Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 44

4 Questions to Help You Find Happiness

The questions that follow are ones with which I wrestled in the writing of Hoping for Happiness, and which I continue to think about regularly. I hope these thoughts will help you to find real happiness and rest in it.

1) What is the difference between joy and happiness?

Many Christians think of joy as deeply spiritual and virtuous, and think of happiness as experiential, untrustworthy, and fleeting. Joy is rooted and unshakeable while happiness lives on the whim of a mood and the serendipity of circumstance. As we saw in chapter 10, these definitions are unhelpful and cause people unnecessary turmoil.

Certainly, people can have a version of happiness without having joy in the Lord. Temporal happiness is all around us all the time. Happiness, in this sense, is not the purview of Christians alone. Matthew 5:45 tells us that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust,” so it’s clear that the good gifts of God are enjoyed by all people to some degree. People eat and drink. People fall in love. People marvel at the beauty of the Matterhorn or an Edgar Degas oil painting. But this happiness—a tug toward the eternal—is incomplete. It is meant to lift people’s eyes to the things of God. Instead most people make their way through life moving from one temporal happiness to another.

This version of happiness is the beginning of something lasting and magnificent. But without an eye toward the eternal, it is happiness without joy—a fleeting pursuit of the next good feeling. However good it looks on the surface, at its root it is idolatrous and dangerous.

So you can have a version of happiness without joy, but you cannot have genuine joy without happiness. To be joyful is to be glad, to rejoice, to be grateful, to be at peace. Joy should be magnetic and compelling, not life in the doldrums. In short, to be joyful is to be happy in those things that are lasting and transformative. A professed joy that lacks happiness is nothing but an articulated belief system, and it is hypocrisy.

When we recognize the inextricable wovenness of genuine happiness and joy it relieves a burden of unnecessary guilt over enjoyment (evangeliguilt) in life’s pleasures. It gives us permission to—and even compels us to—find laughter and peace in the midst of life’s worst circumstances. The complex reality of human emotion is that we rarely experience just one feeling at a time. We find that we can be truly happy in the midst of suffering even though we are grieving and burdened because of the suffering. We don’t need to extricate our joy from our happiness or put one on a spiritual pedestal while the other plays in the yard. To do so is to falsify both.

2) Is unhappiness sin? How about unhappiness in the midst of suffering?

Well, that depends.

In chapter 4 we took a long look at how we live under a curse because of sin. Nothing is as it is supposed to be. And every human knows this at a visceral and often subconscious level. We feel the wrongness of injustice, unkindness, illness, brokenness, and death. They make us unhappy, and this unhappiness is a reflection of God’s image in us. We are designed to abhor what is evil, what is wrong, what shouldn’t be. This kind of unhappiness is right.

This means that when we suffer, we are free to lament—to grieve with faith that God is in control. We should abhor the pain that a cursed reality has brought about. We ought to yearn for resolution, for healing, for justice, and ultimately for the return of Jesus to set things right. The Gospels tell of Jesus weeping over the death of a friend, mourning over the plight of a city he loved, and pleading with God for a way out of the suffering of crucifixion. He was rightly unhappy with the devastation wrought by sin.

But he was never selfish. His unhappiness did not turn to complaint, to blaming, to bad moods, or to mistrust of his Father. Just the opposite. When Jesus asked, “Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me,” in the same breath He prayed “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36). He was unhappy, but trusting. He was unhappy, but obedient. He was unhappy, but he did not let it direct him away from the course God called him to.

Our unhappiness becomes sinful when it focuses on the self. We instinctively do this all the time—and the effects can be devastating. We allow the brokenness in one area of life to splatter its acid all over other areas of life, so that we become blind to that for which we should be thankful. Or we experience a wrong of some kind and our reaction is disproportionate and causes even more wreckage. Or we wallow in unhappiness, as if that will somehow make us happier, rather than seeking the happiness Christ offers through his Spirit and through so many good gifts.

Unhappiness is part of life until we go to meet Jesus or he returns. We will never be completely happy, completely satisfied, or permanently at peace in this life. And this does not have to be sinful. In fact, it can be God-honoring as we respond to life’s unhappiness in the manner Jesus did—selflessly, joyfully, trusting God, pressing on.

3) Are my expectations right, realistic, and godly?

So much of happiness is tied to what we expect. But how do we know if what we expect is right? Here are some filters we can run expectations through to help determine if they are realistic and god-honoring.

