The Pursuit of Happiness

I read a book recently that said the goal most people have set for themselves and their children is to live the good life. And the good life is defined as a life of happiness. The book goes on to say that a radio talk show host had interviewed hundreds of people over the course of a few years asking the question: “What did your parents want most for you – success, wealth, to be a good person, or happiness?” Eighty-five percent said “happiness.”

Obviously, being happy is a high priority for a majority of people. In fact happiness is so important that our Founding Fathers believed that the pursuit of happiness was a divine right ranked right up there with life and liberty.

Listen to these words from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

So, how’s your pursuit for happiness going? Have you found happiness? That probably depends on what you think happiness is. The modern definition of happiness is experiencing pleasurable satisfaction, feeling really good, and being stoked inside. However, when the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, about 240 years ago declaring the pursuit of Happiness an unalienable right, happiness referred to virtue and character. That means happiness involved suffering, endurance, and patience because it’s through suffering, endurance, and patience that one becomes a good person and is able to enjoy life.

That might sound contradictory. How can happiness come out of suffering or enduring hardship or being patient?

To answer that question let’s begin with how Jesus told those who desired to follow Him must live.

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul’” (Matthew 16:24-26 NASU)?

Jesus Christ, the wisest man who ever lived, has revealed to us that the secret to living life as God created us to live it is by denying self.

But this is the exact opposite of what the world tells us. Books, magazines, TV shows, and movies scream at us that the way to enjoy life and get the most out of it is to do indulge in whatever activities our desires lead us to. If it feels good do it. And it anyone even dares suggest that what you’re doing is wrong just quote Matthew 7:1…

“Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1 NASU).

That will shut most people up because they do not know how to properly response those words. So, if you don’t know anything about the Bible just memorize that verse and go on with your happy life.

But for anyone who has made pleasurable satisfaction or feeling really good – the world’s definition of happiness – his goal in life it soon becomes apparent doing whatever you want to do when you want to do it sooner or later gives birth, not to happiness, but to depression, a loss of purpose in life, and brokenness. Why?

The book of Proverbs in the Bible gives us a hint. In it is a verse that says…

“Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied” (Proverbs 27:20 NASU).

Sheol and Abaddon were names for the place of the dead. Sheol was sometimes translated as “grave” or “pit”. It was a place of gloom and darkness and shadows.

The proverb is teaching us that death comes to everyone; no one is exempt and as long as there is life Sheol and Abaddon crave to take that life because it is never satisfied.

And just as Sheol and Abaddon never get full regardless of how many people die, the eye never gets full regardless of how much it sees and the ear never gets full regardless of how much it hears.

What I mean is this: You can look at pornography one day and think you’ll never look at it again because your eye is full – so to speak. But what happens? Your eye seeks it next fix. The appetite of the mind, which the eye feeds, is never satisfied. You can listen to hours of gossip until you’re exhausted and think you will never listen to that again because your ear is full – again, so to speak. But what happens? You find yourself straining to hear the latest dirt someone is saying about others. The appetite of desiring the failure or humiliation of another in an attempt to exalt ourselves is never satisfied.

In 1870 a man named John D. Rockefeller started Standard Oil. That company made him a billionaire. Relatively speaking he was wealthier than Bill Gates. Yet, he was driven to make more and more money. In an interview Rockefeller once was asked how many more dollars he needed before he was satisfied. He then answered…

“Just one more dollar”.

But John D. Rockefeller is not unique. Three thousand years before he was born there was a man who was not only as rich as he was, but he had a lot more power. That man was King Solomon, the man who wrote the Proverb we just read.

Materially speaking there was nothing Solomon couldn’t buy. For him money was literally no obstacle. And being a king he had power over the lives of his subjects; nobody told him “no”. He lived in wealth and luxury. If he wanted something he simply got it. But he wasn’t a happy man. We know that because he wrote a book of the Old Testament called Ecclesiastes.

Listen to some of what he says in this book.

“All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecclesiastes 1:8 ESV).

That sounds a lot like the verse from Proverbs we quoted earlier doesn’t it? But that shouldn’t be surprising. You see King Solomon wrote both Ecclesiastes and most of Proverbs.

