Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 151

Preaching Directly and Seasonably: Thoughts from Rev. John Kennedy

I love these comments on preaching. The author, Reverend John Kennedy, was speaking of the preachers of Ross-shire who were not like those described at the beginning of each paragraph, but like those described at the end. I’ve left out his specific references to those particular preachers, because I think it helps us who are unfamiliar with them to be able to make a timeless application today.

“There are some who preach before their people, like actors on the stage, to display themselves and to please their audience. Not such were the self-denied preachers…

There are others who preach over their people. Studying for the highest, instead of doing so for the lowest, in intelligence, they elaborate learned treatises, which float like mist, when delivered, over the heads of their hearers. Not such were the earnest preachers.…

There are some who preach past their people. Directing their praise or their censure to intangible abstractions, they never take aim at the views and the conduct of the individuals before them. They step carefully aside, lest their hearers should be struck by their shafts, and aim them at phantoms beyond them. Not such were the faithful preachers…

There are others who preach at their people, serving out in a sermon the gossip of the week, and seemingly possessed with the idea that the transgressor can be scolded out of the ways of iniquity. Not such were the wise preachers…

There are some who preach towards their people. They aim well, but they are weak. Their eye is along the arrow towards the hearts of their hearers, but their arm is too feeble for sending it on to the mark. Superficial in their experience and in their knowledge, they reach not the cases of God’s people by their doctrine, and they strike with no vigor at the consciences of the ungodly. Not such were the powerful preachers…

There are others still who preach along their congregation. Instead of standing with their bow in front of the ranks, these archers take aim in line and, reducing their mark to an individual, never change the direction of their aim. Not such were the discriminating preachers…

But there are a few who preach to the people directly and seasonably the mind of God in His Word with authority, unction, wisdom, fervor and love …”

Revd. John Kennedy, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire (Inverness, 1895), pages 22-23.

(Originally on Ray Ortlund’s blog)

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Turning from Idols to Find True Happiness in God

In the first chapters of Genesis, God had no competition for the affection of His creatures. Humanity found its meaning, purpose, and happiness in God. God was God; everything else wasn’t. And everyone knew it. The fall tragically changed that.

We turned from God, the one true source of happiness, to false gods of every imaginable description. False gods are anything we praise, celebrate, fixate on, and look to for help that’s not the true God. One term describes and unites them all—idols. To grasp a biblical theology of happiness, we must understand the nature and extent of our constant temptations toward idolatry.

Because we all sinned in Adam (see Rom. 5:12-14), we all became idolaters in Adam. Idolatry is woven into our very nature. John Calvin said, “The human heart is a factory of idols. Every one of us is, from his mother’s womb, expert in inventing idols.”1

God created things as means to help us delight in Him. The problems start when we believe we can find more happiness in God’s creation than in God Himself. Those who seek happiness in false gods end up sacrificing their integrity, their families, their culture, and the very happiness they crave.

The Devil is incapable of creating, so he uses God’s good creation to tempt us, twisting it to his evil purposes. He never acts for our good, since he hates us just as he hates God, who made us in His likeness.

When we see the fulfillment of a desire as a gift and gratefully enjoy it for God’s glory, we find satisfying happiness. When we chase only the desire, we become miserable, enslaved to the very thing God intended as a gift. Idolatry isn’t just wrong; it also doesn’t work.

Those who argue over whether to use cheese or peanut butter in a mousetrap agree on one thing: the stronger the attraction, the better chance of catching the mouse. Every temptation uses false happiness as bait. A woman told me, “I left my family to find happiness. It didn’t last, and I sacrificed the greatest happiness I’d ever known.” In the name of momentary happiness, she made choices that brought her despair.

Satan always works this way. He’s been trapping and devouring people for millennia; he’s good at it. That’s why the Bible warns us to “be alert. ... Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8, NIV).

John Piper says, “We all make a god out of what we take the most pleasure in.”2 The one way to avoid idolatry is to take the most pleasure in the one true God. Once we recognize our idols, we must destroy them, exalting God alone. Only then can we know true and lasting happiness—the kind that all lesser pleasures are only shadows of. God calls each of us to demolish our idols and live our lives bringing glory to Him alone.

