ARE YOU HAPPY?
What’s
Important to You?
Are you
happy right now? That’s kind of a tough
question, isn’t it? Because there are
varying degrees of happiness. You can be
a little happy, kind of happy, fairly happy, really happy, or completely
overjoyed! And your happiness could
depend a lot on what has already happened to you today, couldn’t it? For instance: did you get a good night’s sleep
or did you spill coffee on your pants this morning? Your happiness could depend on what you are
anticipating in the near future: are you looking forward to a nice relaxing
afternoon or do you still have so much work to do that there aren’t enough
hours left in the day? It could depend what
has happened in the past: have you already received a nice tax return check or
are your taxes still spread out on the table waiting to be done? There are a lot of factors that can play into
how happy you are on any given day. And
it can change in an instance! Unless, of
course, your happiness is based on the most important things that never change…
My wife and I were just reminiscing the other
day about the weekend we got married. It
was the middle of June in Denver and people were coming in from out of town all
over the country. For many of them it
was their first time in Colorado and so they were planning their summer
vacations around our wedding.
Unfortunately, the weather that weekend ended up being really cold and
windy and rainy the entire time - in fact it was actually snowing in the
mountains in the middle of June! And so
when most of the guests arrived the day before the wedding, they couldn’t even
see the beautiful scenery, much less enjoy it, and they were a little
disappointed. But I wasn’t. It didn’t bother me at all because I was
getting married! The bad weather didn’t
affect my happiness in the least because that wasn’t really all that important
to me at the moment. The next morning,
one of my brothers who was my best man had planned on taking me sky diving -
unbeknownst to me - on the morning of my wedding. And it would have been great! But the weather was so rotten that our outing
was canceled and he was a little disappointed.
But I wasn’t. It would have been
fun but my happiness wasn’t affected because I was getting married later that
afternoon! The day after the wedding it
was still terrible weather and some of our friends who had decided to go tent
camping in Estes Park were snowed on and had to leave early. They were obviously a little
disappointed. But I wasn’t. The snow and the rain and the wind didn’t
really matter too much to me because I had just gotten married! No matter what was going on around me, no
matter what turned out well and what didn’t, no matter how bad the weather was
or how inconvenient it made other people’s travel plans, my happiness did not
diminish in the least because there was something far more important that I was
looking forward to. I was happy. And there was very little that could have
changed it.
We Have the
Celebration of Heaven Ahead
There is
plenty of bad “weather” throughout our lives: plans that don’t turn out as you
thought they would, blessings you once enjoyed that are now taken away, events
you anticipate that don’t end up happening, people you have enjoyed life with whom
are no longer in this life. But no
matter what happens around you, no matter what snow and rain and wind may affect
your life, there is something far more important that you can look forward to -
something that fills you with the ultimate joy.
And that is heaven. You have an
eternity of glory with your God to look forward to, a festival of majestic
proportions that dwarfs any moment of joy on this earth. A place where hundreds of thousands of angels
sing in one powerful choir, a home where every Christian who has gone before
you now lives the life they never had here and worships in a way they never
could before, a Paradise that has at its center Jesus himself in the
flesh. Can you start to visualize what
this celebration in heaven is going to be like?
Can you begin to comprehend the overwhelming joy that will fill your
heart when that day arrives?
The book
of Revelation gives us a sneak peek from time to time into what that experience
will be like. And no matter what it will
be like, there is no doubt that we will be completely overcome with
happiness. Then I looked [John said] and heard the voice of many angels, numbering
thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled
the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang: “Worthy is the
Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and
honor and glory and praise!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on
earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: “To
him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and
power, for ever and ever!” The four
living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
A grand
and magnificent celebration of our God.
A glorious victory party. A
festival of praises and cheers and angelic roars that will echo throughout
eternity. And you will be right there in
the middle of it! You will be caught up
in that moment of unparalleled ecstasy with the almighty Lord himself! And that moment will never end. This is what is waiting for you. This is what your God has prepared for you. And through faith in Jesus you know it is true.
What’s More
Important than Heaven?
So why
aren’t you always happy? If that truly
is what you have to look forward to, if heaven really has been secured for you
by our God, why aren’t you perpetually happy on this earth? How could anything possibly dampen your
mood? How could anything be more
important to you than what God has already done? How could anything be more meaningful to you than
what he has guaranteed? But we aren’t
always happy, are we? We aren’t always
filled with joy. Because sometimes our
happiness is tied up in something other than our Lord.
