Finding Happiness

The key to happiness lies not in endeavoring to be happy, but in giving up your right to happiness. When we seek anything as an end in itself that ought not to be an end we loose that which we seek. If we seek love for loves sake, we loose love. If we seek happiness for the sake of happiness we loose our joy.

True happiness comes from being filled with joy. Joy comes from being filled with Christ. When we surrender our will to His we experience His life abundantly. All that is good is found in God. Scriptures says to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. A life lived in service to happiness is a life lived for one’s own pleasure. It results in a selfish life, not a happy life. A life lived for His pleasure is a life where true happiness will abound.

Often times we think that if our life could only be free of trouble or if only we could attain this one ideal we would arrive at happiness. In reality, if happiness isn’t found regardless of our circumstances, it will not be found when we have attained whatever it is we think we need. True happiness isn’t about living in a place where there are no trials or problems. True happiness is that which continues no matter the circumstances. It isn’t brought on by circumstances, but is sustained through circumstances for its substance is found in being in Christ.

Some think happiness will come by surrendering all desires. Others think it comes by attaining all desires and yet once attained they sink into despair for happiness was not reached. One only needs to follow the lives of the Hollywood actors to find people in the height of success without happiness. They run through relationships and marriages. They have all the glamour, money, houses, fancy cars, vacations, fame, possessions they could want and still addictions abound to dull the reality of their failure to attain their heart’s desire. Sleeping pills, drugs, and alcohol run rampant in this famous culture illustrating that happiness is not found with more money, more fame, or more things.

The desire lingers unfulfilled for it was never meant to be fulfilled by looking to this world, but to heaven. This is why when Jesus taught us how to pray He said that we pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God and that the reality of heaven bends the reality of earth. Thus, let it be on earth as it is in heaven. When we learn to dwell in God and gain our life from Him all these things will take on new life and meaning. They are no longer ends in themselves, but pleasures meant for us to enjoy because we first find our joy complete in Him. Happiness is attainable, only if the source of our joy is found in our relationship to our Lord, Jesus.

C.S. Lewis put it best when he wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

A View About Human Value

I like to watch The Antique Roadshow. People bring in their family heirlooms or a great garage sale purchase and the appraisers tell them the history of the item and attach a monetary value to the item. The monetary value given is an estimation of what people will pay at auction for such an item. Most of the time, when the item is a family heirloom, the monetary auction value cannot overcome the sentimental value of the item. When the item is merely a great garage sale purchase the value assessed comes solely from the amount of money a collector is willing to pay for the item. The item might be a campaign button from a presidential election and have no intrinsic worth. It only gains worth because people collect them and are willing to pay high prices to obtain it. If someone is willing to pay $1,000 dollars for it, it gains that value.

An object only obtains the worth that someone is willing to place on it weather the value be sentimental, practical, or monetary.

People, however, do not obtain worth in this manner. Now, we have all heard someone talk about the net worth of Bill Gates, but they are referring to his bank accounts and not his person. So how does a person obtain value?

There is a degree of value that is placed on a person through relationships between family members and friends. Employees are worth something to employers. However, with humans we cannot look at human value as we do objects. The value of a person does not come from their productivity in society, their ability to love or how much they are loved, or any such performance based value system. Humans are not valuable simply because other humans value them. If a human needed another person to give them value then the lone homeless person on the street would have less value than the person ensconced in relationships that value the person. Each person regardless of their abilities, capabilities, handicaps, friendships, performance, etc. has intrinsic value. No matter if no human on this planet loves that person or cares about that person or gains anything from that person that person is priceless.

Human worth doesn’t come from the value the rest of humanity places on the life. It comes straight from the Creator of that life. If no one else on the planet knows that person and values that person, God still has given that person value. He is the one that breathed from His life into the human life and gave life and He said it is good. He said man is fearfully and wonderfully made. No matter the handicap, no matter the age, mental capacity, or physical capacity or how many humans love a person, each person is uniquely special and valuable because God created him/her.

Moreover, because we are made in his likeness we know human life is valuable. That is why we know slave trafficking is absolutely wrong and murder and abuse and injustice is wrong. We have been stamped with knowledge of the intrinsic value of humanity. That is why when we do things that devalue humanity we feel the guilt, we feel the injustice. The famous scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth when Lady MacBeth is washing her visibly clean hands of blood over and over as the guilt suffocates her is so telling of our knowledge of the value of human life.

LADY MACBETH
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

DOCTOR

Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets:
More needs she the divine than the physician.
God, God forgive us all! Look after her;
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,

Lady Macbeth was overwrought with guilt from her murderous deed. Soap and water would not remove the memory as she slipped into near insanity. The doctor watching her condition adequately assessed her need for relief that can only come from divine forgiveness for her deed was not one only against humanity, but against the author of life. And it was He and He alone who could remove from her the guilt of her transgression.

As a Christian I bear the responsibility of loving people like God loves them even though I cannot do it as perfectly as God does. God calls me to love those who are in Christ and everyone else and even my enemies. He says that not a sparrow falls from the sky without Him noticing. He says that He knows how many hairs are upon our heads. He sees every tear and every laugh. He asks us to live a life of love, not of our own strength, but empowered by Christ. We are all created equal and we are all precious in His sight.