Who are my expectations benefiting?

The easiest thing in the world is to think of ourselves first and only. It is our sinful nature to prioritize ourselves at the cost of anyone else, and it is contrary to everything Scripture teaches about serving others, considering their needs, bearing with one another, and taking up our crosses as followers of Jesus. If the primary, or only, beneficiary of your expectations is yourself, you need to consider how they align with what God says is right and true.

When you head into a relationship, are you thinking primarily of how it will be good for you, or how it will be good for the other person? When you join a church, are considering only what it offers you or what you can bring to it? In any decision, are you considering the cost to yourself or only the benefit? Are you willing to absorb that cost for the good of others, even if it is unpleasant? And have you considered how the benefit to you might actually be a cost to others?

Who do I depend on to meet my expectations?

This question goes hand-in-hand with the one above. It is impossible to have expectations that truly depend on God and are also self-centered in their outcome. To depend on God (to “fear God”, Ecclesiastes 12:13) is to put him first. When we do this, it rearranges or replaces our selfish motivations and orients us toward expectations that truly please God. When we have expectations that are selfish we can be sure that they are dependent on ourselves, or other people, to fulfill them.

That’s not to say we don’t need other people or that leaning on them is wrong. God has designed us for relationships in which we depend on one another. But there is a significant difference between the kind of depending on people that puts all our faith in them and the kind that recognizes their need for God to empower and enable them. The former places a burden of expectation on people that will inevitably lead to disappointment. The second acknowledges their God-given abilities and capacities with gratitude, while resting in God’s ongoing work through them. This is freeing and gracious.

When our expectations are God-dependent they become God-defined. We simply can’t expect God to do anything that God didn’t say he would do. Remembering this keeps us from hoping for things that dishonor God, while enabling us to expect remarkable, mind-blowing things from God by faith. We often will not know what to hope for or expect in particular situations, but when we depend on God, we know that he will do what is best—whether or not our expectations come to fruition. When we depend on ourselves, or on others, we risk becoming proud or embittered, depending on whether our expectations were met or not.

What do I know of the one I am depending on?

When we depend on God, we know that our expectations are in perfect hands—but they are also in mysterious ones. God will do things we never thought possible and that we never asked for. His wisdom is too great and wonderful for us, so we will never know the full picture of why and how he does what he does. However, if we know him well—his character, his word, his promises—we will find peace and happiness in the outcomes he gives. If we don’t have a firm grasp on God’s character, we’ll struggle to believe and find peace in outcomes we did not expect or want.

When we depend on people, even in a healthy way, we need to be equally aware of who they are—image-bearers of God with an incredible capacity for good and evil. We are fools if we don’t let this shape our expectations of people. They can bring us great joy and do us real good, but they will inevitably let us down too. There is only one person who works for our good in all things, all the time—and it’s not our spouse, or our friend, or our pastor (Romans 8:28). This is why we depend on God even as we depend on people. It is only through God’s work that people do good and can be trusted. Another way to put it would be: who does the one you depend on depend on?

4) How do I freely enjoy life without guilt? How do I keep enjoyment from becoming idolatry?

One of the main reasons I wrote this book was because I was tired of wrestling with guilt over having fun and enjoying myself. It seemed strange that God would give so many wonderful gifts only for me to feel guilty for enjoying them. On the other hand, I could also recognize my propensity for turning good things into idols, and that wasn’t ok either. Thus began my efforts at wrangling these tensions into a (hopefully) coherent and biblically faithful book. In the spirit of Ecclesiastes, and hopefully a dash of Solomon’s wisdom, I’ll conclude with the following thoughts.

Be grateful in everything. If you acknowledge and thank the source of your blessings it is so much harder to turn them into idols of any kind.

Appreciate good gifts as God intended. Savor the delicious things. Laugh at the humorous things. Thrill at the exhilarating things. Enjoy the entertaining things. Cheer at the joyous things. Ponder the deep things. Rest in the peaceful things. Reflect on the somber things. Wonder at the beautiful things. Cherish the precious things. And share them all, for happiness is multiplied when gifts are experienced together.

Live the life God has given you to the fullest. Imagine taking a child to the playground. If she continually came back asking, “Am I swinging right?” or, “Am I sliding right?” you would eventually say, “Just go play! Enjoy yourself. Have fun.” We are like that child when we worry too much about how to enjoy life rather than simply being fully engaged and enjoying it.

