Does God Want Me to Be Happy?
Share
Our modern culture is obsessed with being happy. We see the roots of this in the Declaration of Independence, that we have unalienable rights to life and the pursuit of happiness, among others. Therefore, happiness becomes the reason we do many things. People get married and divorced based on their happiness. We take jobs or quit based on a happiness quotient. We choose places to live and other purchases based on what we think will make us happy. Most advertising uses this principle to get people to buy or commit to things.
When talking about following God, a friend once told me, “I think God just wants us to be happy.” In context, she meant he’s cool with whatever we think will make us happy, no matter what anyone or the Bible might say.
This brings up important questions regarding whether God wants us to be happy, or unhappy, and the definition of happiness itself.
Photo credit: Unsplash/Nghia-Le
What Is Happiness?
Happiness is a temporary emotion responding to certain situations or outcomes. People feel happy when something good (or something they interpret as good) happens. This can be success at work, fun with friends, a great meal, or a kind word. These moments result in happiness, but it doesn’t last. Life keeps moving and circumstances change.
People often chase happiness as if it’s the destination. They set goals like making more money at work, finding a perfect mate, or reaching social status. Individuals seek these things, hoping the new situation will lead to a permanent happiness. But happiness doesn’t connect to anything permanent or lasting. Quite the opposite. Once someone gets what they want, the feeling dissipates, and they must start looking for the next thing.
This chase leads to the opposite of happiness. Ironically, it can bring more anxiety, anger, and frustration. Life also includes pain, disappointment, betrayal, and hardship, no matter how hard we try to avoid it.
God created the emotion of happiness, so it isn’t evil in and of itself. He created humanity to encounter goodness and experience these temporary feelings. However, like many of the lies people believe, the problem comes when we make something temporary into more than God meant it to be. As individuals and communities, if we seek happiness as a goal – the ultimate good – then we’re limited by our own notions of goodness and we won’t be able to endure unhappiness and hardship.
The Father gives us good things to enjoy, and we should be thankful. But we must be careful not to worship happiness. We were created for a greater goal.
Photo credit: Unsplash/Lidya Nada
What’s the Difference Between Happiness and Joy?
Happiness depends on what happens. But situations are temporary and change, often quickly. There’s no eternal meaning within seeking happiness.
In contrast, joy rests on something eternal. Joy is a deep and constant gladness rooted in God’s character, being, presence, and promises. Things that will never change. The Father’s joy pre-existed us and will last eternally. It’s not dependent upon something we can achieve or our circumstances. Joy rests in who God is, what he’s done, what he’s doing, and what he will do, a future in which we can trust. Joy flows from our engagement and intimacy with the Father through the Son by the Spirit.
As such, we can have joy even within difficult times. In fact, the joy of the Lord becomes a strength during hard seasons (Nehemiah 8:10). Grief and sorrows produce godly character, so our joy sees the reward ahead for faithfulness in the present. Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2). The early church rejoiced they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus (Acts 5:41). James even tells us to “consider it pure joy … whenever you face trials” because these things grow our faith and draw us closer to God.
God isn’t asking us to be happy about pain or grief. He weeps with us in sorrow and sadness. At the same time, he offers us his joy to endure and hope in this world, something no one can take away.
The Bible expresses joy as a defining trait for believers. Paul wrote from prison, “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). Paul’s joy didn’t depend on his comfort. He was under house arrest. He rejoiced “in the Lord,” in his God and Savior. He knew nothing could separate him from God’s love or oppose the gospel’s spread around the world.
We have joy because God has promised good things to us, and he keeps his promises. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him” (Romans 15:13). Trusting God produces joy when we understand him as good, all powerful, and faithful, no matter the temporary situation. Joy is a fruit – an outgrowth – of the Spirit in us (Galatians 5:22). And as the verse in Romans above teaches us, joy rises in partnership with peace, trust, hope, and strength.
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Bartek Szewczyk
What Verses Show How God Desires Our Happiness?
This doesn’t make happiness evil. God loves blessing his people with good things, and he wants us to enjoy them with thankful hearts. The discipline is clear, however. We just can’t set our hearts on these things, placing them as a focus. We should learn to see God’s gifts and even temporary happiness as gifts from the Father.
