Who's Your King?

Does God Want You to Be Happy?

The answer is yes, but perhaps not the way Joel Osteen and the like think. Read "Actually, God Does Want You To Be Happy" by Jade Mazarin at Relevant

Once upon a time, too many people saw God as a genie whose main purpose was to grant us our every wish. They believed every action in life was meant to bring happiness, and if it did, it would be what God wanted.

Then a backlash ensued against these ideas. A tidal wave of rebuttals addressed them, speaking out about deeper truths like purpose in suffering, and the fact that our happiness is not the litmus test for what’s good.

As a result, many people today state that while God is concerned with our growth, He is not so concerned with our happiness.

Today the idea of God wanting us to be happy is one that many Christians shy away from or refute. We’re OK with words like, “contentment” or “joy.” We believe those words contain an element of depth and holiness. "Happiness" though, well, that’s different. It reminds many of us of society’s definition of the meaning of life—like momentary satisfaction. It feels empty, irresponsible and even dangerous. It seems to squash the notion that God is Holy, wants us to grow or uses our suffering.

And sure, God is not a wish-granter, and our main purpose in life isn't consistent happiness. I have been through long seasons of intense trial and suffering, and they have changed me in priceless ways—ways I believe were divinely created.

But I think that while God allows and carefully uses seasons of difficulty, it is not His sole desire for us. When I look at His Word, I can see that He has a strong desire to even bring us—dare I say it—happiness, even if it’s not exactly how our culture would tend to define it.

Happiness Is in God’s Nature.

First of all, we see happiness in God’s very nature. Not only is He overflowing with love, He also brimming over with happiness.

Scripture says God “rejoices over us with singing.” This is not some uptight, stern judge who waits for us to mess up. This is a person who adores us, and whose very being is inclined toward happiness.

Scripture not only says God Himself is our strength; It also says His joy is our strength. Perhaps it’s time we paid more attention to His jovial heart.

Too often, we walk around with a heavy sense of seriousness. We are burdened with the belief that God Himself is serious, and our duty is to walk “just so” before Him. We become weak under the load. We think becoming lighthearted might mean becoming irresponsible.

But that’s not the way it has to be. Scripture not only says God Himself is our strength; It also says His joy is our strength. Perhaps it’s time we paid more attention to His jovial heart—one that can’t help but sing over His creation.

David praised God with singing and dancing, and sometimes we need to do that—get off that mental tight rope and just celebrate God’s good presence around us.

Hope Through Suffering

Of course, God’s desire for us to be happy doesn’t mean we won’t have times that we’re not. He takes us through seasons of suffering and difficulty, because He does desire more for us than only happiness; or what we think is happiness. He wants to refine our character, help us heal from the past and develop into our emotional and spiritual potential. This process often feels painful, and He doesn’t ask us to just pretend like everything’s OK and smile through it.

But the struggle is not the end of the story. And if we think God wants us to feel constantly miserable in order to make us holy, then we won’t grasp all of His love. The truth is, even the invitation to grow contains the desire of God to bring us to a deeper level of health, freedom—and therefore happiness.

He takes us through seasons of suffering and difficulty, because He does desire more for us than only happiness; or what we think is happiness

When we go through times of suffering, God wants us to keep sight of the hope that there’s more for us. In Isaiah, we see His passion to encourage the Israelites. Many years prior, they rebelled against God, and He distanced Himself from them. And yet, now He zealously proclaims that He is taking them back. He even wants to bless them more than they’ve ever been blessed before.

You can almost feel God’s excitement when He says, “They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isaiah 51:11).

Clearly, God doesn’t just want them to feel a little better. He wants their joy to be everlasting. He wants gladness and joy to overtake them.

Happiness doesn’t mean something that’s only surface level, even if people around us treat it that way. In fact, true happiness—happiness from God—is peaceful, safe and good. It’s genuine, and it isn’t based on situations that are empty or bad for us.

The Idol of Happiness

From When Happy Trumps Holy by Reecca Tekautz at Relevant:

...I would love to say that my experiences at the hands of "happy" are unique, but over the past year I have watched "happy" break apart multiple marriages, damage churches and shatter families. My heart aches as I watch the fallout that occurs when happy trumps holy. I watch friends—and myself—make life-changing decisions based on what would make them more happy instead of more holy.

