God Wants You Happy Series

How does this play out in, let’s just say, in the church world, in the every day church world? Scripture teaches us that if you are a follower of Christ, you are a part of the body of Christ, and that means, in the local church, God has something for you to do to serve, to use your gift. In other words, if you are not serving, using your gifts in the church, then something that God wants to get done is not being done, and in our American-feel-good culture, though, what do we hear all the stinking time? “I don’t want to do anything at church. I just want to go when I want to, occasionally. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to serve, because I’ve been busy all week long. This is my time. I want to go and just, just, just be there. I don’t want to serve, because it’s all about me, and I want to be happy.”

Let’s talk about finances. Scripture teaches us that we return the tithe to God. Ten percent of what God trusts us with, it belongs to Him. We give it to Him. But, what do people say? “I’m not going to give that much money. You kidding me? That’s crazy. It’s my money. I worked hard for that. I’m not giving that much money to God. I’m going to do something with it myself, because I want to be happy.” College. Someone was in college. “This class is too hard. I don’t like college. Quit. That’d make me happy.” Maybe you are at a job you don’t like, and what do we see now? “I’m not happy in this job. It might not be that God wanted me there to make a difference in someone else’s life, or maybe God was going to do something to my life in an uncomfortable situation, but I’m not happy, so I quit.” Marriage. “They’re not making me happy, so I quit the marriage.” Dating world. Boy meets girl. Girl smells good. Boy, he says, “Urrrrrh, urrrrrrrrr ahhhhhahhhhh. God gave me these desires, and I know the Bible says I should wait until I’m married, but we are in love, anyway. And gazoom gazoom makes us happy, so I don’t care what God says. This makes me happy.” Do you see how subtle and how dangerous this is?

Let me tell you the conversation I’ve heard about a zillion times, hear it all the time. “Hey, dude, how’s it going? “Ahhh, much better now.” “What do you mean?” “Well, you know I used to be married to old so-and-so.” “You’re not married anymore? What happened?” “Well, we just weren’t happy, so we divorced.” “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Well, are you happy now?” “Yes. I’m happy now.” “Oh, well, that’s good, because that’s all that matters.” It’s never been all that matters. Understand, God does not want you happy when it causes you to sin, and in Romans 6:1, Paul was making a very powerful argument, and he asked a question, “Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase, that grace may abound?” If you can allow me to read into it, he was kind of saying, “You know, if God’s going to forgive me anyway and I’m having fun and this makes me happy, why stop? Shall we continue to sin that grace may increase?” He said, “By no means, under no circumstances do we continue sinning so God can just forgive us if we like it.” He said, “We have already died to that. How can we live in it any longer?” As much as we want to believe it’s all about our happiness, it is not. Our happiness is never the bottom line in God’s spiritual economy.