Solomon goes on to express his lack of happiness in spite of being unimaginably wealthy and very powerful.

“All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11 NASU).

When Solomon said…

“All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure” (Ecclesiastes 2:10 NASU)…

he wasn’t kidding. This man had 700 wives and 300 concubines (legal mistresses). He allowed himself to drown in pleasure, yet he wasn’t happy. If nothing else this reveals that engaging in sex outside of God’s design for marriage – which is between one man and one woman – doesn’t satisfy the longing with our hearts for intimacy. Listen to some more of what Solomon said…

“He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 5:10 ESV).

“There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them” (Eccl 6:1-2 ESV).

Solomon, the richest man who ever lived, a man who indulged every desire his body or mind craved in his pursuit for happiness didn’t find it. Why? Because he believed owning things and to be free to indulge any desire his body or mind had was the path to happiness. What he discovered was such a life lead to depression and emptiness.

Living for pleasurable satisfaction, living to feel really good, or living to be stoked inside – the world’s definition of happiness – requires us to take our eyes off of others and put them on us and keep them there. But when we do that we become empty, shallow people with dried-up souls that live in perpetual pity-parties where we blame others for our lot in life. In other words…

“When we make happiness the goal of our life we live as victims rather than overcomers.

But why does this happen? Listen again to these words of Jesus…

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul’” (Matthew 16:24-26 NASU)?

As human beings created in the image of God we are wired for more than happiness as the world defines happiness. We are created by God to honor Him by becoming spiritually mature members of the Kingdom of Heaven. We do this by seeking His Kingdom first before all things and that begins by taking our eyes off of ourselves and living for a purpose greater than ourselves.

The Apostle Paul spoke of those who refused to follow this teaching of Jesus. He said…

“For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things” (Philippians 3:18-19 NASU).

Did you get that? When we refuse to die to self and live primarily to satisfy the desires of our bodies and minds – pursuing happiness as defined by this fallen world – we have made our fleshly appetites our “god”. Our desires and appetites and emotions no longer serve us, but rather have become our master.

Desires and appetites and emotions make great servants, but terrible masters.

Jesus tells us in John 10:10…

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 ESV).

I like the way the Amplified Bible puts this…
“I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)” (John 10:10 AMP).

And how does one take hold of this abundant life? Obey the words of the One who came to give you this abundant life. Let’s repeat:

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul’” (Matthew 16:24-26 NASU)?

There’s an episode of the old “Twilight Zone” TV series entitled, “A Nice Place to Visit”. I encourage everyone listening to or reading this sermon to watch it because it speaks what I have been saying about the pursuit of happiness loudly and clearly.
The gist of the show is this: A man is gunned down and killed by the police while attempting to flee from them, just having robbed a business. But in the next scene this “dead” man, lying on the ground, wakes up and a man dressed all in white is standing beside him. As it turns out this robber had been killed and the man in white was there to show him to his new living quarters.

These quarters are lavishly furnished with expensive furniture, decorations, and a closet full of expensive clothes. But that’s just the beginning of the pleasures he is not just freely given, but encouraged to indulge himself in by the man dressed in white.

Soon, some women join him in his apartment. He said he now knows he’s in Heaven. Shortly after that he goes to a casino accompanied by the women, driving a brand new and very expensive car. Gambling was something that brought him happiness when he was alive.

While in the casino he can’t lose. No matter what type of gambling he engages in – roulette wheel, blackjack, slot machine – he wins – every time. He is having the time of his life, gambling and winning while the women surround him, watching him.

He returns to his living quarters a happy man. But something is beginning to cast a dark shadow over him. His happiness is beginning to fade. All of a sudden a pool table appears in his living quarters. He is ecstatic to have a new game to play. He excitedly rakes the balls, places the cue ball on the opposite end of the table, pulls back the cue stick and strikes the cue ball. The cue ball hits the other balls and every one of them – every one – goes into a pocket; one hit, fifteen balls go down. It’s a shot every pool player on earth dreams about. But not this guy, not this guy who was living in the lap of luxury, not this guy whose every desire – except one – would be fulfilled instantly. Instead of being thrilled with his miraculous pool shot, he broke the cue stick. Why? Because the one thing, the one desire that the man in white couldn’t (wouldn’t) fulfill was to let this thief fail – at anything.