Repent often and eagerly. We will get things wrong dozens of times every day for the rest of our lives. We will sin in our hearts, minds, and actions. We can either let our sins drive us from God, or we can remember the work of Christ and take our sins to God, our good Father, who stands ready to forgive and is generous with good gifts. When we repent the Holy Spirit changes us, by degrees, toward holiness, where perfect peace and happiness are found.

Fear God and keep his commandments. These words are the final instruction of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, and they are the perfect summation of our pursuit of happiness. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning wisdom” (Proverbs 1:7). It is the grounds for all gratitude. It is the orientation of our hearts to truth and right expectations. It is dependence and honor and trust. From it flows a desire to keep God’s commandments because we see them as life-giving and good. In God’s words we have freedom to enjoy, strength to overcome, and a promise of true happiness.

[image error]This is an excerpt from my book Hoping for Happiness. A biblical framework for living a grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy life, this book gets far beyond the topic of work and helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun.

Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writing

Stephen King is one of the most prolific and gifted American novelists. I say that as someone who does not particularly enjoy his bent toward the dark and terrifying but who absolutely recognizes him as a brilliant writer. King’s book, On Writing, is my favorite resource of both an example of good writing craft and tips on how to do it. Any writer or aspiring writer should read it.

Some time ago the Barnes & Noble book blog shared King’s 20 rules for writing, as drawn from his book. Their post includes Kings’ brilliant commentary on each rule, so go read it in full. For the more opaque rules I included King’s explanations.

Here are the 20 rules. If you can follow even a few of these your writing will notably improve.

1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. 

2. Don’t use passive voice. 

3. Avoid adverbs.

“The adverb is not your friend. Consider the sentence “He closed the door firmly.” It’s by no means a terrible sentence, but ask yourself if ‘firmly’ really has to be there. What about context? What about all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came before ‘He closed the door firmly’? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, then isn’t ‘firmly’ an extra word? Isn’t it redundant?”

4. Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.” 

5. But don’t obsess over perfect grammar.

6. The magic is in you.

“I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.”

7. Read, read, read. 

8. Don’t worry about making other people happy. 

“Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second to least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”

9. Turn off the TV. 

10. You have three months.

“The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”

11. There are two secrets to success.

“When I’m asked for ‘the secret of my success’ (an absurd idea, that, but impossible to get away from), I sometimes say there are two: I stayed physically healthy, and I stayed married. It’s a good answer because it makes the question go away, and because there is an element of truth in it.”

12. Write one word at a time. 

13. Eliminate distraction. 

14. Stick to your own style. 

15. Dig. 

“When, during the course of an interview for The New Yorker, I told the interviewer (Mark Singer) that I believed stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, he said that he didn’t believe me. I replied that that was fine, as long as he believed that I believe it. And I do. Stories aren’t souvenir tee-shirts or Game Boys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”

16. Take a break. 

“If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours, even be able to remember what tune was on the stereo when you wrote certain lines, and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin, perhaps.

17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings. 

18. The research shouldn’t overshadow the story. 

19. You become a writer simply by reading and writing. 

“You don’t need writing classes or seminars any more than you need this or any other book on writing. Faulkner learned his trade while working in the Oxford, Mississippi post office. Other writers have learned the basics while serving in the Navy, working in steel mills or doing time in America’s finer crossbar hotels.”

20. Writing is about getting happy. 

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.”

New Happy Rant: Gen Z, Fallwell, and False Yoda Work

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas do what they always do and wander to and fro through a variety of topics:

Woke Ted
Sunday Cool and the Gen Z Bible Study that wasn’t
Bible verses read by generations
Fallwell Falls . . . well?
Endorsers for a Happy Rant Book
Correcting false Yoda tweet accusations
Simon Sinek: Leadership Yoda extraordinaire

SPONSOR

[image error]Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 20% off your subscription.

FORTHCOMING BOOK

[image error]In his forthcoming book, Hoping for Happiness, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that is grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy. It’s available October 1, but you can pre-order now.

Get Your Coffee

[image error]WE ARE COFFEE MOGULS AGAIN. We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #312

Do You Feel Guilty for Being Happy?

This is Randy Alcorn’s foreword for Hoping for Happiness, my new book which releases on October 1.

Spoiler alert: I loved Hoping for Happiness.

