From our Pastor
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How to be Happy
1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31, Psalm 146 September 29/30, 2007
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What does it take to make you happy? Are you happy if your team wins? Are you happy if you have a nice meal with your favorite foods? Would you be happy if you had plenty of money? Would you be happy if you found the perfect mate? Would you be happy if you got good grades? Would you be happy if you had a new car? What would it take to make you happy? Some people find their happiness in drugs or drink or in sex or money. Each one of these, to bring fleeting happiness, needs more and more. To get a high with drugs or drink or sex it takes more and more to make a person satisfied. It’s the same thing with money. No matter how much a person has, it’s never enough. There is always a desire for more.
What does it take to be happy? God gives us a beautiful answer to our strivings. You can read self help books, go to seminars, engage in psychotherapy, spend a lot of time and money trying desperately to find a way to be happy. Yet here, in a few simple words, God gives us the key to happiness. 1 Timothy 6:6 says, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” I think I’ve generally concentrated on the contentment part of the sentence. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If you are content, you’re going to be happy.
But I think I’ve been missing the point. Godliness with contentment is great gain. Let’s zero in on that word “godliness.” The word is eusebia, and it has an interesting history. Way way back the word simply meant “to fall back before” or “to shrink from.” It came to mean, “worship” when one falls back before God. When used with other objects, it meant to reverence or have awe at something. But used with God, the word usually meant worship, though at times reverence or awe, which comes pretty close to the same thing as worship. So when we read godliness here, think worship, think living a life of reverence and awe toward God.
If you want to be happy, live a life of reverence and awe, a life of worshipping God in all your thoughts, in all your actions, in everything you say. Be thinking about God. Be always loving God. It’s all a matter of where your heart is. It’s all a matter of what or whom you love. When we’re unhappy it’s not about the things we do or don’t have. It’s a matter of the heart. Things are not the problem. It’s where our hearts are that counts. For instance, notice that money is not the root of all evil. Being rich is not the root of all evil. (Though being rich has its spiritual dangers.) It’s the love of money that is the root of all evil. It’s a heart issue. And the love of money can cause great hardship. “Some people, striving after money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many woes.” (10) That’s what God says. You know it’s true. Watch your heart. Avoid the heartache; avoid being run through with many woes. Keep your heart focused on God. Refocus your heart on God. Live your life worshipping him, reverencing him, thinking about him, being in awe of him.
Though we think about it every so often, each of us should constantly be in awe that God would love me so much as to suffer for me… to die for me. We ought to reverence the God who has the power to make the heavens and the earth and everything in them. We ought to worship our wonderful God who overcame sin and death, who conquered the devil for us and gives us everlasting life. Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, fully knowing what would happen to him, and did not mince words. He gave the good confession. (13) He told the truth about who he is. He calls us, similarly, to tell the truth about who he is. Without being bashful, or afraid, we should follow his example and speak the truth in love. (14) God is so great. He is the great ruler over all. (15) He is immortal; he dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or is able to see. To him be honor and power forever and ever. Truly it is so. (16)
Do you want to be happy? Live in honor, in great respect and awe of God. Live a life of worshipping him. Godliness with contentment is great gain. It’s not just godliness, but also contentment that bring great gain. Now you should know that contentment does not mean just being satisfied with substandard expectations. Not at all. When God tells us to be content, he’s telling us to be content with the best, with the overwhelmingly most wonderful… we are to be content with being forgiven by our Lord Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection, to be content that we have a gracious God that loves us, to be content that we have blessings showered on us day by day, to be content that even in the most difficult times God has promised “never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” We are to be content that we have the most wonderful vacation which we can hardly wait for: Jesus has prepared a place for us in heaven. Be content… with the best, with God, with life with God, with perfect, everlasting joy and peace!
Do you want to be happy? I’ll tell you the Gospel truth. You have all you need right now to be deliriously happy. Do your remember the Wizard of Oz? Dorothy finds herself in a strange place, and goes through all kinds scary adventures to try to get back to her home in Kansas. Oh, just to be able to go home. And when her last hope is lost, she finds out she’s had the power to go home all along. All she has to do is click the ruby slippers on her feet, and she arrives at home. That movie was all a fantasy world. It’s a figment of someone’s imagination. But here’s the genuine article. God loves you now. God lives within you now. He’s put faith within you so that you can know him and love him and be with him, now and always. So worship the Lord. Revere him. Live in awe of God, being content to know you have it all. That is great gain!
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