But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful. Psalm 68:3
The current Renton Gospel Network book I am reading for a discussion the beginning of the New Year is Randy Alcorn’s 500 page study of Happiness. You might wonder if a book on happiness really needs 500 pages. All I can say is that I’m only a tenth of the way through it and I’ve already filled up close to a page in notes! At times happiness is contrasted with joy, with the former connected to the short-lived delights of this world, and the latter to an abiding sense of peace and blessing sourced in the Lord. That is NOT how Alcorn is using the word happiness in his book. Instead, he uses happiness interchangeably with joy. He does recognize the Biblical contrast between righteous happiness and sinful happiness, yet he also exposes the Biblical evidence that God wants us to experience happiness/joy both in this world and in the world to come. As is true of Managing God’s Money, the Alcorn book our Life on Life groups will study in the New Year, Happiness makes for excellent devotional reading because it is Scripture-saturated. Unlike too many proponents for a happiness sourced in positive thinking which tends to water down or twist God’s Word, Alcorn’s arguments are firmly grounded in the Bible. One of the central arguments of Happiness is that too many Bible-believing Christians have adopted a faith that is heavy on criticism and light on the first two fruits of the Spirit: love and joy. The result? Rather than leading compelling lives that attract unbelievers, we repel them with curmudgeon Christianity. Allow me to quote, at lengt, Alcorn’s thoughts on this topic: There are valid reasons why unbelievers fear that becoming a Christian will result in their unhappiness. They’ve known—as many of churchgoers have also known—professing Christians who go out of their way to promote misery, not gladness. I’ve seen Bible-believing, Christ-centered people post thoughts on a blog or on social media only to receive a string of hypercritical responses from people who wield Scripture verses like pickaxes, swiftly condemning the slightest hint of a viewpoint they consider suspicious. Others quickly join the fray, and soon it appears that no one has bothered to read what the blogger actually said. Responders assume the worst, not giving the benefit of the doubt and engaging in shotgun style character assassination. If I were an unbeliever reading such responses, I certainly wouldn’t be drawn to the Christian faith. I wonder why it’s not immediately recognized by those engaging in such behavior that what they’re doing is utterly contrary to the faith they profess and the Bible they believe. How is it that perpetual disdain, suspicion, unkindness, and hostility are seen as taking the spiritual high ground? Perhaps the message that Christians shouldn’t be happy has really been taken to heart! Hence curmudgeon Christianity abounds. In refreshing contrast, J.C. Ryle said, “I assert without hesitation, that the conversion described in Scripture is a happy thing and not a miserable one, and that if converted persons are not happy, the fault must be in themselves…I am confident the converted man is the happiest man.” I love that he quotes J.C. Ryle here, because Ryle is one of my favorite authors on the topic of holiness. Yet, Ryle doesn’t present happiness as something contrary to holiness, but as something that is inherent to embracing the Gospel, aka, the Good News! The message of the Bible IS Good News. As the wonderful hymn Great is Thy Faithfulness puts it, “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine with ten thousand beside.” Or in the words of Nehemiah 8:10, “the joy of the LORD is your strength.” What I have written here only scratches the surface of all that Scripture has to say about the happiness we find in Jesus. But it is a good word of encouragement to us who love Jesus. We need to be proponents of the kind of happiness that has true-lasting power…happiness sourced in Jesus. We absolutely need to expose the emptiness of our culture’s obsession with self-expression and sexuality, with complete disregard for the sanctity of human life, God’s design for sexual expression and the epic Story of God. Yet, as we do this, we must also point our world to a richer, deeper, truer kind of happiness found by those who embrace God’s love and God’s rule! We must point them to the beautiful, redemptive Story of God as the source of a lasting happiness. In this New Year, may the happiness we’ve found in Christ increasingly cause us to overflow with hearty laughter, with gracious speech and with joy-filled faces reflecting the truth, “Happy is that people whose God is the LORD!” (Psalm 144:15, KJV).
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Dan GannonDan has ministered at Renton Bible Church, with his wife Debbie, since 2003. Archives
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