Barnabas Piper hooked me when he said, “One of the main reasons I wrote this book is because I was tired of wrestling with guilt over having fun and enjoying myself. It seemed strange that God would give so many wonderful gifts only for me to feel guilty for enjoying them.”

I grew up in a home with no knowledge of Jesus or the good news. I was often unhappy, spending night after night listening to music that promised happiness but failed to deliver it. Gazing at the night sky through my telescope, I longed for a connection to the wonders of the universe but couldn’t find it.

When I was in high school, Jesus drew me to himself. Everyone, first my mom, noticed the change. The most obvious difference? I became much happier.

I loved my first-ever church, but it struck me as strange when the pastor said, “God doesn’t want you happy; he wants you holy.” Well, I was holier than I’d ever been, but I was much happier too. Was something wrong with me?

That wonderful pastor often cited Oswald Chambers’ great book My Utmost for His Highest, which I eagerly read. But at the time I didn’t know enough to disagree when Chambers said, “Joy should not be confused with happiness. In fact, it is an insult to Jesus Christ to use the word happiness in connection with Him.”

I certainly didn’t want to insult Jesus by saying he was happy or he made me happy! And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the difference between joy and happiness. (In fact, they are synonyms for everyone except Christians who’ve been taught otherwise).

After a steady diet of such teaching, I became wary of happiness. Had I seen this book Hoping for Happiness back then, I’d have thought, We shouldn’t hope for what God doesn’t want us to have. I’d never have believed I’d one day write a book titled Does God Want Us to Be Happy? And I would have assumed the answer must be a resounding no!

Like Barnabas, I felt guilty for being happy. The message seemed to be, “You could impress God if you chose a life of miserable holiness.” It took me decades to realize that wasn’t merely a misguided and thoroughly unbiblical idea; it was a lie from the pit of hell. It undermined the “good news of happiness” (Isaiah 52:7, ESV, NASB).

Barnabas writes, “Everyone, whether they believe in God or not, has a deep internal yearning for eternal significance and happiness.” That’s why it’s counterintuitive and counterproductive to pit happiness and holiness against each other. Jesus himself, the most holy human there’s ever been, got invited to parties and was the life of them. (His first miracle was rescuing a wedding celebration that ran out of wine). Children loved him. Had he been stern and unhappy, they wouldn’t have.

Instead of, “Don’t seek happiness,”—a command impossible to obey anyway—why not, “Seek your primary happiness in Jesus, and fully enjoy the derivative happiness in his countless gifts, including family, friends, food, work and play”?

We love and serve one who reveals himself as a “happy God” (1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15). We are to put our hope in “God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17).

Barnabas calls on us to see God as “a generous Father, who showers you with good things day by day and invites you to enjoy them freely, daily, for your pleasure. “

The years I devoted to researching and writing various books on happiness were life-changing. I discovered Scripture speaks of exactly what I’d experienced: not a flimsy superficial optimism, but a happiness that’s biblically grounded in the rock of Christ’s blood-bought promises. Truth is, the good news should leak into every aspect of our lives, even if we’re not consciously talking about God or witnessing to someone. The “good news of happiness” should permeate our lives with, well, happiness. True holiness is happy-making, and all ultimate happiness is holy-making.

Barnabas couldn’t be more right when he says, “A laughing Christian who relishes good things is a compelling, magnetic Christian—the kind who draws people to truth.”

This echoes what J. C. Ryle wrote 150 years ago:

It is a positive misfortune to Christianity when a Christian cannot smile. A merry heart, and a readiness to take part in all innocent mirth, are gifts of inestimable value. They go far to soften prejudices, to take stumbling blocks out of the way, and to make way for Christ and the gospel.

There is no greater draw to the gospel than happy Christians who are full of grace and truth, quick to laugh and quick to weep for and comfort those who suffer.

My wife Nanci and I have been married 43 years. In the last three, as we have faced her cancer together, we have found a deeper happiness in God and each other than ever before. We have known firsthand the “hopeful, grounded realism” Barnabas writes of. Trusting in Jesus has brought us great happiness in Him, even amidst suffering and the threat of death.

In this delightful book, you’ll see that Barnabas loves Jesus, family, sports, food, fun, God’s creation, and life in general. So do I. We don’t pass our peaks in this life. We don’t even begin to reach them. A New Earth awaits us. I envision Christ’s laugh will be the loudest and longest at all those great feasts ahead of us. But why wait? Why not frontload our eternal happiness into our here and now and give ourselves and others a taste of Heaven?

