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God loves us and wants us to be happy. I discussed this with the men at a drug and rehab center in Tlacolula, Mexico, yesterday. I am leading them on a study of Ephesians, and in this book, especially chapter two, Paul makes the fact of God’s love for us abundantly clear.
Ephesians 2:4 says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.
Ephesians 2:7-8 talk about two other aspects of God’s great love, that is his “incomparable riches of grace” and his “kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
The result of his great love is that we are happy!
We are happy because we were dead spiritually, and are now alive.
We are happy because God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms (6).
We are happy because we have been saved by grace through faith (8).
We are happy because we are God’s work of art created to do good works(10).
This Valentines Day we can enjoy pink hearts, red roses and dark chocolates, emblems of the love humans have for one another, but we should celebrate, rejoice and be glad in God’s great love, rich mercy and incomparable grace that will never fade away.
God loves us and wants us to be happy. This is clear from many of the Psalms. