Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
12 15 2023
Is it OK to want to be happy without directly thinking of God?
Personally, I think God wired us to want that. He made us with this arrow that points to the innate desire to be happy. It is not a sin to want that. Aren’t we happy about our spouses, our children, sports, and so much more? He wired us to want to be happy. Now if it leads to one of these taking a position above God, that means we have built an idol before him. But wanting/desiring happiness is a desire planted by God across the entire spectrum of each life. Take a look at Romans 15:13 “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”, or Psalm 8:1 or 19:1 or 50:6 or 89:5.
I do believe there is another side to this. I believe life is wasted when we don’t live it for the glory of God. I believe that if you start every day with this one request in a fervent prayer, it will change your life forever. “Lord, make your name great”.
I think it lurks in the shadows of modern minds that having a desire for our own good and honestly hoping for it, is a bad thing as it relates to a relationship with God. That wanting our own good and happiness is somehow a conflict and you shouldn’t want that or feel that.
So the question is, does God deny that to us?
I believe the answer is no. And I think that if it is in our mind, then it has crept in from a worldly view, and it’s not part of what God desires for us. The desire to be happy is not a bad or forbidden desire. When we consider the forever, unfolding blessings, and rewards from his hands, and the staggering nature of God’s gifts to us, then it would seem that God deems our desires, as not being strong enough but too weak. What? Your problem is your desires are not too strong but too weak. Are you listening?
CS Lewis wrote a paragraph in his book. ‘The Weight of Glory” that’s illustrates this truth. He says
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. 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.”
That sounds like a diagnosis of the problems of the world.
But what about the glory of God? Praising God?
May I quote Mr Lewis again? “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not just being complimentary that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete until it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”
When I think of the word “Praise”, I think in terms of approval and giving honor. I think when good things happen the enjoyment that we have, at that moment, spontaneously overflows in Praise.
When you look around the world, it brims with praise. Lovers to their mates, their children, to sports, readers to their books, walkers to the countryside, motorcars, horses, the examples are endless.
The world spontaneously praises what they value and urges others to join them. Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t that gorgeous? The psalms are saying that we delight in what we enjoy. Because praise not merely expresses, but COMPLETES the enjoyment. It is its appointed consummation
The point of this, and what this means to me is; that God is not an egomaniac, because he commands us to praise him. If I commanded that of you, I would be a narcissist and sick. But when God commands us, he is loving, and CS Lewis showed us that.
If God is supremely enjoyable, and we can enjoy his worth, his excellence, his power and his beauty and his work of the universe and his wisdom and grace and if we are indeed, enjoying the overwhelming aspects of who he is, he says, to give expression to that enjoyment.
That praise is bringing joy to its completion and the consummation of that truth.
So in all that God has done in all the world, he is showing his love for us, and he is telling us to complete your joy in praising him. Why? Because he is the only true place it can be found. He is the only true and pure place that can never change or go away or lose its love and splendor.
So the truth is: the consummation of your joy in God is praise,
but the world is missing it! Christians are missing it,
making mud pies when God has their ultimate joy at the beach.
That ultimate joy is Praising His son Jesus as the completion and consummation of our joy.
Condensed from and modified from a teaching by John Piper – How God made me happy in him.
Lauren Daigle – Noel
