Had a cool experience over the weekend. I was driving over to my mom’s and on the way there was just praying that I would live the day with the Lord as the most important thing. I would also work on applying myself to add virtue to my faith. As I was driving, I began to notice that I wasn’t worried about getting in front of the slower people anymore. I was just content where I was. The entire weekend, I was a more contented and less anxious driver. From a previous post, I noted that driving was an area where I often show a noticeable lack of compassion and virtue. In trying to work on this, I’m looking for areas where I can start with concrete actions. Later in the process of adding virtue to my life, growth will move more to interior areas, which are much more difficult to work on, but at least with things like ‘using bad words’, it is a concrete area to measure.
Just as had been mentioned in a few previous posts as well, ‘thinking on these things’ (Phil 4:8) worked. I applied myself to think about the Lord, and the negative thoughts just took a back seat. And as Pastor Fusco said (in another earlier post) about self-control: the desire to know the Lord translated to not wanting to do the things that would break that.
This morning as I was praying, I was thinking back to Saturday when I was driving over to mom’s, and I realized that as I was asking the Lord to make me a more virtuous person that morning, I decided to start with an outward appearance, and just smile. So I was practicing smiling as I was driving over to the store to shop for Mom and it was probably that simple act of smiling and thinking about God’s goodness towards me, that led me to relax and be more content. So…. this morning I decided I would try to chase after joy by generally being a more pleasant person, and that could start by smiling more. To help me do that, I would look up some verses on joy.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23
“Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” John 16:24