You have a duty to perform, which is to make yourself cheerful and to cultivate unselfishness in your feelings until it will be your greatest pleasure to make all around you happy. . . .
Cheerfulness without levity is one of the Christian graces.
Do not allow the perplexities and worries of everyday life to fret your mind and cloud your brow. If you do, you will always have something to vex and annoy. Life is what we make it, and we shall find what we look for. If we look for sadness and trouble, if we are in a frame of mind to magnify little difficulties, we shall find plenty of them to engross our thoughts and our conversation. But if we look on the bright side of things, we shall find enough to make us cheerful and happy. If we give smiles, they will be returned to us; if we speak pleasant, cheerful words, they will be spoken to us again.
It is Satan's studied plan to push persons from one extreme to the other. As children of the light, God would have us cultivate a cheerful, happy spirit, that we may show forth the praises of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.
Go into a cellar, and you may well talk of darkness, and say, "I cannot see; I cannot see." But come up into the upper chamber, where the light shines, and you need not be in darkness. Come up where Christ is, and you will have light.
Earnest Christians seek to imitate Jesus, for to be Christians is to be Christlike. . . . A hearty, willing service to Jesus produces a sunny religion. . . . In Christ is light and peace and joy forevermore. ML 195
It is by communion with Him, daily, hourly--by abiding in Him--that we are to grow in grace. SC 69
We say they are happy because they did not give up. You have heard about Job's patience, and you know the Lord's purpose for him in the end. You know the Lord is full of mercy and is kind. James 5:11 (New Century Version)