Hoping for Happiness says, “Hang your happiness on the right hooks, hang your hopes on God’s promises, fear him, and obey his commands—and in this you’ll find happiness, now and forever.”

I know how good this book is. I’ve read it. Now it’s your turn!

[image error]This is an excerpt from my book Hoping for Happiness – the foreword by Randy Alcorn. A biblical framework for living a grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy life, this book gets far beyond the topic of work and helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun.

New Happy Rant: Childhood Books, Christian Schools, and an Enneagram Argument

In this episode of the Happy Rant Ronnie and Barnabas do what they always do and wander (lots of wandering) to and fro through a variety of topics:

C.S. Lewis the closet Calvinist
Favorite childhood books
Childhood books we hated
How Christian schools shaped (or didn’t) reading habits
Books we came to love as adults
Books we loathe
Is the Enneagram helpful any more?

SPONSOR

[image error]Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 20% off your subscription.

FORTHCOMING BOOK

[image error]In his forthcoming book, Hoping for Happiness, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that is grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy. It’s available October 1, but you can pre-order now.

Get Your Coffee

[image error]WE ARE COFFEE MOGULS AGAIN. We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #311

Is holiness opposed to happiness? (And what about joy?)

As a society, we don’t excel at nuance. This means that many cleverly stated falsehoods go unchecked. We especially love a good false dichotomy, particularly if it rhymes or is alliterated. It matters less if it’s true than if it’s memorable.

One such statement that has laid waste to many people’s happiness, and even their faith, is some version of “God wants you to be holy, not happy.” While some might put it that bluntly, more often it is applied to specific areas of life. “Marriage isn’t about your happiness but your holiness.” “Church doesn’t exist to make you happy; it exists to make you holy.” “It’s a parent’s job to lead their children toward holiness, not happiness.”

The guilt so many Christians feel for experiencing pleasure is born of the belief that to chase after happiness is to run away from God. This isn’t to say we can never be happy, but rather that happiness is, at best, a temporary and surprising circumstantial bi-product of doing what is right. We can desire and run after happiness or holiness, but not both.

A brief definition of holiness is: growing in Christ-likeness through the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives so that we pursue the things of God. So, if it’s true that God wants us to be happy, then pursuing the things of God cannot be in opposition to happiness.

So why is this false dichotomy so prevalent and so powerful in the lives of so many churches and believers?

The Wrong Kind of Happiness

The movie The Princess Bride contains a memorable exchange between self-important criminal mastermind Vizzini and Inigo Montoya, the revenge-driven Spanish swordsman. Vizzini repeatedly uses the word “inconceivable.” Everything that surprises him is “inconceivable.” After numerous such exclamations, Inigo looks sidelong at him and says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” This is how I feel every time I hear someone pit happiness against holiness. The only way happiness and holiness can be put at odds is to misdefine them both.

We do this, first, by cheapening happiness and reducing it to something trite. The “happiness” that stands in opposition to holiness is cheap, flimsy, and temporary. It is the kind found in things of little significance that we think will fulfill us but really won’t last—the kind of happiness that we hang on weak hooks and with wrong expectations.

Certainly there is a bastardized version of happiness that can be found in sin too. Pornography arouses. Gluttony satiates. Laziness relaxes. Drunkenness stimulates or numbs, depending on what we need it to medicate. Sexual promiscuity is enthralling and ecstatic. Workaholism gives a sense of accomplishment. Gossip titillates. Criticism leaves us feeling superior.

While the feelings last, that is. Then comes the inevitable crash, leaving us with a need for another hit to keep the high going. And every high is lower than the last, so we increase our intake. In the end we are as strung out emotionally and spiritually as a heroin addict is physically and mentally. What we thought of as happiness was mere emotional self-manipulation.

This kind of “happiness” looks nothing like the joy we saw in Psalm 16, or the pleasure of enjoying every good and perfect gift. It’s not the happiness we have when we expect the right things of the right things—a solid, grounded happiness that’s earthy but not worldly, and is simply good.

So in one sense, to pit this twisted type of “happiness” against holiness is biblically right; it is in opposition to pursuing the things of God. But to call this “happiness” is inaccurate and leads people to believe that pursuing things of God reduces enjoyment in life.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Holiness Without Happiness

Misdefining happiness is only half the problem. Misdefining holiness is the other half. At least part of reason we do this is because we’ve already misunderstood happiness. Once we reduce happiness to something that is opposed to godliness, we end up seeing holiness as a dry husk; a matter of suppressing our desire for the sake what is right. We know there’s a reward in heaven—a significant reward to be sure, but it offers a bleak outlook for enjoyment during the duration of our lifetime.

