Lesson for January 28, 2024
The Excellence of Happiness
John 15:11
“I have told you these things so that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy may be made full and complete and overflowing.”
It is impossible to be happy as a believer in Christ without obeying the principles and instructions found throughout the Word of God. Disobedience brings only self-induced misery and divine discipline. The Word of God gives us a clear picture of how Jesus exhibited happiness during His life. Jesus used the same power options that we have, the filling of the Holy Spirit and Bible doctrine to exhibit happiness during His time on earth. Therefore, Christ’s happiness was based on divine truth, not human emotion.
We must be aware that there is a counterfeit “happiness” of Satan. Since Satan was unsuccessful in destroying Christ’s happiness, his mission became to attack the happiness of believers by offering them a counterfeit happiness. As the ruler of this world system, Satan provides all the conditional and temporary emotional happiness a person can handle. This includes things like money, power, relationships, and fame.
Satan and his fake “ministers of righteousness” have distorted true happiness from God into an overt display of emotion. A state of genuine, true, and complete happiness depends on truth, not emotion. Knowing and applying the absolute truth of God’s Word brings true happiness to believers. The more time you spend in the study and application of Bible doctrine, the higher your degree of happiness.
God is perfect happiness, His happiness is eternal, His happiness is unchanging (it never decreases or increases) because it is a part of His essence. There has never been a time when God was unhappy. The times in the Bible when unhappiness is ascribed to Him are anthropomorphisms (ascribing to God human characteristics that He does not have) to help us understand God’s displeasure.
Reaching a mature state of happiness is a matter of spiritual growth. Believers who reach this state of happiness do not require overt blessings to create or to sustain their happiness. Their state of happiness does not hinge on people, things, money, relationships, promotion, etc. Their relationship with God has matured to the place that they do not need special blessings in order to be happy. However, because of their mature relationship with God, He can give them special blessings since they will not forget the source of those blessings.
When your spiritual life becomes more important to you than success, money, relationships with others, pleasure, popularity, or promotion, you will be able to enjoy a happiness that only God can give you. no person or set of circumstances can defeat you when your happiness depends on God and not on people or circumstances. Your happiness will depend on the application of the accurate Bible doctrine that you have stored in your soul. When your priorities are in order, it means that you have learned that happiness comes from your relationship with God and that His happiness has replaced any false, temporary happiness that Satan’s world system offers.
Happiness from God increases capacity for life, eliminates a lifestyle of fear, and increases the ability to endure suffering. When we reach the point of increased capacity in our spiritual life, God begins to pour out fantastic blessings to us, which make us even more happy. They make us happy because blessing us brings glory to God. Ephesians 2:4-7, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Sharing the happiness of God is having permanent contentment as your constant companion. It is actually God’s own perfect happiness that He shares with advancing believers as a grace gift. Sharing God’s happiness is obtained only by consistently learning, believing, and applying the Word of God over a period of time. The more time we spend in fellowship with God and the filling of God the Holy Spirit as a result, the more we will think divine viewpoint and the happier we will be.
Being happy is one of the many spiritual blessings that comes with increased capacity. Increased capacity to share God’s happiness comes only by a lifestyle characterized by consistently learning and applying accurate Bible doctrine. Jeremiah 15:16, “Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your words became a joy (happiness) to me and the delight of my heart; for I have been called by Your name, Lord God of armies.”
It is also impossible to have the capacity to share God’s happiness, if you’re not consistently utilizing the Problem-Solving Devices in your daily life. As with everything in the Christian life, sharing the happiness of God is only a potential and acquired only through spiritual growth.
If the details of life are keeping you from learning and using the inventory of Bible doctrine in your soul, you will never experience the necessary spiritual growth required to share God’s happiness. Proverbs 8:32-34, “Now therefore, O sons and daughters, listen to me, for blessed [happy, prosperous, to be admired] are they who keep my ways. Heed (pay attention to) instruction and be wise, and do not ignore or neglect it. Blessed [happy, prosperous, to be admired] is the person who listens to me, watching daily at My gates, waiting at My doorposts.”