The apostle Paul writes this wisdom to Timothy. “God … richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” We shouldn’t put our hope in wealth but recognize that God gives all good gifts – including material things – to be enjoyed. God isn’t a killjoy or uncaring. His generous, good nature delights in giving us gifts, and for us to enjoy the happiness they bring with the right, pure heart.
Solomon, whom the Bible says was gifted by God with wisdom, shares, “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil — this is the gift of God” (Ecclesiastes 3:12-13). King Solomon expresses how temporary pleasures like eating and drinking aren’t meaningless when seen as gifts from God.
James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” No matter the gift — laughter with friends or a great movie — they are meant to remind us of the existence of heaven and a God who loves us. Remember, this is the same James who tells us to rejoice in hardships because of the reward and character revealed in us through faith.
This is the secret: we redeem the temporary gifts of God, the things which give us momentary happiness, when we see God as the source. This leads us to worship the true goal, God himself. In this way, we properly enjoy the temporary while rejoicing in God, finding greater joy in his presence to help us faithfully endure the unhappy times.
Photo credit: Sparrowstock
What Verses Point to Joy as a Greater Gift?
When we view each situation through the eternal lens of God and heaven, we experience and lay hold of the Father’s joy. As the best Father, the Lord desires to give us the best gifts, which includes his joy. Joy is the greater gift.
When Nehemiah told the Jews, “the joy of the Lord is your strength,” the people of God had just returned to right worship and the Promised Land after a period of exile. They still existed as second class citizens under a massive empire, the Persians. Jerusalem lay in ruins. Yet God had begun to redeem them, as he had promised through the prophets. The Jews could have easily wept in sorrow at their hardships, and they did, but Nehemiah called them to the Lord’s joy, which would give them strength to continue forward in hope.
Psalm 16:11 further declares where this joy exists. In him. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” True joy comes from being close to God, at his right hand. No earthly happiness could compare. And in the new covenant, the apostle Paul says our lives are now in Christ at the right hand of the Father (Colossians 3:1-3). As such, Paul urges us to seek the eternal, where Psalms say the fullness of joy awaits.
Jesus spoke to his disciples the night before his death and said, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). He didn’t tell them of the future and truth so they would be happy, but so they would have his joy, an eternal joy that then completed their own. The joy of the Lord ensured their own lacked nothing.
The Kingdom of God is identified by joy. One of the few “definitions” of the Kingdom of God says, “The kingdom of God is … righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). Paul contrasts an earthly idea of the Kingdom (eating and drinking or following a law) and points us to the rule and reign of God in the unseen, manifested by righteousness, peace, and joy. He repeats again where we can find this joy: in God, in his Spirit within us.
Photo credit: Unsplash/Jasmin Ne
What Is God’s Design for Our Happiness?
God designed us to enjoy the good things he gives, yet by the same design, we must enjoy them rightly. For instance, he created intimacy between a man and woman to be amazing, but he also created it to happen within a covenant of love and commitment. This actually makes the intimacy more amazing, despite what modern culture might want us to believe.
All worldly happiness is properly enjoyed in the same principle. The good things of life should make us happy, but we must view them under a greater reality, a covenant between us and God, in submission to him. If we don’t, then we twist good things into something evil. When we chase happiness as a goal for its own sake, we turn it into an idol. We serve temporary pleasure instead of God.
If we depend upon happiness, we build our lives on shifting sand. And this has destructive consequences. Worshipping happiness, we become seekers of self-pleasure, and as such, we justify selfishness and self-centeredness. Or we could call it pride. This self-seeking lies at the heart of rebellion and sin.
Second, if happiness is the goal, then unhappiness becomes evil. And then we start defining unhappiness as anything we don’t like or makes us uncomfortable. But hardship and resistance builds muscles, both in the body and in faith. God allows and uses trials in our lives to grow our character. However, with happiness as a goal, and unhappiness as evil, we question God’s goodness when we suffer grief and betrayal.
Altogether, we end up rejecting God, making a permanent and eternal decision based on temporary feelings. This is a great delusion and deception.
Instead, God teaches us to treasure moments of happiness when they come, and be thankful to him as the source. Then in seasons of trial (or unhappiness), we hope in God and find joy in him. In both situations — happiness or unhappiness — we realize these are temporary situations, not worthy of our worship. Instead, we seek the eternal King of Kings, worshipping him and finding lasting hope, peace, strength, and joy.
Peace.
Related article: Is God Anti-Fun?
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Christopher Robbins