1. John Calvin, as quoted in Andy Park, The Worship Journey: A Quest of Heart, Mind, and Strength (Woodinville, WA: Augustus Ink Books, 2010), 40.

2. John Piper, “We Want You to Be a Christian Hedonist!” Desiring God [online], 31 August 2006 [cited 30 October 2015]. Available from the Internet: www.desiringgod.org.

Excerpted from Happiness. 

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The Reversal Doctrine

Luke 16:19-31 tells us the story of a rich man, and a poor man named Lazarus. The rich man dressed well, lived in luxury, and was apparently healthy. Lazarus was a beggar, diseased, dirty, and “longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table” (Luke16:21). If I asked, “Who would you rather be, the rich man or Lazarus?” you would presumably reply, “The rich man, of course.”

We aren’t told that this rich man was dishonest or irreligious or that he was worse than your average person. We don’t know that he despised poor Lazarus; we only know that he ignored him. He lived his life as if the poor man didn’t exist. He didn’t use his God-provided wealth to care for another man in need.

Both men die. Lazarus goes to Heaven and the rich man goes to hell. When the rich man begs Abraham from across the gulf to send Lazarus to relieve his suffering, Abraham replies, “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony” (Luke 16:25).

Now that you’ve heard the rest of the story, who would you rather be, the rich man or Lazarus? You’d probably like to switch places, wouldn’t you? But that’s Abraham’s point: After death, it’s too late to switch.

This parable represents a strong and often overlooked New Testament teaching, which we might call “the reversal doctrine.” It teaches that in eternity many of us will find ourselves in opposite conditions from our current situation on earth.

In this life, the rich man “lived in luxury every day,” while Lazarus begged at his gate, living in misery. At the moment of death, their situations reversed—the rich man was in hell’s torment and the poor man in Heaven’s comfort.

It would be both simplistic and theologically inaccurate to conclude that Heaven is earned by poverty and hell is earned by wealth. But this parable is not isolated—it corroborates a host of other teachings by Jesus, as well as those of the apostles.

In the song she composed in anticipation of Christ’s birth, Mary said, “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke1:53).

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says, and “Woe to you who are rich,” precisely because their status will one day be reversed (Luke6:20, 25). The poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and are persecuted will be relieved and fulfilled and have a great reward in heaven (Matthew 5:3-12). Those praised in this world will not be highly regarded in the next, and vice versa (Matthew 6:1-4, 16-18). Those who are exalted in this life will often be humbled in the next; those who are humbled here on earth will be exalted in Heaven (Matthew23:12).

Those who are poor in this world will often be rich in the next, and those who are rich in this world will often be poor in the next (James 1:9-12). The poor are reassured that the hoarding and oppressing rich will one day be punished and the honest poor will be relieved (James 5:1-6). In Revelation 18:7, a voice from Heaven says of materialistic Babylon, “Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself.”

Some of these passages may present us with theological difficulties, but all of them remind us that temporal sacrifices will pay off in eternity and temporal indulgences will cost us in eternity. These are the verses that encouraged Christian slaves and should have served warning to the plantation owners who were profiting from slavery. The reversal doctrine is comforting to the poor and weak, and threatening to the rich and powerful. But it’s a consistent teaching of the New Testament—one that confirms the premise that materialism is not only wrong but stupid. Conversely, trusting God, giving and caring and sharing are not only right but smart.

Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will spend our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn.

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Ten Things to Understand About Evangelical Christians

If you’re as weary as I am of having pundits and politicians misrepresent who evangelicals are, what we believe, and our attitudes toward those we disagree with, you may find this blog helpful, and may wish to share it.

Of course, those who call themselves evangelical Christians can act like jerks, idiots, bigots and big-mouths, just like people from every other group, but thoughtful observers won’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I know and appreciate Warren Cole Smith, the author of this article. You don’t have to agree with everything he says, or how he says it, but overall he makes some important points about evangelical Christians, around the world and in America.

10 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Evangelicals

A reporter offers his insights on a religious movement everyone talks about but few understand.

1. Evangelicals share a common belief.

Being an evangelical actually means something doctrinally and theologically, namely that salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Evangelicalism is not, or not merely, a demographical subset or sociological tribe. An evangelical is someone who both believes and wants to share with others this evangel, this good news.

Read the rest.

