Merritt Song: #44 Morning Has Broken
Scripture: Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you, Isaiah 60:1.
Around 1985, 120 men from San Francisco had their first heart attacks, so they served as the untreated control group in the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial or MR FIT study. This study disappointed many cardiologists by showing no effect by training to change these men's personalities from type A aggressive to type B easygoing. The 120 untreated men however were of great interest because of their heart damage, blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass, and lifestyle, all traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The men were interviewed about their family, job, and hobbies. Videotaped interviews were coded for optimism and pessimism. Within eight years, half the men had died of a second heart attack, and experts opened the sealed envelope. Could it predict who would have a second heart attack?
None of the usual risk factors predicted death; not blood pressure, cholesterol, not even how extensive the damage from the first heart attack. Only optimism, eight years earlier, predicted if there would be a second heart attack! Of the 16 most pessimistic men, all but one died. Of the 16 most optimistic men, only five died.
1,306 veterans took the Minnesota Personality Inventory and were tracked for ten years. Smoking, alcohol use, blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass, family history of heart disease, education, anxiety, depression, and hostility were measured and all were controlled for statistically. Men who were most optimistic had 25 percent or 1/4 less heart disease than average. More than 20,000 healthy British adults were followed from 1996 to 2002. They measured social class, hostility, smoking and neuroticism. Sense of mastery was also measured by seven things: 1) I have little control over the things that happen to me. 2) There is really no way I can solve some of the problems I have. 3) There is little I can do to change many important things in my life. 4) I often feel helpless in dealing with the problems of life. 5) Sometimes I feel that I am being pushed around in life. 6) What happens to me in the future mostly depends on my choices. 7) I can do just about anything I really set my mind to do. These questions show helplessness to mastery.
Death from cardiovascular disease was strongly influenced by sense of mastery, with smoking, social class, and other variables constant. People high in mastery had 20 percent or 1/5th fewer deaths than those with an average sense of mastery. This was also true of deaths due to all causes and still significant of deaths from cancer. Dutch research studied 65 to 85 year-olds for 9 years. They measured health factors along with optimism, which was measured by answers on a range scale: 1) I still expect much from life. 2) I do not look forward to what lies ahead for me in years to come. 3) I am still full of plans. 4) I often feel life is full of promise. Optimists had only 23% rate of cardiovascular deaths of the pessimists, and only half the overall death rate compared to pessimists.
In Nova Scotia Health Survey, nurses rated positive emotions joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, contentment of 1,739 healthy adults. Over ten years, people with high positive emotion experienced less heart disease. 97,000 healthy women were followed 8 years until 2002. Optimism was measured by the well-validated Life Orientation Test which states: 1) In unclear times, I usually expect the best OR 2) If something can go wrong for me, it will. Optimists had 30%, 1/3 fewer coronary deaths than the pessimists. There is one trait similar to optimism in Japan which means having something worth living for, and in 3 Japanese studies this reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease, with traditional risk factors and stress. The death rate of men and women WITHOUT something worth living for was 160 percent higher than men and women with something worth living for. Men with a high sense of something to live for had only 28 percent risk of death from stroke and there was no association with heart disease.
Experts also found optimists take action and have healthier lifestyles. Optimists believe their actions matter, whereas pessimists believe they’re helpless, nothing they do will matter. Optimists try. When the surgeon general’s report on health came out in 1964, it was optimists who gave up smoking. Optimists want to take better care of themselves. People with high life satisfaction are much more likely to exercise regularly than people with lower life satisfaction. In one study, happy people sleep better than unhappy people. Optimists take action to avoid bad events, are more likely to seek safety in tornado warning than pessimists who believe the tornado is God’s will. The more bad events that befall you, the more illness occurs. The more friends, love and social support in your life, the less illness.
SONG: KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE
Experts found people who have one person whom they would be comfortable calling at 3 in the morning to tell their troubles were healthier. Don’t everyone start calling me at 3 in the morning, please! Lonely people are less healthy than sociable people. In one experiment, people read a script over the phone to strangers, reading in either depressed voice or cheerful voice. Strangers hung up on the pessimist sooner than on the optimist. People who kept social connections had less disability as they aged. Misery may love company, but company does not love misery.
Optimism affects the immune system. In 1991 experts took blood from seniors and tested immune response. Blood of optimists had feistier response to threat by producing more infection-fighting white blood cells T lymphocytes than the pessimists. Optimists cope better with stress. Repeated stress, especially when one feels helpless, causes stress hormone cortisol and other circulation responses that damage blood vessel walls and promote atherosclerosis. Unhappy people secrete more inflammatory substance interleukin-6 that results in more colds. Excessive production by the liver of fibrinogen, a substance used in clotting the blood, leads to more blood clots in the circulatory system by making the blood sludgy. People with high positive emotion show less fibrinogen response to stress than unhappy people.
For many years, I was not optimistic because I saw God as punishing, angry and full of wrath; I had to earn his acceptance as a human doing rather than a human being, and appease Him by following rules. I believed a Sabbath school teacher who said, “Angels follow you around to write down all the bad things you do.” With such negative beliefs, I was without hope. I would hear ministers preach, “Jesus is coming soon! Are you ready?” I would think, “Oh no, I’m not good enough to go to heaven.” I had to earn God's love because, come on, God can't love me for me, CAN HE?
