Are You Happy?

Here is a shocker: God does not busy Himself with ensuring your happiness. If God wanted you to be happy, He would have sealed you with the “Happy Spirit.” God wants you to be holy, which is why He gave you the Holy Spirit. This is why God takes sin so seriously.

Sin and happiness have a connection. Sin is not a mistake; it is rebellion. Call it what you want – midlife, self-expression, a choice, an affair – but God calls it sin. Sin is more than a defilement; it is defying God. The heinousness of sin rests not on the consequences of the sin but resides in the willful rejection of the Word and will of God. Sin erodes the shores of happiness in the lives of Christ-followers.

God does not say “Don’t” when it comes to sin just to frustrate your happiness, but rather, He says “Don’t hurt yourself.” Until you embrace this thinking, you will always see His Word and will as restrictive to your happiness rather than freedom. John puts forth an airtight argument in I John 3 as to why you should say no to sin this week.

First, you have been delivered. John writes in I John 3:5, “You know he appeared in order to take away sins.” Don’t participate in what God has delivered you from by the work of His son. Second, sin has been destroyed. In verse 7, he writes, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” The work of Jesus on the cross snapped the spine of sin. You may sin this week, but you don’t have to. Finally, God has called you His kid. In verse 9, John argues, “He cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.” Kids of the King make tough choices to reject the things that violate the Word and will of the Father. 

Happiness flows from holiness and it is holiness that becomes attractive to a lost community. There is one version of the Bible that every person reads. It is called the “BBV,” the Believer’s Behavior Version. So will your actions this week demonstrate to a lost world the three arguments by John against sin? You are free, sin has been destroyed, and you are His.

Choose holy and let happy happen.

The next move is yours.