The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life

I knew a Christian lady who had a very heavy temporal burden. It took away her sleep and her appetite, and there was danger of her health breaking down under it. One day, when it seemed especially heavy, she noticed lying on the table near her a little tract called, “Hannah’s Faith.” Attracted by the title, she picked it up and began to read it, little knowing, however, that it was to create a revolution in her whole experience.

The story was of a poor woman who had been carried triumphantly through a life of unusual sorrow. She was giving the history of her life to a kind visitor on one occasion, and at the close the visitor said, feelingly, “Oh, Hannah, I do not see how you could bear so much sorrow!”

“I did not bear it,” was the quick reply; “the Lord bore it for me.”

“Yes,” said the visitor “that is the right way. You must take your troubles to the Lord.”

“Yes,” replied Hannah, “but we must do more than that; we must leave them there. Most people,” she continued, “take their burdens to Him, but they bring them away with them again, and are just as worried and unhappy as ever. But I take mine, and I leave them with Him, and come away and forget them. And if the worry comes back, I take it to Him again; I do this over and over, until at last I just forget that I have any worries and am at perfect rest.”

My friend was very much struck with this plan and resolved to try it. The circumstances of her life she could not alter, but she took them to the Lord, and handed them over into His management; and then she believed that He took it, and she left all the responsibility and the worry and anxiety with Him. As often as the anxieties returned, she took them back; and the result was that, although the circumstances remained unchanged, her soul was kept in perfect peace in the midst of them. She felt that she had found out a blessed secret, and from that time she tried never again to carry her own burdens, nor to manage anything for herself.

And the secret she found so effectual in her outward affairs, she found to be still more effectual in her inward ones, which were in truth even more utterly unmanageable. She abandoned her whole self to the Lord, with all that she was and all that she had, and, believing that He took that which she had committed to Him, she ceased to fret and worry, and her life became all sunshine in the gladness of belonging to Him. And this was the Higher Christian Life! It was a very simple secret she found out. Only this, that it was possible to obey God’s commandment contained in those words, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” [Philippians 4:6]; and that, in obeying it, the result would inevitably be, according to the promise, that “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” [Philippians 4:7]

 “Here, Lord, I abandon myself to Thee. I have tried in every way I could think of to manage myself, and to make myself what I know I ought to be but have always failed. Now I give it up to Thee. Do thou take entire possession of me. Work in me all the good pleasure of Thy will. Mould and fashion me into such a vessel as seemeth good to Thee. I leave myself in Thy hands, and I believe Thou wilt, according to Thy promise, make me into a vessel unto Thine honor, ‘sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.’ [II Timothy 2:21]”

And here you must rest, trusting yourself thus to Him continually and absolutely. Next, you must lay off every other burden — your health, your reputation, your Christian work, your houses, your children, your business; everything, in short, that concerns you, whether inward or outward.

Smith, Hannah W. The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life (p. 16-17). Brownstone Books.

Hannah Whitall Smith (1832-1911) was a Quaker who wrote this gem of a book in 1875. It became a worldwide bestseller.

At WitnessCoins.com we are not Quakers, but we are Christians and this simple, yet powerful message has changed many lives. Be Blessed!! 😊