Happiness
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. This is the motive of every man, even of those who hang themselves.
--Blaise Pascale
God created our desire for happiness. He made us to long for happiness. He longs to use that desire to do 3 things:
- Lead us to Him
- Test our motives
- Bring Him glory
Our hunger for happiness is designed to prompt us to look to God, to long for the day when we will be returned to His presence.
The primary function of our desire to be happy is to glorify God.
Our happiness in God is the only evidence that we're not using Him.
We spend ourselves on temporal things and therefore we long for temporal things. The way to combat that is to spend ourselves on eternal things.
- What does it look like in your life for you to spend yourself on eternal things?
- How have you been spending yourselves on temporal things and how is that reflected in the things that bring you the most happiness?
We don't have a heart that is too hard to satisfy, we have a heart that is too easily satisfied.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. --C.S. Lewis
Jesus came so that we would be happy.
Comments