The Secret of Happiness
Most of us would like to have true and lasting happiness.
We major on finding it, but it eludes us because we look for
it in all the wrong places. There is a universal tendency
to expect happiness to come from the realization of our
plans. The idea that someone else might have a better
plan for our happiness is foreign and threatening. Our lives
demonstrate how little we really know about happiness and yet
we doubt that someone else could know more.
God does know more! He proved it by living on earth as a man
for thirty-four years and His was the only lifetime of
constant and complete happiness that history
will ever witness. Furthermore, happiness for Him was
not contingent upon circumstance. He lived and died in
poverty. He lacked formal education and never traveled
abroad. He experienced a lifetime of ridicule. His friends
let him down. His enemies sought to trick Him, hunted
Him down, and finally tortured Him to death. When He
rose from the dead, as He had promised to do, His friends
doubted it and His enemies lied about it.
Still, He was happy! He spoke of His joy as constant
and complete, even though Scripture calls Him "a man of
sorrows...acquainted with grief." He proved beyond
doubt that one can have sorrow and joy simultaneously.
Joy and depression cannot occur at the same time. Joy is
a form of happiness that has no relation to circumstance.
Depression is always wed to our circumstances. Depression
is self-pity arising from self-centeredness. This
Christ did not and could not have, for self-centeredness
requires a sinful nature and our Lord had none. Self-
centeredness is idolatry, and Christ worshipped God only.
Temporary happiness may be found in the idolatry of self-
indulgence, but permanent happiness...happiness that
transcends unpleasantness...can be found only in a
constant. Something immutable. Something that never
changes. And God alone never changes.
The secret of true and lasting happiness is given us
in the most unlikely place, humanly speaking.
Romans 12:1-2 says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren
by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your
reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and
perfect will of God." If God invented happiness, and
Scripture indicates that He did, then His plan for you and
me is the pathway to happiness.
The secret of happiness is embracing His will...abandoning
ours! Nothing could be simpler! But simple and easy are
two very different things. Are you unhappy? Change masters.
Living under the tyranny of one’s old sin nature makes
happiness tenuous and joy impossible. True and lasting joy
comes from voluntary submission to the beneficent despotism
of Christ!
To present your body a living sacrifice is to become
a slave of Christ. "To be Christ’s slave is to be a King."
When I obey His will I do what is right. Right decisions
are the basis of joy. To Christ, in His humanity, the
Father said: "You have loved righteousness and hated
lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You
with the oil of gladness more than your companions."
So, true and lasting "happiness"...joy...is found not in
pursuing it but in abandoning its pursuit. This is a
great paradox indeed, but an essential truth. The pursuit
of happiness is always selfish, and selfishness can never
be satisfied. To seek only the happiness of Another...to
be a slave...is real fulfillment.
"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside
every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares [us,]
and let us run with endurance the
race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
the author and finisher of [our] faith, who for
the joy that was set before Him endured the
cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at
the right hand of the throne of God."
(Hebrews 12:1-2 NKJV)
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