I feel a little helpless, sitting back and watching as this adherence to happiness infects the Church like poison. Slowly, and sometimes silently, it seeps into our thoughts, our prayers, our relationships. 
We are drug addicts, endlessly searching for our latest fix. The moment the effects of our latest hit of happiness have worn off, we are in pursuit of the next. We cannot stop and sit in our pain, disappointment or emptiness. 

Why are we not pursuing holiness with the same passion with which we are pursuing happiness?

Happiness is our idol. Why are we not pursuing holiness with the same passion with which we are pursuing happiness? How have we come to allow ourselves to put more trust in a fleeting emotion than in a God who says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness ... Blessed are the poor in spirit ... Blessed are those who mourn"?
Happiness is a perilous thing. It focuses our attention on ourselves and how we are feeling in the moment. But moments change. People change. Happiness will not hold. It's a season—a side effect of when things are going well and your dopamine levels are up. Happiness is great to enjoy in the moment, but to spend a lifetime chasing it warps it into the idol we have made it out to be.

Happiness will not hold. It's a season.

Happiness is not something to pursue. Holiness is something to pursue.


When we pursue happiness, it breaks and fractures relationships. It pits your happiness against my happiness. Acting for your own happiness will almost always end up breaking someone else's. In pursuing happiness, everything becomes a commodity. We judge everything by the value of how happy it will make us. When it doesn't make us happy anymore, it's time to move on and find what will get us the next hit.

And we don't just do this with objects. We treat people the same way. We throw away relationships, friendships and marriages when they don't add value to our happiness anymore. We walk away from them, choose to pursue "happy" instead.


I praise a Jesus who does not walk away from His bride—flawed though she is. Christ spent His entire time on earth not teaching us how to be happy, but how to be holy. He is the perfect example of what it looks like to sacrifice humanly happiness for God’s holiness. His ragtag group of disciples irritated Him and argued with Him and each other, and He always knew one was destined to betray Him. But He spent time with them anyway, teaching them, loving them, pushing them to grow in holiness. The cross didn't make Him happy, either. Christ was in distress, in pain, and he died

Happy

HT: Bruce Van Horn @BruceVH

Greatest Source of Happiness

HT: Ziglar.com

Grateful Happiness

Happiness

Finish As You Began

"Every day I find it most healthy to my own soul to try and walk as a saint, but in order to do so, I must continually come to Christ as a sinner. I would seek to be perfect. I would strain after every virtue, and forsake every false way. But still, as to my standing before God, I find it happiest to sit where I sat when first I looked to Jesus, on the rock of His works, having nothing to do with my own righteousness, but only with His.

Depend on it, dear Friends, the happiest way of living is to live as a poor sinner, and as nothing at all—having Jesus Christ as All in All. You may have all your growths in sanctification, all your progress in graces, all the development of your virtues that you will. But still I do earnestly pray you never to put any of these where Christ should be. If you have begun in Christ, then finish in Christ. If you have begun in the flesh, and then go on in the flesh, we know what the sure result will be. But if you have begun with Jesus Christ as your Alpha, let Him be your Omega. "
— Charles Spurgeon   The Blessing of Full Assurance: Sermons on 1 John

HT: Of First Importance

Worth a Look

Links Worth a Look:

Not All Weakness is Sin

We Have Forgotten the Art of Dying Well

Happiness is Not Just About Doing Things You Like

A Dozen Things God Does With Our Sin

7 Unconventional Reasons Why You Absolutely Should Be Reading Books

Top 10 Books on Charismatic Theology

Continualist Christians: An Overview and Brief History from CT Magazine

Does God Want Me Happy?

Is Joel Olsteen right? Does God want me (and you) to be happy above all else?  Not so fast, says Tim Keller:

“Is God committed to your happiness? Absolutely, and yet if you come to him to make you happy, you’re coming to a false god. If you say, ‘Well, I’m interested in this Christianity, and maybe I’ll come and bite on it if I can see it will help me reach my goals and make me happy.’ You’re not coming to God; you’re coming to a butler. Either God exists or he doesn’t exist. If he doesn’t exist you can’t come to him for happiness, right? But if he does exist, you have to realize you must come to him because he created you, and therefore, he owns you.

