{"id":37920,"date":"2025-10-28T22:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T05:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=37920"},"modified":"2025-10-21T17:14:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T00:14:19","slug":"251029-ripple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/251029-ripple\/","title":{"rendered":"Ripple Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-0  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  '   itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"text-align: right;\">by Max Lucado<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-37922 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251029_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251029_1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/251029_1-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The first Christians were joyful Christians. The phrase \u201cjoyful Christian\u201d is redundant. Do we need the adjective? Ideally, we should not have to put\u00a0<em>joyful<\/em>\u00a0in front of\u00a0<em>Christian<\/em>.\u00a0But we do because we tend to major in\u00a0<em>contingent<\/em>\u00a0joy and not\u00a0<em>courageous<\/em>\u00a0joy. Let\u2019s invite God to deposit unspeakable joy in our hearts.<\/p>\n<p>According to a study from sociologists at Harvard University, joy is contagious, spreading among friends, neighbors, and colleagues like the flu. Joy has a ripple effect. The pursuit of happiness is more than a line in the Declaration of Independence. It is a necessary step in enhancing the happiness of others. Is it time for you to bump up your joy level?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-37832 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1-300x34.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"34\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1-300x34.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1-line_1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>God Made Our Brains. He Can Retrain Our Brains.<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37576 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/time.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" \/>Stuck in your head? Hounded by regrets? Weighed down by worry? Change is possible! The thoughts that have characterized your past need not characterize the rest of your life.<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em><strong>Tame Your Thoughts<\/strong><\/em>, Max explores three key thought-management tools and then applies them to the most common thought problems: worry, guilt, anxiety, and other types of mental quicksand that threaten to trap us. God loves us too much to let us lead a life marked by poor thinking. He has not left us alone in this battle of the mind.<\/p>\n<p>shared with permission<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first Christians were joyful Christians. The phrase \u201cjoyful Christian\u201d is redundant. Do we need the adjective? Ideally, we should not have to put joyful in front of Christian. But we do because we tend to major in contingent joy and not courageous joy. Let\u2019s invite God to deposit unspeakable joy in our hearts.<\/p>\n<p>According to a study from sociologists at Harvard University, joy is contagious, spreading among friends, neighbors, and colleagues like the flu. Joy has a ripple effect. The pursuit of happiness is more than a line in the Declaration of Independence. It is a necessary step in enhancing the happiness of others. Is it time for you to bump up your joy level?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37923,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37920\/revisions\/37923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}