Unhappy, be Happy!

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11 ESV)

Are you happy in your life? I know many people who are not happy. There is a commonality among those I know who are not happy: They admitly are not right with the Lord.

We all try to use “things” to make us happy, and they may for a fleeting moment. You may take a trip and thoroughly enjoy yourself, and when you return home, the unhappiness settles back in. Sin makes us happy. For the most part, we can find pleasure in sin. Again, fleeting moments of joy, but sin, nonetheless.

How do we overcome the happiness we find in sin? The only way we can find true joy is in the presence of God. When we accept Christ, He lives in us. We are in His presence daily. The more we fall deeply in love with our Savior, the more we can kill the sin in our lives.

There will always be difficulty in the life of the Christian. But the constant devotion to Christ, the overwhelming love of God, and our ability to see that through the difficulty is how we remain happy in our lives. It is not wrong to want to be satisfied. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, “If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.” Lewis believed that many of us settle for far too little happiness. You see, this infinite joy is available to us in Christ.

When we live our life in and for Christ, we live in the fountain of living water and find unending happiness. When we understand the bounty of Christ in our lives and enjoy His beauty, power, grace, and mercy, He completes our joy in Himself. Our praising God is completed in our fulfillment in God. If we are not fulfilled in God, we only praise with our lips. We are only praising because that is what you do; you go to a service and sing in praise because that is what you do. That is lip service alone.

When we are completely satisfied and happy in God, God is most glorified by us. This satisfaction is not only vertical but horizontal satisfaction as well. Our satisfaction in God magnifies our relationship with others. This satisfaction does not stop with me but carries on to those with whom I have relationships. My love and satisfaction for God spills over to others. They want my happiness; they ask how this happiness is found. They want to be happy as well.

You cannot find true happiness on your own. True happiness is given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ and begins with our faith and devotion to God. We glorify God most when we are most satisfied in God.

Peace and Grace!