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J. B. Phillips and the Power of God’s Living Word

I have always loved J. B. Phillips, Ring of Truth and many portions of His New Testament rendition. Justin Taylor shared a great post about Phillips on his blog. What a great story of a man enlivened and transformed by the living power of God's Word:

J. B. Phillips (1906-1982) is perhaps best known today for his book, Your God Is Too Small. He was also a periphrastic Bible translator, working from the Greek text to put the New Testament into a breezy, British, mid-20th-century vernacular. In 1947 he published Letters to Young Churches. In 1952, he added the Gospels, followed by the book of Acts in 1955 (The Young Church in Action). In 1958 he published the entire New Testament in Modern English, with revisions in 1961 and 1972.

In 1967 he wrote a memoir describing the experience, entitled Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony.

In it he describes his view of the text before he began his work:

I must, in common justice, confess here that for years I had viewed the Greek of the New Testament with a rather snobbish disdain. I had read the best of classical Greek both at school and Cambridge for over ten years. . . . Although I did my utmost to preserve an emotional detachment, I found again and again that the material under my hands was strangely alive; it spoke to my condition in the most uncanny way. I say “uncanny” for want of a better word, but it was a very strange experience to sense, not occasionally but almost continually, the living quality of those rather strangely assorted books. To me it is the more remarkable because I had no fundamentalist upbringing, and although as a priest of the Anglican Church I had a great respect for Holy Scripture, this very close contact of several years of translation produced an effect of “inspiration” which I have never experienced, even in the remotest degree, in any other work. (pp. 24-25)

Read the rest on Justin’s blog.

Heavenly Mindedness

Jonathan Edwards said, “It becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward Heaven … to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper end and true happiness?”

In his early twenties, Edwards composed a set of life resolutions. One read, “Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can.” Unfortunately, many believers find no joy when they think about Heaven.

In my book Heaven, I share a story about a pastor who once confessed to me: “Whenever I think about Heaven, it makes me depressed. I’d rather just cease to exist when I die.” “Why?” I asked. “I can’t stand the thought of that endless tedium. To float around in the clouds with nothing to do but strum a harp … it’s all so terribly boring. Heaven doesn’t sound much better than hell.”

Where did this Bible-believing, seminary-educated pastor get such a view of Heaven? Certainly not from Scripture, where Paul said that to depart and be with Christ was far better than staying on a sin-cursed earth (Phil. 1:23). My friend was more honest about it than most, yet I’ve found that many Christians share his misconceptions about Heaven.

Scripture commands us to set our hearts on Heaven: “Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1). And to make sure we don’t miss the importance of a Heaven-centered life, the next verse says, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things [alone].”

While the present Heaven is a pre-resurrected state, the ultimate Heaven, where God will forever dwell with His people, will be in a resurrected universe (Rev. 21:1–4). Because of the biblical emphasis on the resurrection (1 Cor. 15), I think God wants us to ponder not simply where we go when we die, but where we will live with Christ forever.

Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms… . I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). He chose familiar physical terms (house, rooms, place) to describe that place. He gave us something tangible to look forward to — a home, where we will live with Him.

The Heaven Jesus described is not an ethereal realm of disembodied spirits. A place is by nature physical, just as human beings are by nature physical as well as spiritual. What we are suited for — what we’ve been specifically designed for — is the place God originally made for us: earth.

Scripture tells us we should be “looking forward to a new Heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). God has not abandoned His original design and plan for humanity to rule the earth for His glory. One day, He will reverse the curse and restore what was corrupted by sin. He will come down to dwell with His people on the new earth, bringing His throne, and Heaven itself, with Him (Rev. 21:1–4; 22:3).

What’s your attitude toward Heaven? Does it fill you with excitement? How often do you, your church, and your family talk about it?

If you lack a passion for Heaven, I can almost guarantee it’s because you have a deficient and distorted theology of Heaven (or you’re making choices that conflict with Heaven’s agenda). An accurate and biblically energized view of Heaven will bring a new spiritual passion to your life.

When you fix your mind on Heaven and see the present in light of eternity, even little choices become tremendously important. After death, we will never have another chance to share Christ with one who can be saved from hell, to give a cup of water to the thirsty, to invest money to help the helpless and reach the lost, or to share our homes, clothes, and love with the poor and needy.

