“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” Phil. 4:4
“This is what makes her happy,” a husband told me about his wife one day referring to a big volunteer endeavor she had taken on that seemed to have become all-consuming and per her husband had helped her deal with an enormous personal challenge. “And our happiness is what matters, isn’t it?” he essentially said.
Well. Um. Hmm. I started to agree with him because I knew it would make him happy. No pun intended. Clearly he wanted and expected I would agree with him. So I began to validate what he had said about our happiness being what matters in life. But the Spirit of God quickly convicted me. I shouldn’t have hesitated at all. I should have spoken the truth from the start which I ordinarily do. But I fell that day. God caught me and quickly chastened me. I needed to repent. I did.
I told him the truth. The same truth I am compelled to share with you. Though I didn’t sense the Spirit of God was leading me to say more than a couple of sentences to this man and while God always knows the best time, place, way, and through whom He desires to reach someone’s heart to believe in and follow the Lord Jesus Christ and to help people grow in His image, the subject remained on my heart. I knew something needed to be said. To you. Me. To others. God willing one day soon in more detail to that man.
Happiness does most assuredly appear to be our culture’s top priority. But it is not per the Bible God’s. Our primary purpose on this earth is to love and worship the Lord forever, to enter into His forever Kingdom and receive everlasting life by repenting of our sins, believing Christ died for us, and committing our lives to Him, and spending our lives being conformed to Christ and helping others to find and follow Him forever, and using the gifts God has given us to glorify Him, all the while enjoying fellowship with the Lord!
Our primary purpose must NOT be our happiness. It’s not about us; it’s about Him! The temporary, fleeting happiness we find in earthly pleasures, which we can still experience when we follow Christ if and as God leads us but must not be our highest goal, is NOTHING compared with the unfathomable JOY we experience in intimacy, communion, fellowship, in closeness with Christ Jesus. There is no comparison. When we commit our lives to Christ, we may need to turn our backs on some things that make us happy as we turn away from sin and live for Him instead. We may also face great tribulations. But nothing, and nobody, can take from us unless we choose to give it up the EVERLASTING JOY of knowing Jesus!