A cheerful heart is good medicine

Proverbs 17:22 (NIV)

A cheerful heart is good medicine, 
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

King Solomon wrote these words over 3,000 years ago that are as true today as they were then.  You can do an internet search and find several medical articles published that affirm this truth that laughter, a positive attitude, contentment, and being of good cheer, any and all, are proven prophylactics against ill health.   For example, the American Heart Association (www.american heart.org) in 2003 published an article that laughter may help to prevent heart attacks.  Mental health is better when people have an optimistic attitude rather than being pessimistic.  Research at the Stanford Longevity Center reports that “feeling upbeat about your life means you experience less stress, which in turn affects cortisol levels, which can affect health…….having more positive emotions than negative ones is associated with living longer.”  You know that contentment gives peace of mind and peace of mind diminishes the harmful effects of stress such as high blood pressure, heart problems, and ulcers.  James 3:8 writes how an angry tongue from a crushed spirit will cause great stress: “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

There’s the famous story of author and editor Norman Cousins who was diagnosed as having an incurable disease. He was bedridden & the doctors gave him no hope at all. So he decided on his own treatment. His family got a movie projector & rented all the Charlie Chaplin & Abbott & Costello movies that they could find - movies where you just sit back & laugh because they are genuinely funny.

He ran one movie after another, & the more he watched the more he laughed. The more he laughed, the better he felt. First thing you know, the doctors could find no evidence of the incurable disease.

Cousins became a staff member of the UCLA School of Medicine and pioneered a new medical discipline called "psychoneuro-immunology."

By controlling your mind set, you can alter you're your body temperature, blood pressure and blood chemistry.   Cousins work with cancer patients showed that liberating them from being depressed can  activate the anti-cancer capability of the immune system.  Cousins example and subsequent work exemplified the truth of Proverbs 17:22.  If you have joy in your heart, you are receiving good medicine that can help you live better, even survive fatal diseases.  But, if your spirit is so crushed that you cannot experience joy, you will become old and tired (“your bones dry up”). 

Plus, think about it………who wants to be around a crushed spirit, someone who is pessimistic and negative and likely always complaining and grumbling?  Everyone likes to be around someone with a cheerful spirit.  A cheerful heart not only is good medicine, but it allows the Holy Spirit to work in and through a person to do so much good for the world around him/her.   A cheerful heart never gives up, always speaks positively, encourages others, and affects everything you think, say, act, and feel.

How do you obtain and keep a cheerful heart?  Are you someone naturally born with a positive outlook on life?  Perhaps, but most people tend to side toward the “glass half empty” view of life.   Life is filled with disappointments, failures, losses, regrets, mistakes, and other negative aspects that all these things simply tend to make us more negative than positive in our outlook toward life.  That’s the human view and perspective apart of the controlling influence of God’s Holy Spirit.  But, a life that determines to allow God’s Holy Spirit to control one’s life is a life that gets transformed from looking at things negatively from a human perspective to looking at things positively from a godly perspective. 

So, indeed, there are so many advantages to having a cheerful heart.  It’s simply good medicine.  In fact, the Hebrew word used for medicine is “gahah” that means to remove a bandage from a wound, that the wound is cured.  A cheerful heart cures us of many potentially negative and harmful effects in our lives.  However, to be cheerful in this world is so much easier said than done.  You truly have to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision to the flesh in regards to its lusts” (Romans 13:14).  It’s this solid, sincere faith in the Lord that will make the difference in your life’s outlook, whether you see things in a cheerful way or in a joy-less, negative way.  As always, it’s a matter of faith and God always gives you the free will to choose.

“Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.  Optimism doesn’t wait on facts, it deals with prospects.  Pessimism is a waste of time.”—Norman Cousins