Our Attitude about Happiness

6 min read

8 “How happy your people must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! 9 Praise be to the LORD your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the LORD’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness.”
— 1 Kings 10:8-9

In the Bible, happiness and blessing are the same word; they mean the same thing.

Everyone wants to be happy. Anyone who does not want happiness must certainly have some mental, emotional, and especially spiritual disorder.

True happiness can only come with the understanding that God is the source of all blessings through His covenant promises. God does not bless us outside of those covenant promises. It is only when we seek blessings through God’s covenant promises that we can truly be happy. It is only when we walk with God in His covenant promises that we can experience His blessings.

And God is not one to take back a promise or change His mind (Numbers 23:19). However, God may choose to withhold His covenant blessings according to His sovereignty and authority because of disobedience. This truth is at the very heart of what it means to fear the LORD.

But such disobedience is much worse than simply committing sin—although, it is not any less than that. Disobedience that leads to God withholding His covenant blessings has to do with ignoring, disregarding, forgetting, and especially denying God’s sovereign plan of salvation for the world in Jesus Christ.

Managing personal morality, in and of itself, is not really the main issue. Yes, we are called to strive for godly living, BUT we must never forget that Jesus paid it all, and Jesus paid it all so that we might be free to pursue God’s covenant purpose to fill the earth with His glory in Jesus’s name through God-fearing, God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-loving communities and families, the church.

And so the most persistent and problematic sin we commit is to ignore the Great Commission. Jesus has called us to be His witnesses to a dying world that needs Jesus and needs Jesus now. And if we refuse this commission, we are effectively running away from the covenant blessings that God has in store for us through His covenant promises.

We find this narrative in the Scriptures over and over again.

The chapters covering Solomon’s reign show us the tension that exists between worldly blessings and spiritual blessings in our lives and in this world. That tension may be best described like this: spiritual blessings will lead to worldly blessings, but worldly blessings can never lead to spiritual blessings. In fact, the Bible shows us that pursuing worldly blessings first will lead to a deep unhappiness—no matter how wealthy we may be.

At the very peak of Solomon’s reign, it was Solomon’s witness that pleased God.. The queen of Sheba glorified God because of Solomon’s witness concerning God, not concerning himself. It was Solomon’s witness for which God poured out His covenant blessings upon him and Israel. And as we will see, once Solomon forsook his witness, once Solomon turned his back on God’s covenant purpose to bear witness to Him and Him alone, God withheld His covenant blessings from Israel.

Solomon was considered the wisest person to ever live. And he gives us the greatest lesson that we need to heed—both in his wisdom and in his lacking.

I want to urge you, especially you younger folk, please sign up for the Busan mission. Let us not live our lives with the eyes of this world, but with the mind of Christ.

Father, forgive us for when we have our blinders on. Forgive us when we see only worldly blessings and forget that every blessing comes from You. Change my heart and our hearts, Lord, to seek Your covenant blessings through Your covenant promises by fulfilling Your covenant purpose to be Your witness and Your witness alone to a dying world that needs Jesus and needs Jesus now. In Jesus’s name. Amen.