Have you experienced or are you experiencing true happiness in your life?
John Piper's book "Desiring God" is all about being happy IN God. Here is what he says about the book,
"(This book is) all about happiness, because that is what our Creator commands of us!"
"Delight yourself in the Lord" Psalm 37:4 Does that sound like a question? No! The psalmist commands us, saying "Delight yourself in the LORD!" Then he goes on to say, " and He shall give you the desires of your heart." Unfortunately most people misinterpret this by thinking "Wow God is going to give me whatever my heart desires! The mistake was in not adding the next verse. "Commit your way unto the Lord, Trust also in Him and He will bring it to pass." Psalm 37:5
What is he going to bring to pass? Well, if we are Committing our way to the Lord and trusting in Him, then we will Delight in Desiring His will for our lives! So when He brings His will to pass, He is also fulfilling the desire of our heart!
Sadly enough, most of the time in our society today people are constantly trying to fill their life with the earthly things that may bring pleasure for a moment, but tomorrow will mean nothing.
Blaise Pascal wrote this,
" All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves."
-from Pascal's Pensees, trans. W.F. Trotter (New York: E.P.Dutton, 1958),
He truly understood how earnestly men seek for Happiness, even some who are so miserable and they have tried everything but seeking the Lord, that they decide to end their lives.
I think C.S. Lewis made an astute observation on man and his longing for happiness. He remarked that,
"There once was in man a true happiness of which now remains to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings,seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. "
There are so many things we try and fill our lives with that just aren't eternally gratifying to our souls that are searching for true happiness! The only True Happiness that comes from God!
So, where are you searching for your happiness?