Titus 3: 4-7, But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on basis of deeds we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. The dictionary defines optimism as hopefulness, faith in belief that good ultimately wins over evil in the world. Optimists have hope, and we as Christians should have GREATEST hope. Job 11:18, Having hope will give you courage. You will feel secure and will rest in safety. As God’s word changes my thinking, I become more optimistic.
SONG: STEP INTO THE SUNSHINE
Psalm 127:2, In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for He grants sleep to those He loves. Believe today God loves you. We don’t need to feel unworthy of love, never good enough, sad and miserable. You can go to sleep at night in the arms of Jesus, cradled in His love. Isaiah 57: 18-19, “I have seen what they do, but I will heal them ANYWAY! I will lead them and comfort those who mourn. Then words of praise will be on their lips. May they have peace, both near and far, for I will heal them," says the Lord. Trust in God’s unconditional love for you. He is able to heal our life, attitudes, emotions, and broken spirit.
Do you ever feel accused unjustly, condemned by people? Psalm 10: 17-18, You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, in order to provide justice for orphans and oppressed people so that no mere mortal will terrify them again. “Let not your heart be troubled,” Jesus said. Jesus bore everything that could EVER trouble you, so you could have His joy and your heart need never be troubled. Fret not yourself because of evildoers, neither be envious against workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shall you dwell in the land, and verily you shall be fed.
God’s promise doesn’t ask us to sit around passively for it to come about as if by magic. He instructs us to delight in the Lord. See everything according to God’s will of love. Spend time praising God, praising His children, praising Him even in our trials. We know whatever happens, God is in control of our universe. How can God who gave everything for you, who lay down His life for you, how can God want to harm you? Trust He is working for our best good, no matter how things look. Many times we are like children playing with a piece of broken glass thinking it’s so colorful and pretty when God has something better for us, but we are blind to see what is truly best. "Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us," Romans 5:5. There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be disappointed, Proverbs 23:18.
SONG: HE KNOWS MY NAME
For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out My Spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants, Isaiah 44:3. "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength," Nehemiah 8:10. And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like noonday, Isaiah 58:10.
Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are His riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand His decisions and His methods! For who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who knows enough to be His counselor? And who could ever give Him so much that He would have to pay it back? For everything comes from Him; everything exists by His power and is intended for His glory, Romans 11:33-36.
As Christians, we always have sense of mastery because we serve the Master of the Universe. We are not helpless, hopeless, pushed around by life. Hope gives us something to fix our minds on so destructive thinking has no place to take root. Hope cleanses us from being tied too tightly to circumstances of this life, giving us trust in eternal trustworthiness of God. People fail; God is trustworthy!
Those without hope have flatness of emotion, disorientation, lack of energy, and impaired ability, sometimes complete inability to perform tasks. But hope, known to experts as optimism, changes the course of life. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with you, Deuteronomy 4:31. We always have Jesus at 3 in the morning. Better a little with reverence for the Lord than great wealth with turmoil. Better to have a dish of vegetables where there is love than juicy steaks where there is hate, Proverbs 15:16-17. God replaces pessimism with faith, hope and love.
The psychological nature of hope is desire and expectation. An event we dread and fear, such as death, and the mind that dreads death does not hope for it, however certain death comes to all. Hope means desire for good. If we lose all hope, we think we desire death. No one hopes for what he knows or believes to be impossible. Christians know all good gifts come down from God above, so Christians desire good and expect good because God is good. People who don’t desire good or expect good because they don’t know God can’t be truly optimistic and have hope. Do we Christians EXPECT good? We know all things work together for good to those who love Jesus, Romans 8:28.
People do not leave Jesus because they have hope, but because their hope is not rooted in Jesus’ goodness. Hope that makes a man careless and prayerless, what’s it good for? Nothing, for true hope brings us closer to Jesus. Hope in Jesus cannot be kept secret. People talk of having secret hope and secret rapture, but hope in Jesus bubbles forth. We can’t keep hope from busting out.
Have you ever hoped to get something and when you finally get it you say, “Is this all?” Have you ever put all your hopes on a human then found their promises come to this, like a spouse who rejects you? When you hope in Jesus, you will declare like the Queen of Sheba that the half had not been told to her! The love of Jesus is far greater, deeper, wider, and higher than anything we ever hoped for. When you get to heaven, you will never say, “Is this all there is?” Eye has not seen nor ear heard how great heaven is, but the greatest thing about heaven is that Jesus, Who loves you, is there.
Optimists don’t worry about the future. Jesus said, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Luke 12:22-26. Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls, Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, He will make my feet like hinds' feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places. The Sovereign Lord is my strength! He makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the heights, Habakkuk 3:17-19.
The hind is a female deer whose home is the mountains. The rear feet of the hind step in precisely the same spot where the front feet have just been. Every motion of the hind is followed through with single-focused consistency, making it a sure-footed mountain animal. Do you know Jesus has some high spots for you? Places where air is fresh, the view breathtaking, noise far below, and paths big enough for you to walk with Jesus. With Jesus we have hinds' feet for high places.
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you, Isaiah 60:1. Christ-followers of all people are optimists. It’s good for our heart, health and happiness.
SONG: I CAN ONLY IMAGINE