If we remove happiness from holiness, pursuing the things of God is drudgery. It is a grind. We become like Sisyphus, the figure from Greek Mythology cursed to push the boulder up the hill only to see it roll down again, day after day after day for our whole lives. We become driven by a sense of moral dread and the burden of obligation. Holiness becomes a word we loathe rather than the wondrous calling and invitation it actually is in Christ. We mustn’t miss the fact that God says that the pursuit of joy is a pursuit of holiness. Remember the command to “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I will say rejoice” (Philippians 4:4), “Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous” (Psalm 97:12), and the significant number of times Jesus says to rejoice (e.g. Matthew 5:12, Luke 10:20, Luke 15:6). Consider that in Galatians joy is listed among the fruit of the Spirit. We are commanded to be joyful and told that joy will be a result of life as a follower of Jesus.

Some of you may be a bit uncomfortable right now, because you have come to believe that joy and happiness are distinctly different. In this line of thinking, happiness is a temporary, trite emotion, while joy is altogether different—a deep, lasting, rooted, and significant spiritual virtue. So, the thinking goes, joy is our reward for holiness, and happiness is something unreliable and mostly devoid of spiritual significance.

Let me pose a question in response. What would you think of a person who perpetually promoted joy, spoke of pursuing joy, expressed the deep riches of joy, but simply didn’t seem happy? They would be very confusing, right? It would seem at odds and maybe even hypocritical. That’s because joy without happiness is nothing but a theological description, at least if it remains that way. Joy that doesn’t bring about happiness isn’t genuine joy. This doesn’t mean that we will always feel happy. And it doesn’t mean that happiness will always come easily. Our peace and wholeness and comfort in the Lord will not always immediately bring about laughter and rejoicing. But real biblical joy is always moving us toward those things.

It’s true that the Bible says little about the word “happiness.” And of course, Scripture commands us to rejoice, making clear that this is much more than a mere feeling—it’s something we can choose, rather than something we passively experience. But another biblical word helps us understand the connection between happiness and joy: gladness. This is a feeling of pleasure attached to joy, an uplifting of spirit, a bubbling up of happiness. Scripture describes serving the Lord with “joyfulness and gladness” (Deuteronomy 28:47), people being “glad of heart for all the goodness that the Lord had shown” (1 Kings 8:66), and people having “light and gladness and joy and honor” (Esther 8:16). Psalm 32:11 rounds out the picture by saying “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice.” Gladness is paired with joy and rejoicing; it is the feeling that stems from them and fuels them.

This means that when joy in the Lord is lived out, it breeds happiness—the Psalm-16-every-perfect-gift-with-right-expectations kind of happiness that is rich and deep and profound. This is the sort of happiness that is capable of mourning with those who mourn and living realistically under the weight of a fallen world, because it’s rooted and realistic. It can comfort the sorrowful and uplift the weary rather than badgering them with trite chipperness and insisting that they look on the bright side of life. It’s happiness that reflects God’s holiness rather than diminishing it, because if joy is our reward for pursuing holiness, then so is happiness.

Happiness through Holiness 

Having said all that, our pursuit of holiness will still be work, because of our sinful nature. It takes effort and discipline. But for those who are in Christ, this effort is done in the power of the Holy Spirit:

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13)

We work for godliness, but it is God who works in us. It takes effort by us, but God is the mover and accomplisher. What’s more, God works in us “for his good pleasure.” So, even more than our holiness makes us happy, it makes God happy.

This is vital to understand, because it moves us far away from thinking of holiness as drudgery. Yes, it is work. Yes, we will fail. Yes, we must persevere. But it is God who works in us, and he delights to give us the Holy Spirit who teaches and empowers and enables us toward holiness (Luke 11:13). This is a new spiritual dimension entirely, and one that reverberates with hope and happiness.

It is amazing how the changing of a single syllable can alter an entire theological argument and even the trajectory of a life. If we change the framework of our thinking from “happiness and holiness” to “happiness through holiness,” we alter one tiny word and literally everything else in life follows suit. Instead of being pitted against one another they become interdependent. No longer do we have to choose between doing the work of following Jesus or pursuing happiness. Instead we find that pursuing holiness, in all areas of life, through the power of The Holy Spirit, under the smile of God, is where true happiness is to be found.