The thief began to realize that having every pleasure fulfilled and instant success a certainty didn’t make him happy.

When he came to that realization, along with the realization that this was Heaven and this lifestyle would go on for all eternity, he told the man dressed in white he thought a mistake had been made. He had been questioning more and more how a person of his evil character could have gotten into Heaven at all and came to the conclusion that he didn’t really belong in Heaven; he belonged in “the other place”. Hearing this the man dressed in white sternly looked at the thief and said…

“Heaven? What makes you think this is Heaven? This is the other place.” And he began to laugh a diabolical laugh that became louder and louder as the thief realized no mistake had been made and that an eternity of “happiness” lay before him. He was right where he belonged.

While we may have an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness as we read in the Declaration of Independence we discover that that pursuit is only successful when we lay down our lives for others. You see…

“Happiness doesn’t come from looking in the mirror; it comes when we put down the mirror and see Jesus.

Sandy Hook Remembered

Four years ago our nation experienced an unspeakable act of evil. Adam Lanza, then 20 years old, murdered 20 innocent children between 6 and 7 years of age and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

This massacre touched the consciences of many producing deep grief and even deeper anger as the scope of this evil act was unfolded before our eyes and ears on radio, TV, and the Internet.

I wrote an article at that time in an attempt to explain why this act of terrorism took place and what we needed to do as individuals and as a nation to overcome this evil. But many of us shut our eyes and ears to the only solution capable of doing so. As a result we have endured several more similar acts of demonic terrorism against the innocent.

Therefore, I felt it worth sharing again the article I wrote 4 years ago in the hope the eyes and ears of those who chose not to open them to the truth then will do so now.

Evil has been a part of our world ever since the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. We are surrounded by it constantly, but no longer recognize it. Why? Because we willfully ingest evil with our eyes and have thus become blind to holiness; we willfully ingest evil with our ears and have thus become deaf to the truth. We know longer hunger for holiness, but lies. And Satan is just as eager to feed us the lies our fallen, sinful natures crave. Yet it is in believing lies that evil takes deep root within the spirit of individuals and nations, flourishing and growing to a point where it yields a depth of evil that even our comatose consciences – both individually and collectively – respond to it with shock and bewilderment.

Such is what has happened in Newtown, Connecticut. The evil that was unleashed at Sandy Hook School was the harvest of a society and government that has actively labored for the removal of God from its culture. But there is another source even more guilty of allowing evil to grow to such monstrous proportions – religious leaders and teachers who have rejected the truth of the Bible and committed apostasy and are now teaching lies to congregations that “will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4 ESV).

For a few days people will flock to places of worship seeking comfort and answers to the questions that come to the surface when evil of such a degree as that manifested at Sandy Hook stuns us out of our spiritual slumber. We experienced this after 9/11, but we also experienced a quick return to that slumber as the evil that horrified us dissipated to a level our spirits have grown used to living with.

So please understand this, unless the Church takes a stand and begins to speak the truth from the pulpit – continually and consistently – regardless of whether it’s received with thanksgiving or rejected as the ranting’s of mad men, our nation will once again return to its spiritual slumber until another act of evil more horrific than Sandy Hook jars us awake.

There is an answer to this madness. It is found in 2 Chronicles 7:14. “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (ESV). The answer is simple, but it will take courage to speak it and even more courage to live it.

You Shall Be Holy

Are you holy? What does it mean to be holy? How does one become holy?

The Apostle Peter, speaking to Christians, commands…

“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:13-16 ESV).

Holiness isn’t just to be the possession of pastors or preachers or seminary professors. Everyone who names the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior is to be holy. If you are a Christian you are commanded to be holy. But, again what does that mean? And how does one become holy?

Well, there’s a story in the Old Testament that I want focus on that teaches us what holiness is and in stark terms how seriously God takes holiness and the consequences of being unholy.

The story takes place in the book of Joshua, specifically in chapters 3 through 7. It tells the story of Joshua leading the Israelites into Canaan to take possession of it in fulfillment of God’s promise to them to have it as their home.