What
happens when you get sick? Are you happy
then? Are you still overflowing with
just as much joy when you are sick as when you were healthy? Or is your happiness directly proportional to
how you feel that day? What happens when
you have a financial setback? Are you
happy then? Are you still overflowing
with just as much joy at that point as at those times when you had a little
extra? Or are you only happy when you
are financially secure? What happens
when a Christian you love is no longer with you? Are you happy then? Are you still overflowing with just as much
joy at their death as when that person was here? Or is some of your happiness dependent on
someone else other than Jesus? Our
happiness goes up and down, doesn’t it? Our
happiness is fickle and unstable. Because
our happiness isn’t always based on Jesus and his promises; sometimes our
happiness is found in other things.
“Do not love the world or anything in the
world,” the Bible says. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the
Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
When anything in this life takes the place of our God and becomes the
source of even some of our joy, our happiness, and our contentment, we have
effectively broken the very first Commandment: “You shall have no other
gods.” And I will be the first to raise
my hand and say that I have done just that.
I break the first Commandment every day because the Lord and his
promises are not always the only source of my happiness in this world. My mood and my attitude sway with the
weather, results, opportunities, accomplishments, disappointments, plans, and
people. I do not have a joy that is
constant and unchanging because my joy is not always and only found in
Christ. I look to other things and other
places and other people and forget about the most important things of all. And so it’s not a surprise that my happiness
is not stable. Because everything else
changes, everything else fails or frustrates or fades away. And I inevitably end up disappointed because
I have not relied on my God.
There’s Nothing
More Important to Jesus than You
When the
apostle John saw that scene in his vision and heard all of those angels and
elders and living creatures singing to their God, do you remember what they
sang? “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and
wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” Why were they singing that? Out of all the songs they could have sung,
why were they singing those words? And
why will you sing that with them one day soon?
Because you find your happiness in Jesus and Jesus found his happiness
in you. Jesus found his joy in your
forgiveness, in your salvation, in your eternal life. And so he did the only thing that he could
have done: like a lamb led to the chopping block he was slaughtered for your
sins. Jesus grabbed you out of this
world of pain and sorrow and sin and provided you a place in Paradise through
his punishment. He ensured you a life
with him forever in heaven by leaving heaven.
Jesus became the sacrificial sheep for sheep like us who had wandered
away. Jesus displayed the pinnacle act
of his love for us: self-sacrifice. So
now you don’t have to sacrifice a thing.
Because you are forgiven. Your
record is clean. Your soul is
saved. And no matter how unfaithful we
have been and no matter how many things we have placed above our God in the
past, the Lamb who was slaughtered has marked our way to heaven with drops of
blood from his own hands. And because of
the Lamb we get to leave this place one day.
Because of the Lamb we get to leave all of this pain and sorrow and sin
behind. Because of the Lamb we get to go
home. And we will be happy forever
because Jesus found his happiness in us.
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to
receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and
praise!... To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor
and glory and power, for ever and ever!”
One day we will sing that together in heaven and there will be hardly
anything else we’ll want to sing.
Because by then our joy will be complete and we will remember with
absolute clarity exactly what Jesus did to get us there, exactly what Jesus
sacrificed to carry us there, and exactly who Jesus is to keep us there. And there will be no more crying and no more
pain and no more sorrow because the happiness we will have in Christ will never
fade away.
Your Happiness
is Secured Forever
And
there’s no reason why we can’t enjoy at least a little bit of that happiness
right now! I know that we live in a
world filled with sin. I know that there
are plenty of setbacks and disappointments.
We will all certainly get sick again at some point. We will all probably have financial
difficulties of some kind. We will all
have to deal with the death and departure of those we love. But those unpleasant experiences we have to
go through in this life are nothing more than cloud cover on your wedding day,
a stubbed toe on the morning your child is being born, a hangnail en route to a
week-long vacation… Those little things don’t matter! They don’t have to have any bearing on your
happiness because the most important things in your life are secure! Your forgiveness is firm, your salvation is
solidified, and your eternal life is just as certain now as on that day your
Lord will bring you to heaven for the very first time.
There is
no reason not to be happy! As a
Christian there is no reason you shouldn’t be completely overjoyed! Because you know where you’re headed. You know who will take you there. And you know who is watching over you until you
get there. Nothing can shake our
happiness now. Nothing. Because our joy is
in Jesus and he does not let us down.
Amen.
“To him who sits
on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever
and ever!” - Rev. 5:13
Posts
