{"id":4497,"date":"2016-09-08T22:45:56","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=4497"},"modified":"2016-09-08T22:48:53","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:48:53","slug":"rechannel-our-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=4497","title":{"rendered":"Rechannel Our Efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Happiness is not happenstance, but rather it involves a profound spiritual discipline.  If I want to be strong, I don&#8217;t sit around waiting until I&#8217;m strong enough to lift weights; rather, I lift weights in order to become strong.  To accept joy as a commandment is to admit that it doesn&#8217;t come to one effortlessly but requires the cooperation of the will to achieve.  Like salvation, joy is a free gift of God that cannot be earned, yet even a gift must be opened and actively enjoyed by the recipient.  It takes energy to &#8220;shout for joy to the Lord,&#8221; but it takes just as much energy (or more) to be miserable.  Why not rechannel our efforts into something more fun?<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Mike Mason, <em>Champagne for the Soul<\/em>, p. 24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happiness is not happenstance, but rather it involves a profound spiritual discipline. If I want to be strong, I don&#8217;t sit around waiting until I&#8217;m strong enough to lift weights; rather, I lift weights in order to become strong. To accept joy as a commandment is to admit that it doesn&#8217;t come to one effortlessly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}