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"God doesn't want us to be happy because God wants us to be blessed."

A thought by Craig Groeschel, from his book, The Christian Atheist: When You Believe in God But Live as if He Doesn’t Exist (p. 171). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

But I thought that God wanted me to be happy?

Craig said, “The Greek word makarios in Matthew chapter 5, also known as the Beatitudes, can be translated as ‘supremely blessed.’ In other words, God wants us to be more than happy. The happiness of this world is based on fickle happenings, but the blessings of God transcend the things this world offers. Scripture says in Psalm 112: 1, ‘Blessed is the [one] who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands.’ Another way of looking at it: ‘More than happy is the one who fears the Lord.’ The Bible never says, ‘Blessed is the one who does something wrong in the pursuit of happiness,’ or, ‘More than happy is the one who settles for cheap, worldly imitations.”

Later he says, “Max Lucado told a story about a fish in his book When God Whispers Your Name. My version is slightly different. Let’s start with a question: do you think a fish would be happy on a sandy beach? (If you have to ask a fifth grader, I’m worried about you.) The obvious answer is, of course not. The fish’s little gills would be slapping in and out like hands clapping, his body flopping end to end like a crazed acrobat.

“Imagine we give our fish friend $ 100,000 in cold, hard, tax-free cash. Do you think Fishy would be happy now? Can you picture him still flapping and flopping? Suppose we give him a cold Corona and a Playfish magazine. Again, Fishy would not be happy. No matter what we give the fish on the beach, it won’t satisfy him. There’s nothing that could make that fish happy on the beach— because he isn’t made for the beach. The sand is not his home. Anything apart from water will leave him wanting for the place for which he was created.

“The same is true of us. We are not happy with the things of this world because we’re not made for this world! We are strangers, aliens, foreigners on earth. We are made to dwell forever with our Lord in heaven. (See Phil. 3: 20.) We will never discover lasting happiness in the temporary things of this world because we weren’t made to live a temporary life. That’s why we should lower our expectations of this place. Earth is not heaven. It was never meant to be. That’s why no amount of money, new house, new living-room furniture, new kitchen appliances, new clothes, new hair, new baby, new vacation, new job, new income, new husband, or new anything will ever satisfy us, because we were not made for the things of this world.”

He then says, “As Psalm 97: 12 says, ‘May all who are godly be happy in the Lord and praise his holy name!’ (NLT). Real happiness is found only in the Lord, and when we find it we’ll understand, perhaps for the first time, how blessed we really are.”

So, don’t you think it would be better to quit looking for happiness and start living for God’s blessing?


Yes, yes!
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