Be Happy!

Yesterday's commentary was on melancholy; today's is on happiness. Happiness is the state of feeling pleasure or contentment, according to dictionary.com.  That may not be an accurate description because pleasure and contentment are not one and the same: most often pleasure brings guilt, and with guilt contentment is not there.

Christian Mommy said that God wants her to be happy. That's like saying, God wants you to have pleasure. Neither does God want you to have contentment. That's being satisfied with where you are in life. God desires that we change. Our desire for pleasure and contentment is for our own appeasement. It's more about the self than God, and God has no desire that our other god (the self) be appeased.

What is it that God wants for us? He wants our love. He doesn't want any of us to love ourselves to the degree that we live to please ourselves. Our role in life is to tend God's Garden, and since Jesus, the Tree of Life, stood in its center, God wants us to please Him!

How can we please God? By having no other gods besides Him. That is presenting ourselves, our own god, as a living tribute to Him. We bring self-pleasure and contentment to the cross, and hand it over to Jesus as we crucify ourselves with Him.

God doesn't want us to be happy! Paul wasn't a happy camper by any means. He was melancholic even though he believed in the resurrection and eternal life. Because he picked up his cross and followed Jesus, life was no longer about the self. It is a struggle to carry Jesus' cross, but ironically, Paul was happy to carry God's cross, but not to make himself happy, but God!

What is it that God wants for us? He desires us! His will is that he receives our will. We freely hand over to God our quest for happiness, and he takes it and makes us truly happy. You see, the happy old person is different than the happy new person: the first does his own will, and the second does God's will. God doesn't want us to be happy. That's not his motive. He wants our love, and happiness is the outcome of obedience.

If we look at cause and effect, the old person does whatever is his own will, "Do what thou wilt," as the Satanists say - to appease the idol of the flesh. Happiness comes about because of self-pleasure, and the sinner is often content being their own god.

On the other hand, the cause and effect for those born-again is the opposite. They aren't happy with themselves for disobedience to God, so they come to God. Because they are obedient, they are content in the Lord. It is not their will that is done, but God's!

Therefore, happiness comes out of obedience. Those who are disobedient may be happy with the things of the flesh, but their soul is in isolation and screams for reprieve!

Si Robertson is noted or saying: "Happy! Happy! Happy". His happiness is through God. It has nothing to do with Si's own pleasure, but the knowledge that he is serving the Living God.  Without God, Si would Cry! Cry! Cry! because he has been convinced that God wants us in our entirety.

When people sin, and say, "God wants me to be happy." That's a little game they play inside their own head. It's rationalizing God's will. Christian Mommy becomes the Devil's Mommy when sin is rationalized as God's will. She is right where the devil wants her to be - on his side.