Finding happiness

Everyone is searching for happiness, for a sense of joy and satisfaction. We search for it in luxury, pleasure, leisure, travel, experience, success, security, popularity, partying, alcohol, sex and materialism. In 1941 C.S. Lewis preached the following words, "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 Kent and the Stoics and is not part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." 

As John Piper in His book Desiring God elaborates, "The enemy of worship is not that our desire for pleasure is too strong, but too weak! We have settles for a home, a family, a few friends, a job, a television, a microwave oven, an occasional night out, a yearly vacation, and perhaps a new laptop. We have accustomed ourselves to such meager, short-lived pleasures that our capacity for joy has shrivelled. And so our worship has shrivelled. Many can scarcely imagine what is meant by "a holiday at the sea: -worshipping the living God!" This duty we saw as the largest obstacle towards the freedom of enjoyment, is actually the only way to supreme and lasting happiness, joy and satisfaction as Piper continues "If God's reality is displayed to us in His Word or His world and we do not then feel in our heart any grief or longing or hope or fear or awe or joy or gratitude or confidence, then we may dutifully sing and pray and recite and gesture as much as we like, but it will not be real worship. We cannot honour God if our "heart is far from Him."Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth. This cannot be done by mere acts of duty. It can be done only when spontaneous affections arise in the heart. And these affections for God are an end in themselves. They are the essence of eternal worship. Augustine said it like this. The highest good is "that which will leave us nothing further to seek in order to be happy, if only we make all our actions refer to it, and seek it not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake." John Piper- desiring God.


I have set my life on a course to express to others what I believe is the way to experience the ultimate form of happiness and joy. The worship of God, the source of all joy, through Jesus. My conscience is held captive to scripture so that I can do no other than to preach it by conviction that people must here of Christ and His saving Gospel to experience ultimate joy and satisfaction. And so I have given my life to Him for His kingdom holding close to my heart these words from the apostle Paul in Romans Chapter 10- "¹³For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." ¹⁴How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?^[a] And how are they to hear without someone preaching? ¹⁵And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" ¹⁶But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" ¹⁷So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." 


I pray that those things I am taught by my Father in Heaven would be of benefit to others so that, in the words of John Piper, God will be most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.