Why I Am A Christian

Thus far, I have written posts mostly about the philosophical and historical reasons for the authenticity of Christianity. In this post, I want to bring it down to a personal level and address the topic of why I believe in Jesus. It is written that Jesus once asked his disciples “who do you say that I am?” They responded that, “some say you’re a prophet, others say you are . . .” He stopped them. “No,” he insisted, “who do you say that I am?”

I can point to the Bible and tell you what the Bible records of Jesus. I can point to history and show what history says about Jesus. I can point to the Church throughout history as to who is this Jesus. I can also illuminate philosophy as to why He must be. However, all that fades in comparison in my personal life as to who I know Him to be from first hand experience. Why is all this Christianity so important to me? Why do I spend hours writing about His Truth? Why have I devoted my life to Him?

I was raised in a Christian home and all that that entailed. But there came a time that I had to choose for myself--where I examined what I was taught about Jesus and my faith in Him and found it to be not merely a product of my upbringing, but a reality in my individual life. I found that I knew Jesus and that I wanted a life with Him.

When I entered college I encountered challenge after challenge against what I believed. I had a Muslim professor bent on mocking my faith and even proclaiming it his goal to convert me to Islam. I had professors who did not believe in truth at all and were constantly attacking my stance on the validity of the Christian worldview. I had other professors who accepted a multiplicity of truths as long as none of them proclaimed to be the Truth. Still another who forbid me to write anything from a Christian perspective in her class. I met students who were wiccans or atheists and many who did not have any ideas about what they believed as long as it wasn’t Christianity. Here in this antagonistic environment my faith increased. I studied constantly into these matters in search of answers to all these worldview questions being levied at me day in and day out. I found there were good reasonable answers in abundance and I began to learn more and more about why Christianity is the only worldview that lines up with reality in the greatest of measurements.

While my intellectual understanding and firm resolve to share the answers with anyone who wanted them grew in those college years, there is more to my story.

In the last few years I have experienced God in ways I had never before encountered. I have found a new depth to my life in Christ that transcends the strong private faith in my heart and the intellectual foundation of truth in my head. I have begun to experience and learn about the supernatural aspect of the Christian life. I have experienced compassion for people like never before, miraculous physical healing, the tangible presence of God upon and in me, healing of others through my prayers, sharing that tangible presence with another by a slight touch, and having people I’ve never met share with me things that God is telling them that has been apparent intimate knowledge only God could have known.

My husband and I are learning to live life by hearing from God and doing what He tells and shows us to do. God is showing up every step of the way and we follow His lead with His help. It’s been an amazing journey and it is just the beginning.

I know God is real and that I have relationship with Him through Jesus as sure and certain as I am that I breathe air everyday. It’s not a delusion or a fantasy. It’s not a matter of believing real hard that it’s true. It is about knowing that He is real. It’s trust in that knowledge that equals faith. My faith is strong because my knowledge is sure, not because it is in lack and needs faith to boost it.

Who do I say that He is? He is my Lord and Savior, my God, and Eternal Life. The giver of the most wonderful relationship man can ever have--the relationship that is real life now and forevermore.

Love v. Law

Jesus is the perfect example of what the Christian life is to look like. He not only preached the things of God, He lived as the perfect representation of the Kingdom of God. While not forsaking His divinity, He lived the life of a man in perfect relationship with God. Jesus claimed of Himself to be the Way the Truth and the Life. He is the perfect personification of Truth.

There seems to be constant tension between the law and love where there should be none. Some feel that if they cease seeing sin through the law they will some how give it permissive license. However, Jesus knew full well the death produced by sin for He came suffer in our place for our sins though he committed none. Just the same Jesus was sent to, “to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” He came to heal hearts and free and release those in bondage to darkness.

Only love can produce these results. Condemnation and invoking the law only serves to bring bondage not freedom. Every time Jesus refers to the Law and the Prophets he shows that they are fulfilled in love not abolished by love.

Consider the following passages.

Matthew 5: 17 –18 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

Matthew 7:12 “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 22:36-40 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

The Law and the Prophets are fulfilled by Love. So why is that people think that responding to sin with love creates permissiveness and violates God’s law? By no means, the law exists because of God’s love and is therefore fulfilled by His love. Love fulfills the law because when you enter into God’s love through Jesus you are freed from the bondage of sin which was illuminated by the law. Morality becomes a byproduct of knowing Christ and not false righteousness of adhering to moral laws.

When sin is seen through love it is far darker and more real than when it is seen through legalism and the religious spirit. I used to think that compassion for the sinner excused the sin whereas condemnation of sorts would break them out of the sin. I didn’t think this consciously, but rather subconsciously. When God gripped my heart for the outcast and the sinners and replaced my judgmentalism with His compassion and love-- I started to see sin for what it really is: a dark bondage that destroys a person. I began to grieve in my heart when I saw people entangled in its web and I was then motivated by love to reach out showing them the love of Christ and the freedom from this disease in which they are so deeply entangled.

Love sees sin worse then legalism sees sin. Love seeks to restore, help, free, release the sinner from their bondages. Legalism seeks to condemn and bind the person to their bondage. The more like Jesus we become the more we should desire the restoration of the broken, the freedom of the captives, the healing of the hurting, etc. All of this will come out of our relationship with Him otherwise it is simply the works of religion. Religion is about law and Jesus is about love. The more we know Him the more love should abound.