Happiness

The pursuit of happiness has been around from the beginning. It is even in our Declaration of Independence. Happiness and its meaning have changed throughout time. Today’s society focuses on what you can possess to somehow is the answer to happiness or maybe if you can somehow achieve physical perfection then that will bring happiness into your life. Those that feel they are happy, are they truly happy? Can there be an illusion of happiness that the world projects to those that strive after the things of the world?

Most of my memories that appear to be happy times are times when I have had the least amount of things. It is as if the belongs that we have create a false sense of happiness and somehow provides a barrier between you and reality. They provide a distraction from life itself. Is happiness hard to obtain? The scriptures speak on what makes a man happy and these things are simple things and none of them are physical possessions.

Take for instance a wealthy man that is mentioned in the Bible, but lost everything. Job was a blessed man of God and was extremely rich both physically and spiritually. Did he loose his happiness when he lost everything? I am sure he suffered mentally when he lost his children and all that he had, but he held onto his faith in God, which provided him with what little happiness he had left. In Job 5:17 he mentions that a man is happy for any correction that he receives from God. Job says this because it shows that God still loves you enough to point out to you where you are lacking and what may cause you to fall away to the point where your salvation is lost. Happy is the man that God corrects.

David later on points out in Psalms 128:2 that man can also get happiness from his labor of his hands. That simple work that provides food can be a form of happiness. David’s more powerful words come later on in Psalms 144:15 and 146:5, where he connects the ability for man to be happy to his connection to the LORD. Happy is he whose God is the LORD.

As time goes on David’s son Solomon also speaks on the topic of happiness and how one can become happy. Proverbs 3:13 Solomon says that wisdom and understanding can bring man happiness, but he is speaking of the wisdom and understanding of the LORD and not that of the world. Proverbs 14:21 he shows that by showing mercy to the poor can bring happiness to your life. The next two scriptures can be the link to why so many are not happy today or struggle with maintaining happiness in their lives. Proverbs 16:20 and 29:18 are key scriptures to people’s failure to find happiness. First of all happiness comes to those that trust in the LORD. Second is that those that keep the law are able to obtain happiness. People for the most part don’t truly trust in the LORD and definitely don’t keep His law. They have found (made up ways) to circumvent the law so that they don’t have to do what the LORD has commanded.

As I had mentioned in the beginning that happiness changes throughout history and the Bible actually records such an event. While the Old Testament focuses on how happiness is connected to our relationship with The Almighty, the New Testament takes another view of happiness in our lives.

John starts it off kind of normal in John 13:17 where Jesus mentions that happy are those that does the Passover and the Lord’s Supper. Jesus’s words have a connection to the Old Testament through keeping the law. As time goes on though things begin to change and we see that in James 5:11. We see that happiness begins to be connected to our suffering in the Lord. Again, you see it in 1 Peter 3:14 and 4:14 that our suffering is to be viewed as happiness, because of the reason for our suffering. As I have said before, if your life seems to be going just fine and there appears to be no great troubles that arise at all then that is a time to worry. For if we are to be no part of the world and we suffer not then does that mean we are then part of the world and not part of God’s Kingdom? It’s like the saying that goes, “When you laugh the world laughs with you, but when you cry you cry alone.” This world is not yet under the Authority of God’s Kingdom, but is under the control of Satan.

I wanted to show the difference of what brings happiness and then for us to think of what we see that brings happiness and does that correlate with what the Bible views happiness to be. We are to be happy in the LORD and that our happiness should not be dependent upon the world, because in the end if our happiness is not from our relationship with God then you will be crying alone.