Every rational human being wants something better out of life. While it is true that there is a continuum of happiness and that a few fortunate individuals are way over on the end marked "Very Happy," even the fortunate few would not reject a raise in their happiness quotients.

Perhaps we should halt long enough to differentiate between "happiness" and "joy." Happiness comes from the same root that gives us "happening" and "happenstance." Essentially it has to do with our circumstances--with what is happening at the moment. It is gladness dependent upon circumstance. Joy, on the other hand, is gladness independent of circumstance. One may readily see that joy is superior to happiness. As happiness comes and goes with the tides of circumstance, joy remains constant, defying the changing tides of human experience. Both joy and happiness make for a better life. Ella Fitzgerald said, "I’ve tried rich and I’ve tried poor, and, believe me, I’ll take rich." To experience nice things, pleasant things, is generally conceded to be better than the reverse; but continuing happiness cannot be guaranteed, where ongoing joy can. Life brings us happiness...and takes it away. The Holy spirit, when allowed to do so, will quite naturally give us joy on a perpetual basis (Galatians 5:22).

I knew a man named Benson. The years have come and gone and I have forgotten his first name. He had been a British missionary to Mongolia prior to the outbreak of World War Two. One day, before hostilities had begun between Britain and Japan, Japanese soldiers arrested him charging him with spying, something he hadn’t done.

Interestingly, he was the smallest in stature and the most physically frail of the twenty-odd British and American missionaries to the Mongols; and he was the one selected to be forced to confess. He was tortured for forty-nine straight days. The cell-block that contained him adjoined the office building housing the military command for that area. An officer was charged with wringing a confession from this man by any means at length. When the most violent abuses failed to make Benson confess, the officer broke down and tearfully implored his prisoner to sign the confession lest he, the officer, be tortured in Benson’s stead for failing to do his job. He would beg Benson to comply saying that he too was a family man and that his family would suffer greatly if the confession were not produced. It was all to no avail. The little Pentecostal refused to be conquered. When he was returned to his cell at night he would sing songs to the Lord and dance with joy at the thought of his Savior. He didn’t have as much doctrine as many of us, but he took what little he had, exploited it fully, and used it to glorify God. At first his captors thought that he had lost his mind. Torturing Chinese Communist prisoners was their first order of business and they did it almost matter-of-factly as a daily routine. They were accustomed to seeing their victims, pain-wracked and terrified, crawl on hands and knees begging to be killed. They had never before seen one dance and sing nightly. Benson assured them that he was still in charge of his mental faculties and that his joy came from the risen Christ and couldn’t be lost as easily as his happiness had been (John 15:11).

When Benson was released, after seven weeks of daily agonies--some too awful to describe--he found two rows of Japanese officers lining the walk from the prison to the car. As he passed between them they saluted smartly, the greatest honor they could accord the one man ever to conquer them--the man sustained by joy.

God is no respecter of persons, no show-er of favoritism. The provision that the indwelling Spirit made for Benson He has made for you and me. Your circumstances may be unimaginably unpleasant right now, worse than most. I doubt they are worse than Benson’s were when the enemy mercilessly forced screams from a Mongol woman in the next cell and told Benson that the screams were coming from his wife. Or when they drowned and revived him repeatedly, allowing only a brief moment of breathing to occur between drownings. Or when they pulled his finger nails out. Or when....!

The extremity of our circumstances is never the bottom line to our lives; God’s perfect provision for His children is! (1 Corinthians 10:13).