say on his old radio and television shows, “People are funny!” And that includes us. We need to recognize that fact and become more attuned to the playful child within each of us.
God Gave Us a Child
When they saw the star, they were thrilled with ecstatic joy.
And on going into the house, they saw the Child with Mary His mother, and they fell down and worshiped Him. Then opening their treasure bags, they presented to Him gifts — gold and frankincense and myrrh.
And receiving an answer to their asking, they were divinely instructed and warned in a dream not to go back to Herod; so they departed to their own country by a different way.
Now after they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Get up! [Tenderly] take unto you the young Child and His mother and flee to Egypt; and remain there till I tell you [otherwise], for Herod intends to search for the Child in order to destroy Him. Matthew 2:10-13
We recognize this passage as part of the Christmas story. The Child spoken of here is Baby Jesus, and those who came and fell down and worshiped Him, presenting Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, are, of course, the Wise Men.
I am recalling this story because I want to emphasize the point that when God looked down from heaven and saw our lost condition, His answer was to send us a Child, as we read in Isaiah 9:6: For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father [of Eternity], Prince of Peace.
The Father sent us a Child to deliver us, and right away King Herod set out to destroy that Child.
In the same way, God has given each of us an inner child, and the enemy has set out to destroy that child within us.
The devil is after our childlikeness. He does not want us to be free like little children.
Children Are Free
We have considered some of the characteristics of a child.
One of the most important of these traits is that children are free. They are not concerned with what people think.
Some time ago I watched two young children during a church service. The little boy had brought his toy microphone with him. He was all dressed up in his Sunday suit and during the praise and worship part of the service, he was singing into that toy microphone, holding it up and turning this way and that just like he was performing in front of a huge audience.
The mother of the little girl had obviously let her come to church directly from dance class because she was still wearing her ballet costume. While the little boy was singing enthusiastically into his microphone, she was dancing around like a ballerina.
They were thoroughly enjoying themselves, and they didn't care what anybody thought about it. They were not yet old enough to have come under the bondage of, “What will people think?”
Sometimes it takes a great step of faith to overcome our inhibitions and give free expression to our pent-up emotions, regardless of the opinion of others. That's when we need to exhibit and enjoy the freedom of a child.
Avoiding Phariseeism
Then were our mouths filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing. Then they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them.
The Lord has done great things for us! We are glad! Psalm 126:2,3
I was watching a Christian television talk show in which the participants were talking about the laughing revival that is sweeping the land.
Someone asked the host of the show if he thought it was of God.
“Does it offend your mind?” the host asked.
“Yes, it does,” answered the person who had raised the question.
“Well, then,” responded the host, “it's probably of God.”
I don't know if you ever noticed it or not, but Jesus went around offending people all the time. It sometimes seems He did it on purpose.
In Matthew 15:12 we read, Then the disciples came and said to Him, Do You know that the Pharisees were displeased and offended and indignant when they heard this saying? Jesus' answer to them was: Let them alone and disregard them; they are blind guides and teachers. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a ditch (v. 14). Jesus knew exactly how to get to the self-righteous Pharisees.
We must be on our guard against Phariseeism. If the truth were known, the Church today is full of Pharisees.
I used to be one of them.
In fact, I was a chief Pharisee. I was rigid, legalistic, boring, out to impress others, humorless, critical, judgmental, and on and on. I was on my way to heaven, but I wasn't enjoying the trip.
You and I need to get out of our straightjackets. Jesus was not sent into this world to bind us up but to set us free. We need to be free to express our thanksgiving and praise to Him for all the great things He has done, is doing, and is going to do for us.
Now I don't mean by that statement we are to go through life trying to see how ridiculous we can act from daylight to dark. I am not talking about weirdness and fanaticism, I am talking about freedom and joy. I am talking about being liberated from the shackles of pharisaical religion so that we can freely follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Protect and Preserve the Inner Child
And having risen, he took the Child and His m
other by night and withdrew to Egypt
And remained there until Herod's death. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, Out of Egypt have I called My Son.
Then Herod, when he realized that he had been misled by the wise men, was furiously enraged, and he sent and put to death all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that territory who were two years old and under, reckoning according to the date which he had investigated diligently and had learned exactly from the wise men. Matthew 2:14-16
Again we see illustrated in this story how the devil seeks after the child in each of us to destroy it.
That's why we must be vigilant not to allow him to destroy that inner child the Lord has placed within us to keep us from giving into and being controlled by our pharisaical nature.
Becoming, Receiving, Accepting, and Welcoming a Little Child
Whoever will humble himself therefore and become like this little child [trusting, lowly, loving, forgiving] is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives and accepts and welcomes one little child like this for My sake and in My name receives and accepts and welcomes Me. Matthew 18:4,5
You and I must humble ourselves and become as little children. We must also learn to receive, accept, and welcome the child within us. But some of us have a hard time doing that because we are striving so hard to become spiritually mature.
In one place in the Bible, we are told to grow up into Christ (Eph. 4:15), and here we are told by Jesus to become like a little child. The truth is that we are to do both.
The Lord wants us to grow up in our attitude, behavior, and acceptance of responsibility. At the same time He wants us to be childlike in our dependence upon Him and in our free expression of our feelings toward Him.
A good example is found in Matthew 19:14 in which we read what happened when Jesus' disciples tried to keep children from coming to Him: … He said, Leave the children alone! Allow the little ones to come to Me, and do not forbid or restrain or hinder them, for of such [as these] is the kingdom of heaven composed.
“Leave the children alone!” Isn't that a wonderful statement? Just as Jesus received, accepted, and welcomed the little children who came to Him, so we must receive, accept, and welcome the little child God has placed within each of us.