To put it a different way, pursuing holiness pays off. In this life. As we pursue holiness, “we walk in the light” (1 John 1:7). We step out of spiritual darkness where we hid in shame and guilt and frustration and loneliness and step into the light of Jesus with all our sinful junk. And that’s where we find freedom. Freedom to be forgiven over and over again as we fight against and sin and still fail. Freedom in the Spirit to pursue the things God love. Freedom to grow genuine deep relationships. Freedom to enjoy the things of earth as God’s good gifts not as idols. Freedom from pain we have inflicted on ourselves or even that others have inflicted on us. Freedom to keep repenting, knowing that God welcomes all who are in Jesus with open arms.

In the moment, many of these actions feel like sacrifice and self-denial. It’s difficult to give up idols because of the prominence we’ve given them in our lives. It feels humiliating to repent. Turning from habits of sin is hard. Meaningful relationships are risky because vulnerability is frightening. Changing the course of our lives from self-centered to God-oriented can lead in uncertain directions. But each action is simply denying a self we left behind when we became Christ’s. They are risky, in that we can still be hurt by fellow sinners, but we know with certainty that we are accepted by God. They are losses, but only of things by which we no longer want to define ourselves and in which we no longer want to find our worth.

Pursuing holiness is the pursuit of happiness, in this life and the next. Nobody should be happier than a follower of Jesus.

Holiness through Happiness

For a Christian, everything you just read should feel right. We can grow in happiness as we grow in holiness because of the freedom we find in Christ. But we can also grow in holiness as we pursue happiness. It’s true. The Bible gives us a model how.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

This verse begins in such a striking way; with happiness. “Delight yourself.” Find delight. Then it locates where and how that delight should be: “in the LORD.” This is a pursuit of happiness in the things of the Lord. It is freedom to run after all the delight and happiness we can find, in the Lord—his words, his presence, his people, his gifts, his direction for our lives.

And when we do that, “he will give you the desires of your heart.” That does not mean God will give you whatever your heart previously desired. It means that he will give us those delights we are seeking in him. By pursuing happiness in the Lord our very desires are reshaped. We want new and different things which God is pleased to give us lavishly.

To extrapolate this out, it also means we will begin to desire new results from old pleasures. If food was once how we filled the void of loneliness, by delighting ourselves in the Lord we will begin to desire food for enjoyment and out of gratitude. If sex was once how we sought love and validation, by delighting ourselves in the Lord we will begin to see it as the gift God intended between husband and wife within the safe and comforting bounds of marriage. If work was once where we found accomplishment and identity, by delighting ourselves in the Lord we will begin to see it as a means of using abilities he’s given us for purposes of his kingdom.

This means that, as we grow in holiness, we are free to pursue happiness because it is ultimately located in the things of God. Our delight in friendship reflects our part in the body of Christ. Our enjoyment of work and creating declares our status as image bearers. Our pleasure in eating points us to gratitude for God’s provision and for the skills of the one who prepared the food. The peace we find in cool breezes and rolling surf is the peace of the Lord shared through his beautiful creation.

God does, indeed, want us to be happy. He wants us to enjoy and to revel and to delight. God wants us to be holy too. What a miracle of his wisdom and love it is, then, that he has given us everything we need to find both.

[image error]This is an excerpt from my book Hoping for Happiness. A biblical framework for living a grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy life, this book gets far beyond the topic of work and helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun.

New Happy Rant Sports: Listener Sports Q&A

In this episode of the Happy Rant Sports Podcast Ted and Barnabas do what they always do and wander to and fro through various sports topics. This time, they’re all topics submitted by listeners.

Why does we hate the Titans?
Best broadcasters and calls?
John Piper’s playing style
Moneyball reformed guys
Best sporting events we’ve watched
Best sporting event we’ve played in
New MLB rules – keep or ditch?

FORTHCOMING BOOK

[image error]In his forthcoming book, Hoping for Happiness, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that is grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy. It’s available October 1, but you can pre-order now.

