Because I'm Happy........

"Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth..."

One of the top new pop songs out there today...and should you come across it while scanning through the radio stations, scan quickly or it will get stuck in your head for eternity! In our house, we have been singing it for weeks.  And once one of us finally gets the tune out of our heads, it doesn't take long for another of us to start singing it and begin the whole process over again....

"Because I'm happy........"

Happiness.  I hear a lot about how God wants us to be so happy.  For forty-two years I have lived out different ideas of what would make me happy.  As a young girl, I would have told you THINGS made me happy. I was always convinced I would some day grow up and make enough money to have a really nice car and a really big beautiful two story Colonial type house.  And I did.  But my last really nice car got totaled in a Nor'easter on the Boston Turnpike, and that great big beautiful house that I always KNEW would fill that giant hole in my heart?  Well, lets just say all it did was fill up my time..as in all the time it took to clean it...and I can promise you THAT did not make me happy!

My New England Dream House! Sketch by my daughter:)

 Once I had the house, I knew I would just be happy if I could find a way for my marriage to work better, or when the baby stopped teething, or once we got over the flu, or well...you get the picture.

The amazing fact is, the word happy and it's various forms are only used a little over thirty times in the Bible, many of those used to refer to how WE can make God happy, not how He wants US to be happy. Happiness is completely circumstantial and can rely so much on what is going on around us.

"Sin isn't just a mistake, it is willfully choosing our own happiness over the promise of God."

Author Unknown

The fact that happiness is mentioned so little in the Bible does not leave me hopeless though because what is mentioned is JOY.  Not once. Not twice, but over 300 times!!!!  And if our joy is found in Christ alone, then happiness will follow as a major bonus! Maybe not in our timing, but certainly in His. It won't be something you have to seek and search for.

Psalm 4:7

The Message (MSG)

^6-7 Why is everyone hungry for more? “More, more,” they say.
“More, more.”
I have God’s more-than-enough,
More joy in one ordinary day

^7-8 Than they get in all their shopping sprees.
At day’s end I’m ready for sound sleep,
For you, God, have put my life back together.

We can say God wants us to be happy..and maybe He does....so lets choose an example from the Bible.  What then does it mean when God allows Daniel to be put in the lions den?  Did He want Daniel to be happy in the lion's den?  Or did God want Daniel to show the joy that can only come from faith in God?  What if Daniel had sat in that lions den and said, "I just know God wants me to be happy?"  Then, I believe, his theology would have gotten completely messed up, and he would have ended up confused and mistrusting of the one true God he believed so faithfully in.  "Wait a minute," Daniel might have said, "If God wants me to be so happy, then why am I even in this lion's den to begin with?" But joy...Daniel could look every last lion in the eye, his faith intact, and still have joy because "the joy of the Lord WAS his strength"! (Neh 8:10)

 What is it today, right here, right now, that you think could bring you more happiness than the joy you would get from following Christ?  I can share with you what I had to learn...I had to learn to stop concentrating on my own happiness, and instead concentrate on the JOY that came each day from knowing Christ, even if He didn't fix my marriage on Day 1 or Day 441.  I had to learn the Joy that came from Christ when I found contentment and peace, first in a renovated barn and now a 100 year old cottage, that I never acquired in our big beautiful Colonial New England home.  A wife can't say that she is "happy" her husband spends the majority of time far away from home , but she can say she is forever joyful to witness her husband live out God's will for his life.  If I were searching for the happiness in teary goodbyes, sometimes lonely days, and the knowledge of where he spends his time, I would be forever miserable.

So my friends, if I wanted to wrap this all up and give it to you as a gift, I guess my gift to you would be to say, stop thinking about what can make you happy.  Instead, just for today, focus on the joy that comes from truly living in Christ, wake up tomorrow and do it again...I promise you the benefits of living this way day in and day out are better than anything Happiness can offer!

Til next time ya'll!
God Bless and Love Everyone!!