Do You Desire To Be Happy Or Holy?

Noth­ing in the Bible remotely sug­gests the idea that we should seek “happiness.”

But there is plenty writ­ten about seek­ing holi­ness: “Pur­sue holi­ness, with­out which no man shall see the Lord… like the Holy One who called you, be holy your­selves in all your behav­ior.” (Hebrews 12:14; 1 Peter 1:15)

While many blithely pur­sue the life depicted on “Fan­tasy Island,” a bat­tle is rag­ing between the forces of heaven and hell — between good and evil. It is here that Satan seeks to destroy us while God is prepar­ing us for eter­nity. It is here that either godly char­ac­ter is being forged, or souls are in the process of destruc­tion. Hardly a place for “happiness.”

“The whole cre­ation groans and suf­fers the pains of child­birth… wait­ing eagerly for our adop­tion… the redemp­tion of our body.” (Romans 8:22, 23)

The pur­suit of “hap­pi­ness” is cen­tered in self and has about it a kind of Dis­neyesque sur­re­al­ism. Sur­rounded as we are by strug­gling human­ity in the abyss of mis­ery and dev­as­ta­tion, chat­ting about “hap­pi­ness” seems a tad trite. Con­sider King Solomon’s poignant observation:

“It is bet­ter to go to a house of mourn­ing than to go to a house of feast­ing… to lis­ten to the rebuke of a wise man than… to lis­ten to the song of fools.” (Eccle­si­astes 7:2, 5)

Para­dox­i­cally, it is only out of a life of holi­ness and ser­vice cen­tered on glo­ri­fy­ing God that we expe­ri­ence pur­pose, mean­ing, and fulfillment.

Note Isa­iah 58:10, 11:

“And if you give your­self to the hun­gry, and sat­isfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in dark­ness, and your gloom will become like mid­day. And the Lord will… sat­isfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered gar­den, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

If “hap­pi­ness” were achiev­able in the wealth­i­est nation on earth, why then are we plagued by bore­dom, crime, drugs, the mur­der of the unborn, teenage preg­nancy, and divorce? It is my sus­pi­cion that Satan has been less than truth­ful to us in hold­ing out the car­rot of “hap­pi­ness.” What do you think? 

Noth­ing in the Bible remotely sug­gests the idea that we should seek “happiness.”

But there is plenty writ­ten about seek­ing holi­ness: “Pur­sue holi­ness, with­out which no man shall see the Lord… like the Holy One who called you, be holy your­selves in all your behav­ior.” (Hebrews 12:14; 1 Peter 1:15)

While many blithely pur­sue the life depicted on “Fan­tasy Island,” a bat­tle is rag­ing between the forces of heaven and hell — between good and evil. It is here that Satan seeks to destroy us while God is prepar­ing us for eter­nity. It is here that either godly char­ac­ter is being forged, or souls are in the process of destruc­tion. Hardly a place for “happiness.”

“The whole cre­ation groans and suf­fers the pains of child­birth… wait­ing eagerly for our adop­tion… the redemp­tion of our body.” (Romans 8:22, 23)

The pur­suit of “hap­pi­ness” is cen­tered in self and has about it a kind of Dis­neyesque sur­re­al­ism. Sur­rounded as we are by strug­gling human­ity in the abyss of mis­ery and dev­as­ta­tion, chat­ting about “hap­pi­ness” seems a tad trite. Con­sider King Solomon’s poignant observation:

“It is bet­ter to go to a house of mourn­ing than to go to a house of feast­ing… to lis­ten to the rebuke of a wise man than… to lis­ten to the song of fools.” (Eccle­si­astes 7:2, 5)

Para­dox­i­cally, it is only out of a life of holi­ness and ser­vice cen­tered on glo­ri­fy­ing God that we expe­ri­ence pur­pose, mean­ing, and fulfillment.

Note Isa­iah 58:10, 11:

“And if you give your­self to the hun­gry, and sat­isfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in dark­ness, and your gloom will become like mid­day. And the Lord will… sat­isfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered gar­den, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

If “hap­pi­ness” were achiev­able in the wealth­i­est nation on earth, why then are we plagued by bore­dom, crime, drugs, the mur­der of the unborn, teenage preg­nancy, and divorce? It is my sus­pi­cion that Satan has been less than truth­ful to us in hold­ing out the car­rot of “hap­pi­ness.” What do you think?

When they had eaten break­fast, Jesus asked Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?”—John 21:15

Jesus has a won­der­ful way of restor­ing us when we fail Him! He does not humil­i­ate us. He does not crit­i­cize us. He does not ask us to make a res­o­lu­tion to try harder. Rather, He takes us aside and asks us to reaf­firm our love for Him.

Peter mis­er­ably failed his Lord when he fled with the other dis­ci­ples from the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane. Later, he pub­licly denied that he even knew Jesus. Peter must have won­dered if he had been capa­ble of being Jesus’ dis­ci­ple when he was unfaith­ful to Jesus in His most cru­cial hour.

As we begin a new year, we may be painfully aware that we have failed our Lord in many ways. Per­haps we were not faith­ful. Per­haps we dis­obeyed His word to us. Per­haps we denied Him by the way we lived. Jesus will take us aside, as He did Peter. He will not berate us. He will not humil­i­ate us. He will ask us to exam­ine our love for Him. He asked Peter, “Do you love Me?” If our answer, like Peter’s, is “Yes, Lord,” He will reaf­firm His will for us. If we truly love Him, we will obey Him (John 14:15). Jesus does not need our res­o­lu­tions, our recom­mit­ments, or our promises to try harder this year. If our resolve to obey God last year did not help us to be faith­ful, it will not make us suc­cess­ful this year. Jesus asks for our love. If we truly love Him, our ser­vice for Him in the new year will be of the qual­ity that He desires.

We need to know and remem­ber how God feels about us:

We are “majes­tic” in His eyes (Lit­er­ally: excel­lent, glo­ri­ous, mighty, worthy)

We are the source of all His delight (Psalm 16:3)

Zepha­niah 3:17 puts it this way:

The Lord is with us.

He takes great delight in us.

He will quiet us with His love.

He rejoices over us with singing

Of us He says, “I have loved you with an ever­last­ing love.” (Jere­miah 31:3) He has always loved us! Even before we were conceived!

Yes, I know we are ‘sin­ners’. That is not new infor­ma­tion. But in His eyes our prob­lem with sin has noth­ing to do with our intrin­sic worth. If your daugh­ter con­tracts can­cer, her worth is not dimin­ished in your eyes, is it?

As the kids say, “God don’t make no junk.” The truth is that “you are fear­fully and won­der­fully made… skill­fully wrought”: God’s mar­velous cre­ation! (Psalm 139:14, 15) In fact, “while we were sin­ners” — scuzzball rebels, many of us — Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8) Before we cleaned up our act, He crawled up on that cross for us. Is there a more force­ful demon­stra­tion of uncon­di­tional love?… Of our worth to Him?

So, this week as you enter the shark infested waters of the world, keep in mind the fact that you are

A CHILD OF THE KING. A PERSON OF INFINITE, ETERNAL WORTH!

Have a Blessed New Year in 2010!