Get Your Coffee

[image error]WE ARE COFFEE MOGULS AGAIN. We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #44

New Happy Rant: Barnabas Piper on the Hot Seat

In this episode of The Happy Rant the boys do what they always do and wander to and from through, well, just one topic: Barnabas Piper. Ted and Ronnie come with pressing questions they’ve always wanted to ask Barnabas regarding:

What his mom taught him
The perfect day
What doors is marriage opening?
Dream jobs as a kid
That *one* dream writing project

FORTHCOMING BOOK

[image error]In his forthcoming book, Hoping for Happiness, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that is grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy. It’s available October 1, but you can pre-order now.

Get Your Coffee

[image error]WE ARE COFFEE MOGULS AGAIN. We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #310

Is Happiness Possible – Introduction to “Hoping for Happiness”

Is happiness possible?

[image error]When I began writing this book, the answer to that question seemed like a fairly obvious “yes.” I could look up from my laptop as I wrote in coffee shops and see a world full of happy people. Across the table from me a young couple would talk softly and giggle occasionally. They seemed happy. Outside, gaggles of bachelorette partygoers moseyed along the downtown Nashville streets, combining enthusiastic off-key warbling with copious adult-beverage consumption. They seemed happy. My daughters planned sleepovers with friends, complete with movies, junk food, crafts, and very little of the aforementioned sleep. They were so happy. At the end of each week we’d head to church to worship and be refreshed and encouraged. It was a happy time.

Shortly after I turned the manuscript in, however, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, and all that disappeared in the space of weeks. Thousands upon thousands of people died, and the workings of entire nations ground to a halt. It was terrifying and overwhelming. Never in our collective lifetime had we faced such uncertainty. Happiness was lost for some, called into question by many, and redefined for others.

In the aftermath of a global pandemic, the answer to the question “Is happiness possible?” might sound a little different. When I set out to write this book, I thought I might have to persuade some readers to reconsider your definition of happiness—to rattle some cages and show how fleeting our sources of happiness are—before offering hope and direction. Now few of us need to be persuaded that so many of the things we look to for happiness are actually rather fragile. But more than ever, we need to know what true happiness is and how to find a version of it that cannot be shaken.

So let me begin by saying this: YES, happiness is possible. That is what this book is about—to help you find your way to a true, lasting, grounded sense of happiness. But it also seeks to answer some of those other questions that have bubbled to the surface: the ones we probably should have been asking before our worlds were rattled and that we can hardly ignore any longer.

If happiness is so attainable, why are our lives marked by such a desperate search for it? Why are we so often unsatisfied, grasping at what is next, groping for what is better, and racing after what is new and undiscovered? Why is it that even while we are in the midst of pleasure we are thinking of the next pleasure? It’s an exhausting way to live.

But let me reassure you: this book is not going to tell you to stop pursuing happiness. That would be like saying, “Give up on life.” Nor am I going to tell you to just look ahead to future joy with Christ and find all your happiness there. That would be to diminish the value of all that God has given us in the present. Instead, I’m going to show you a third option that exists in the tension between those two extremes. We must neither be so dedicated to earthly happiness as to never attain infinite joy nor so “heavenly-minded” as to be no earthly good. Both errors disconnect us from the real stuff and substance of life as God intends us to live it.

In this book, the first four chapters are, in essence, clearing the ground, helping us to see why happiness often proves elusive. Having done that, we’ll be in a position to put in place the building blocks of a better, firmer, more stable kind of happiness.

I am slowly learning to take hold of this right kind of happiness. It would be gross arrogance to say I have “arrived.” But I am learning, mistake by mistake—with my failures in view but my eyes fixed on Jesus—more of what it means to be truly happy. As you read this book, I hope that you too will discover a perspective that leads you to a new kind of happiness—a grounded and hopeful sort. I hope you’ll escape the frenzied pursuit of the next source of happiness and relish the ones God has given you, with an eye toward what he will give you forever and ever. Yes, you can be happy.

[image error]This is an excerpt from my book, Hoping for Happiness , releasing October 1, 2020 from The Good Book Company. It is also releasing as an audio book, read by me.

New Happy Rant: Listener Q&A (Part 2)

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted and Barnabas do what they always do and wander to and fro through various topics . . . with a twist. These are all listener questions and suggestions.

Favorite music
Re-living favorite years and eras
Reformed people reading for fun
Happy Rant Origin Story
Stuck on an Island with emergent church leaders

FORTHCOMING BOOK

[image error]In his forthcoming book, Hoping for Happiness, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that is grounded, hopeful, and genuinely happy. It’s available October 1, but you can pre-order now.

Get Your Coffee

[image error]WE ARE COFFEE MOGULS AGAIN. We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #309