The secret is that happiness, the way this world defines it, is that you’ll never find it by seeking it…It’s a mirage that pales in comparison to the JOY that is found in relationship with the God who made you and loves you.
This is not about being pessimistic or negative, it’s about being real and transparent…and taking God at His Word. We cannot ultimately find lasting happiness in this life. But what we CAN DO is experience JOY that is anchored beyond it into the realm of its Almighty & Loving Creator! That’s how God set it up, and created us. But it doesn’t seem like most people want that answer, so they end up chasing after alternatives…one after the other…in a never ending cycle of disappointment. Many of us naturally spend our lives going from one thrill to the next, or burrowing deep into one bottomless pit, because God built us that way so that we would seek Him and His Kingdom. This is the true adventure…the macro-story and meaning of the whole world! It’s kind of like the Matrix, but again, most people don’t see it, and don’t want to. This is essentially why people get into drugs, have affairs, and cheat on their taxes. They’re looking for something else to fill the void. Because we think we need more of something to make us happy. I can say from personal experience, after smoking lots of pot in my teenage years, that the freewheeling sensation of being high never fulfilled what I really needed. And I had to keep doing more of it to feel the same way. We all have little false gods, and struggle with them every day. I am so thankful that, in my 16th year of life, I discovered a truth that set me free! The truth is that this world is just a stepping stone to eternity…a test…a practice run. But it’s rigged because the world is broke, and so is the heart of every one of us:
“The creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:20-22).”
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? ‘I, the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)
OK, don’t stop reading….this is the GOOD NEWS!
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do….Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it….For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!…Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 7:15-8:4)
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers….What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?….We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:28-39)