To not come to him and obey him would be an injustice. The only way to come to God rightly, the real God, is to come without conditions and to say, ‘Forget happiness. I owe you everything.’ There are only two ways to come to God. You can come to God on the basis of saying, ‘I owe you everything; you owe me nothing,’ or you can come on the basis of saying, ‘I’m going to come to you, but then you owe me a lot.’ The only way for you to know on what basis you have come is to see what happens in the bad seasons.

When things go wrong, do you get upset and say, ‘What good did it do me to come to church? What good did it do me to read the Bible?’ Do you know what that shows? You came to him on the basis of saying, ‘I will do this and this, as you owe me.’ In other words you’re saying, ‘My number one priority is happiness, and I’m using God as a way to get there’ as opposed to saying, ‘My number one priority is to serve God, and if happiness happens, great. To the degree it happens, great.’

Here is the irony: the less you’re concerned about your happiness and the more you’re concerned about him, the happier you get. This is not a trick. You can’t say, ‘Oh, great. I have it. I come to God, and I say this and this and this.’ You cannot bandy with the omnipotent and omniscient Lord of the universe. ‘Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.’ Happiness is a by-product.”

HT: Peter Cockrell

Jesus Did Not Come...

• Jesus did not come to make us happy. He came to make us holy.
• Jesus did not come to make good people better. He came to make dead people live.
• Jesus did not come to make your marriage happy. He came to transform two sinners into a picture of his self-giving love for us and of our proper response to him.
• Jesus did not come to give you your best life now. He came to bring you into his best life for eternity.
• Jesus did not come so you could ask him into your life. He came to call you into his life.
• Jesus did not come to improve your story. He came to bring you into his story.
• Jesus did not come to make your life into a comfortable cottage for your pleasure.  He came to make your life a majestic palace for his presence.

Doubled By Wonder

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

                    - G. K. Chesterton

The Far Side

I want to reemphasize one line from the Tim Keller quote in the previous post:

"If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not on the near side."

Wow! Just totally wow.

Holiness and Happiness in Marriage

From Tim Keller's new book mentioned in the previous post:

"A parishioner heard me preach on Ephesians 5, where Paul says that the purpose of marriage is to “sanctify” us. She said, “I thought the whole point of marriage was to be happy! You make it sound like a lot of work.” She was right—marriage is a lot of work—but she was wrong to pit that against happiness, and here is why. Paul is saying that one of the main purposes of marriage is to make us “holy . . . without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish” (verses 26–27). What does that mean? It means to have Jesus’s character reproduced in us, outlined as the “fruit of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithful integrity, gentle humility, and self-control—in Galatians 5:22–25.

When Jesus’s love, wisdom, and greatness are formed in us, each with our own unique gifts and callings, we become our “true selves,” the persons we were created to be. Every page in the Bible cries that the journey to this horizon cannot be accomplished alone. We must face it and share it with brothers and sisters, friends of our heart. And the very best human friendship possible for that adventure is with the lover-friend who is your spouse.

Is all this a lot of work?

Indeed it is—but it is the work we were built to do. Does this mean “marriage is not about being happy; it’s about being holy”? Yes and no. As we have seen, that is too stark a contrast. If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not on the near side. Holiness gives us new desires and brings old desires into line with one another.

So if we want to be happy in marriage, we will accept that marriage is designed to make us holy."

- Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, pages 132-133

Hat Tip: Take Your Vitamin Z

Path to Happiness

Hat Tip:  22 Words

No Such Thing

“God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”

        ― C.S. Lewis
 

It is Jesus...

“It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal”.

              – Pope John Paul II

Hat Tip: The Anchoress

Beings Capable of Happiness

"I serve You and worship You that I may be happy in You, to whom I owe that I am a being capable of happiness."

--St. Augustine, Confessions; quoted in David Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Eerdmans, 2008), 21

Almost sounds like something written by John Piper, doesn't it?

Hat Tip: Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology

Failed Script Writers

"The salvation that God promises in Christ requires my death.... I no longer can see God as existing to make me happy, to satisfy my felt needs, even to give me a sense of well being and add a few suggestions to improve my life. He comes to kill me and to make me alive. Repentance means I give up my script; I stop pretending that I can write the story of my life. Through faith in Christ, I become a character in God's story, part of the new creation."

-Michael Horton, The Gospel Driven Life, pages 116-117