One day a Godly women at True Love Christian Church told me to keep my smile on. It was interesting since I never had paid attention to my smile. their is always something going on in my mind all the time. I didn’t feel smiling was that important. I tried it one day and much to my surprise it really worked. I felt a peace that I hadn’t felt in a long time. What came to my realized is; the more I smiled the better thoughts I had about my day and my situation. Your smiling works for you. In a 2012 study published in the journal Psychological Science, University of Kansas psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman studied 170 participants who were told to hold chopsticks in their mouths in three formations, making them smile to various degrees without realizing it, after performing a stressful task. The experiment revealed that subjects who smiled the biggest with the chopsticks experienced a substantial reduction in heart rate and quicker stress recovery compared to those whose expressions remained neutral. So smiling really does work!
The question you are probably wondering now is how in the world am I suppose to smile all the time and I have all of these issues robbing me of my joy? The Bible talks about rejoicing but the Bible says that for sustained rejoicing you need to remember some thinking guidelines found in Philippians 4.
whatever is true,
whatever is right,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable—
if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:6
Smiling coupled with the right things to think on will cause you to grow through any situation. Your mind opens up to the spiritual things of God. We cant be neutral in our facial expressions. We must focus hard on the things that brings rejoicing. Don’t be anxious, it causes us to focus on whats wrong all the time. Leading to anxiety. The truth is, you are destined for so much more.
Knowing this, lets do a spring “spiritual deep cleaning” that will change the next seasons of our life. What bad habits, broken mindsets of negativity and rusty attitude must I clean out today to cleanse me of “duty” service and return me to “refreshing” service. The joy of the lord is our strength so lets work hard to “Keep our smile” on today!