No wonder Scripture makes clear that the one central business of this life is to prepare for the next. What we need is a generation of Heavenly minded people who see human beings and the earth not simply as they are, but as God intends them to be.

Theologians once spoke of the “beatific vision,” Latin for “a happymaking sight.” That sight was God Himself. Revelation 22:4 says of God’s people on the new earth, “They will see his face.” God is primary, all else is secondary. Joy’s tributaries are the overflow of the swelling river of God’s own goodness. He says to the one He welcomes into His presence, “Enter into your Master’s joy.” Anticipating the eternal joy of His presence allows us to get a head start on Heaven by rejoicing in Him here and now.

Longing for that new earth, “the home of righteousness,” Peter says, “So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with Him” (2 Peter 3:14).

Knowing that our destiny is to live as redeemed, righteous people on a redeemed, righteous earth with our righteous Redeemer should be a powerful incentive to call upon His strength to live righteously today.

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Nine Questions to Diagnose Theology Idolatry

Since I was a new believer, at age 15, I have loved theology. What I’ve always loved most is that it helps me get to know God better—His person, His plans, the way He works in His redemptive purposes.

Some are quick to minimize doctrine—“all that matters is loving Jesus.” But the more you know about Jesus, the more grounds you have to love Him. The doctrines of the deity and humanity of Christ, part of the larger field of theology called Christology, are vitally important not only to sound doctrine, but also to loving our Savior and Lord by getting to know Him better.

But theology, sadly, can also become an idol—as is everything that we put above God. Love theology, but be aware that if you care more about doctrine than about God, something is desperately wrong. Marshall Segal spells it out clearly and powerfully:

Is Theology Your Idolatry?

We have often loved what we’ve learned about God more than God himself.

The Bible warns us about the dangers that come with our knowledge of God, especially for the theologically refined and convinced. “You cannot serve both God and theology.” Good theology is a means to enjoying and worshiping God, or it is useless.

Has your theology turned into idolatry? Has your knowledge of God ironically and tragically drawn you away from Him, not nearer to Him? Here are nine questions that might help you diagnose theology idolatry in your own heart and mind.

Read the rest.

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A Call to Fathers to Pass a Biblical Worldview onto Their Children

All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. Psalm 25:10 (ESV)

Fathers are to be the primary influence in their children’s education. A man’s success as a father is largely determined by his commitment to inspiring and training his children to develop a right worldview.

Who is God? Who is mankind? What is God like? Does God have a plan? Do even bad events serve God’s purposes?

In light of the great number of young people who reject their faith, we must encourage our children to think through these questions. Warm feelings toward the Christian faith won’t sustain them when they find their faith attacked. But deeply rooted beliefs built on God’s truth will allow them to hold fast to their faith.

Many kids are in college before they are faced with the questions, “If you were all wise and all powerful and all loving, would you permit children to starve and be abused? Well if you wouldn’t, doesn’t that suggest that there is no God, or if there is one he lacks either love or power or wisdom?”

A professor’s eloquence may persuade your child that he has identified something you and your church are unaware of and would cause you to lose your faith if you only knew. If you have not been proactive in helping your child develop a deep faith based on a thorough knowledge of Scripture’s truth, what will keep your child from doubting God?

Fathers, do you study Scripture in order to understand the world? Is your life consistent with God’s Word? Are you deliberately passing on its teachings to your children?

Ray Ortlund on Strength in Integrity

I like the insights of Ray Ortlund and appreciate his thoughts here about integrity:

Strength in Integrity

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely.” (Proverbs 10:9)

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.  Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. . . . Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” (Ephesians 6:10-13)

The word “integrity” is the key word in Proverbs 10:9. A secure walk is not a matter of clever politics but of personal integrity.  But what is integrity? This Hebrew word suggests completeness, wholeness, fullness. So, no compromises, and no breaches or gaps or refusals in the face of duty, but rather, saying Yes to the Lord moment by moment. There is a completeness to our life in Christ, with no compartmentalization.  The Lord gives all, and he claims all. When we yield all, we walk securely.

Proverbs 10:9 reminds me of Ephesians 6:10-13 and the whole armor of God, and “having done all.” So yesterday I tweeted: “No short-cuts, no half-way Christianity, will stand.” In our age of the ironic inversion of our true grandeur, I do not accept the mocking erosion of who I am as a knight in the service of the King.