Children need to feel safe and secure and cared for. They need to be able to express their feelings and emotions fully and freely. So do we.
Unstop the Wells!
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:13,14 kjv
In His conversation with the woman at the well, Jesus said those of us who believe in Him will have within us a well of water springing up continually. But if that well gets stopped up, then we have a problem. Because the water within us cannot flow, it becomes stagnant.
If your life is stale and polluted, it may be because your well of living water has been filled up with stones by the enemy, as was done in Old Testament days.
In 2 Kings 3:19 the Lord told the Israelites who were being attacked by the Moabites: You shall smite every fenced city and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree and stop all wells of water and mar every good piece of land with stones.
In those days, stopping up wells with stones was one of the weapons used to defeat one's enemies. Our enemy, the devil, still uses that weapon against us today.
I believe that you and I are born with a nice, clean flowing well within us. As children, we still have that well flowing freely. But through time our enemy, Satan, comes along and starts throwing stones into that well: stones of abuse, hurt, rejection, abandonment, misunderstanding, bitterness, rejection, resentment, self-pity, revenge, depression, hopelessness, and on and on. By the time we have become adults, our wells are so filled with stones that they have become stopped up and no longer flow freely within us.
Every now and then we may feel a little gurgle down inside. But we never seem to experience the full release that is needed for our wells of water to flow freely once again.
It is interesting that when Jesus went to raise His friend Lazarus from the dead, He ordered, Take away the stone (John 11:39). I believe the Holy Spirit wants to take away the stones that have been clogging our wells of living water.
When alcoholics and drug addicts speak of getting drunk or high on drugs, they call it getting “stoned.” With us it is just the opposite. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we get “unstoned” so that our lives can overflow with living water.
Living Water
Now on the final and most important day of the Feast, Jesus stood, and He cried in a loud voice, If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink!
He who believes in Me [who cleaves to and trusts in and relies on Me] as the Scripture has said, From his innermost being shall flow [continuously] springs and rivers of living water.
But He was speaking here of the Spirit, Whom those who believed (trusted, had faith) in Him were afterward to receive. For the [Holy] Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified (raised to honor). John 7:37-39
Notice in this passage Jesus did not say that from those who believe in Him there will flow rivers of living water once in a while. He said these rivers of living water will flow continuously.
That living water is the Holy Spirit. What Jesus was talking about here is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which we (who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior) have received — the Person and the power of the Holy Spirit in us.
The river of living water flows within you and me. It is not supposed to be stopped up, but it is to bubble up within us and flow out of us. And we can release the power of that living water in an even greater measure by receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit. (Please write to my ministry at the address in the back of the book to obtain more information about this experience.) What we have to learn to do is to go with the flow.
Go With the Flow
“Go with the flow” has a double meaning for me because of an incident which I describe in great detail in another of my books.1
When my children were small, several times a week, it seemed, one of them would spill a glass of milk at the dinner table. Each time I would immediately fly into a rage and into action to clean up the spill because the milk would run all over the table, down into the crack in the table where the leaf was inserted, and down the table legs.
One day while I was under the table during dinner on all fours in a raging tantrum sopping up the mess, the Holy Spirit ministered to me that all the fits in the world would not cause the milk to run up the table legs and back into the glass. Because my children were small, they were going to spill things. The Holy Spirit taught me just to go with the flow.
From that experience I learned to laugh at things that used to upset me. When things go wrong in our lives, Dave and I have learned to say, “I'm not impressed, Satan, you're not impressing me at all.”
I have figured out that if we don't let the devil impress us, then he can't oppress us.
Here is another instance in which we have got to learn to use the weapon of laughter against the enemy.
The Laugh of Faith
The wicked plot against the [uncompromisingly] righteous (the upright in right standing with God); they gnash at them with their teeth.
The Lord laughs at [the wicked], for He sees that their own day [of defeat] is coming. Psalm 37:12,13
The Bible teaches that the Lord sits in heaven and laughs at His enemies because He knows the day of their defeat is coming.
That is what I call “the laugh of faith.”
Do you remember Abraham's reaction in Genesis 17:17 when God told him that his wife Sarah would bear a child in her old age and become a mother of nations?
He laughed.
Then in Genesis 1
8:10-12 when Sarah overheard the Lord repeating this promise to Abraham, she also laughed.
So when the child of promise was born, Abraham and Sarah did as the Lord commanded and named him Isaac, meaning “laughter.” (Gen. 17:19.)
Do you know what I believe that says to us? I believe it says that if we will wait on the promises of God and learn to be inheritors instead of laborers, we will end up laughing. We will be giving birth to Isaacs, not Ishmaels.
Laughter Unstops the Wells
And Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham. … Genesis 26:18
One of the things Isaac did when he was grown was to unstop the wells of his father Abraham which their enemies had stopped up. We can understand this to mean that laughter and joy in the Holy Spirit will unstop our wells.
You and I don't have to labor over this issue or become extremely philosophical about it. We just need to become like little children.
Regardless of our age, if we are to enter the Kingdom of God we need to become like little children, just as Jesus spoke of in Luke 18:17.
The Kingdom of God is available to us at the moment of the New Birth. But in order to enter into it and enjoy it to the full, here and now, we must become like little children.
It is interesting to note how many times the writers of the New Testament referred to the followers of Jesus as “little children.”
For example, in 1 John 4:4, we read, Little children, you are of God [you belong to Him] and have [already] defeated and overcome them [the agents of the antichrist], because He Who lives in you is greater (mightier) than he who is in the world.