Their first combat mission was to take the city of Jericho. And they overwhelmingly succeeded in doing so having followed God’s unorthodox battle plan with apparently no loss of Israelite life.

Things were looking good for the Israelites. So, they engaged the enemy again, going up against the little town of Ai. After Jericho, Ai should have been easily taken. But they didn’t consult God first. And the results of the battle were a disaster. The Israelites fled from before the men of Ai and ended up killing some of the Israelite solders.

Joshua couldn’t understand why they had been defeated, badly. He fell on his face before God (something he should have done before going to battle against Ai). Eventually God told him…

“Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings. Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction. I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you” (Joshua 7:11-12 ESV).

Having entered the land of Canaan the Israelites consecrated themselves unto the Lord. They were committing themselves to be holy as He is holy. But the foundation of holiness is obedience and someone in the camp of Israel had disobeyed God’s commandments. Israel was no longer holy. As a consequence she could no longer stand before her enemies.

The situation Joshua found himself in was precarious and very dangerous. They were in enemy territory. And those enemies would soon learn of Israelite’s defeat at Ai. That would embolden them to consolidate their forces and wipe out the Israelites. Therefore, it was imperative that the holiness that Israel had been clothed with when they consecrated themselves upon entering Canaan be regained.

They did and went on to take Ai.

What’s this got to do with us as Christians? We are at war with the powers of darkness, Satan and his demonic warriors. It is only when we are clothed with holiness that we are able to defeat these powers. The story in Joshua teaches us what it means to be holy, what happens when that holiness is compromised, and how to regain that holiness. Though this story happened thousands of years ago by reading and studying it we as Christians can gain insight into how to fulfill the command…

“You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16 ESV).

Now, if you have ever tried to be holy by gritting your teeth, having believed your willpower is sufficient to enable you to become holy you have undoubtedly been frustrated and thrown up your hands in despair. Well, let me try to encourage you. I’ll throw a teaser out there for you to ponder (the answer to which is revealed when you listen to the sermon) revealing how you can be holy.

God isn’t just giving us a command to be holy; He’s giving us something else too. What? Listen to the sermon and find out.

“Remember, God isn’t asking you if you’re able to be holy; He’s asking you if you’re willing to be made holy.”

How Great the Darkness

Think America has sunk as morally low as she can go with the legalization of sodomite marriage? Think again. It is one thing for secular society to embrace spiritual darkness and spread it through the laws of the land. It is something entirely different for churches to embrace spiritual darkness and spread it through the pulpits. How great is that darkness for it is a darkness that claims spiritual authority not just manmade authority. It is the darkness of Hell where unseen demonic beings whisper into the ears of fallen man the lies he craves to believe because these lies tell him he is god. Once that lie is believed man is ready to be consumed by Satan and his demonic horde. The Bible doesn’t say for no purpose…

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

Think of it this way. Lies are like a demonic meat tenderizer for your soul. The more lies you believe the more palatable to Satan and his minions you become. And his most accomplished “chefs” are false teachers, preachers, and prophets for they live in deep darkness. And I’m going to introduce you to one of these demonic “chefs” and some of those whom he is feeding his lies. It helps explain why we are witnessing the most divisive election in America’s history.

9/11 – The Day America was Shaken

We are about to observe the 15th anniversary of September 11, 2001 – 9/11 – the day Islamic savages murdered almost 3000 innocent human beings in America. This evil was committed in the name of their idol – Allah.

When 9/11 happened people asked me why God would allow such a thing to take place in America. I responded that America was witnessing a physical manifestation of God’s judgment upon us because America had turned from God and had chosen to embrace and celebrate sin. I further said unless America repents and turns back to God something worse will happen. Since then we have witnessed Islamic savages behead, drown, and burn alive innocent human beings in other parts of the world in the name of their idol, in effect declaring war against all who refuse to bow the knee to Allah – particularly Christians.

But it will get worse. Because America refused to repent after 9/11, God’s judgment will manifest itself in ever increasing forms of evil bringing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. The Islamic savages use of nuclear weapons will be used as soon as they are available to them.

The only way to stop this is for America to turn back to God.

Listen to the sermon “9/11 The Day America was Shaken”, then pray for America to repent