What then does that resilient Christianity look like, at least for me? As I thought it through, I came up with a checklist for whole-armor Christianity, as I work out my own salvation:

1. Union with Christ, his centrality in my story, with his complete all-sufficiency for all my need today.

2. Utter loyalty to the whole Bible, with apologetics but without apology.

3. Prayerful dependence on God’s wisdom and power, treating God as real moment by moment.

4. Honesty, openness, confession of sin, enjoying forgiveness in Christ as my constant reality.

5. Full authorization as a husband, father and pastor, accepting no diminishing of my offices but fulfilling my roles with a whole and joyful heart.

6. Readiness to suffer and die at any time in the course of my service.

7. Sincere and costly commitment to the true good of everyone within my influence.

Walking in this integrity, I walk securely, fully armed against the schemes of the devil, entirely equipped to serve my family and my church in a full-orbed way.

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God’s Plan for Us Includes Happiness in Him

This interview with Lifeway Facts & Trends was originally posted on lifeway.com.

Facts & Trends recently spoke with Randy Alcorn, author of an important new book titled Happiness. Alcorn’s latest book has been gathering acclaim. Popular bloggers Tony Reinke and David Murray have declared it their 2015 book of the year. And for good reason. Alcorn makes a strong biblical case for the rightness and goodness of happiness for all God’s people.

Why did you write a book on happiness? And how do you define happiness?

Among Christ-followers, there’s a tendency to minimize happiness and make it sound unspiritual because people in the world are trying to find happiness in sin. I argue in the book the problem isn’t they’re trying to be happy. Rather, God wired us to seek happiness. The problem is we seek happiness in the wrong places, rather than in the right place—in Christ.

The Bible tells us explicitly the gospel is very much about happiness. Consider Isaiah 52:7, which says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness.” Paul clearly refers to Isaiah 52:7 in Romans 10:15 as he references the gospel, demonstrating this “good news of happiness” is in fact nothing else but the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.

The gospel is about bringing a deliverance from sin, of course. But the result is to be not only our holiness but also our personal happiness. True holiness (not the false, Pharisaical, self-exalting kind) and true happiness (not the false, superficial, sin-seeking kind) are two sides of the same coin. Happy holiness is God’s ideal for us.

Webster’s Dictionary defines happiness as—wait for it . . . “the state of being happy.” The Dictionary of Bible Themes gives a more biblical definition of happiness: “A state of pleasure or joy experienced both by people and by God. . . . True happiness derives from a secure and settled knowledge of God and a rejoicing in His works and covenant faithfulness.”

So, would you say the Bible teaches that God is happy?

Short answer: Yes. The apostle Paul wrote of “the gospel of the glory of the blessed [makarios] God with which I have been entrusted” (1 Timothy 1:11). At the end of 1 Timothy, he refers to God as “he who is the blessed [makarios] and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15).

As I explore in Happiness, numerous language scholars and lexicons attest that the Greek adjective makarios, translated here as “blessed,” actually means “happy.” First Timothy 1:11 and 6:15 actually speak of the gospel of the “happy God” and the God “who is the happy and only Sovereign.”

“In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). As love and holiness are found in God’s presence because God is loving and holy, so joy and happiness are found in God’s presence because God is joyful and happy. How could it be otherwise? 

Does God want us to be happy?

Yes, I believe God desires us to seek and find our happiness in Him, the Source of all joy. Contemplate these words: “The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:25-26) Isn’t this a call for God to endow His people with happiness?

If we grasp just how happiness-saturated Scripture is, it will radically affect our perspective as God’s children and greatly expand our outreach to the world. Whatever else the plan of God and the gospel of Jesus encompasses, without question it includes our happiness.

Of course, if we compare the value of our happiness to the value of God and His glory, our happiness is infinitely outweighed. But the same is true of everything else. Just because God and His glory are infinitely more important than our families, friendships, churches, and jobs, that doesn’t mean any of those are unimportant. Indeed, God Himself tells us they are important. 

Is it selfish to pursue happiness? 

This distorted notion that wanting to be happy is inherently selfish, and therefore immoral, is believed by many Christians. It’s true that Scripture warns of a self-love that is obviously wrong (2 Timothy 3:2). But when Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves (see Matthew 22:39), He isn’t arguing that we shouldn’t love ourselves, only that we should extend our instincts for self-care to caring for others.

Some parents believe looking after their children’s happiness means constantly saying no to their own. But if they don’t take care of themselves, failing to cultivate and model happiness in God, they’ll deprive their children of happiness, too.

Flight crews routinely announce, “If you’re traveling with a child or someone who requires assistance, in the case of an emergency, secure your own oxygen mask first before helping the other person.” Those instructions may sound selfish, just as it sounds selfish to say that one of our main duties in life is to find happiness in God. But only when we’re delighting in our Lord do we have far more to offer everyone else.

Does a person’s happiness depend on their circumstances?

Yes and no. In our fallen world, troubles and challenges are constants. Happy people look beyond their circumstances to someone so big that by His grace, even great difficulties become manageable—and provide opportunities for a deeper kind of happiness. Part of being a Christian is experiencing the underlying and overarching happiness in Christ that goes beyond circumstances. Our happiness is dependent not on temporary circumstances but on our eternal perspective.

Still, it’s fair to recognize positive life circumstances can prompt real and emotional joy and happiness. This is an important correction to the modern sentiment that being happy due to positive circumstances, including the welfare of loved ones, is somehow unspiritual. True, circumstances change and our happiness should be grounded on Christ, who doesn’t change, but that doesn’t make it inappropriate to rejoice in favorable circumstances.

How can we be happy when there’s so much evil and suffering in the world?

Romans 8:28 says, “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” By recognizing and believing in God’s sovereignty, even over Satan’s work, our perspective is transformed.

The gospel’s good news is because of Christ’s death and resurrection, happiness, not sorrow, has the last word—and it will have the last word forever. This secure future invades our present, so that even while death and sorrow remain, the new normal in Christ isn’t sorrow but happiness.

We certainly live in a world filled with suffering and death. But as believers, we understand God is with us and won’t forsake us, and one day we’ll live on a redeemed Earth, a place full of joy and delight. Yes, the day hasn’t yet come when God will “wipe away every tear from [His children’s] eyes” (Revelation 21:4). But it will come. Anticipating this reality has breathtaking implications for our present happiness.

Should we only find happiness in God? Or is it OK to be happy with our family, friends, work, pets, flowers, and forests?

God is primary; all other forms of happiness—relationships, created things, and material pleasures—are secondary. If we don’t consciously see God as their source, these secondary things intended for enjoyment can master us.

But by recognizing God as primary, we maximize our enjoyment of the secondary with no danger of idolizing it. The better I know Jesus, the more I see Him all around me—in people, animals, places, and objects. When I find happiness in playing with and hugging our golden retriever Maggie, I am finding happiness in God, who I recognize as her Maker and the gracious Father who entrusted her to our care. I’m in no danger of making Maggie an idol, a God-substitute, when I recognize and praise Him for her and thank Him for the joy He imparts to us through her.

When we invite God into our happiness, we become aware of how He invites us into His. The happiest times of my life are when I’ve entered into the happiness of God—not only through Bible study, prayer, and church, but also when reading a good book, laughing with a friend, running, biking, and enjoying the wonders of creation. 

What can we say to people who seek happiness in sin instead of in Jesus?

Scripture recognizes there are “fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25). An injection of heroin or an immoral act can bring moments of pleasure—but not deep and lasting happiness. Sin can for the short term make us happy, but it won’t leave us happy. In fact, it’s the biggest enemy of happiness because it results in a broken relationship with God.

But instead of backing away from happiness or trying to correct those who love the word happiness (which almost everyone does, except some inside the church), we should embrace it, realizing that Jesus is inseparable from happiness.

If someone declares a desire to be happy, we should never say, “You just need to obey God and forget about being happy.” Rather, we should say, “God wired you that way.” Then we can ask, “Have the things you’ve thought would make you happy always worked out for you?” The answer is probably no.

That’s the time to suggest, “Maybe you haven’t looked in the right place.” We can then present the Bible’s bad news, which explains the sin problem that makes them unhappy. Then we can share the good news of the gift of God that can reconcile them to their holy Creator and thereby make them eternally happy.

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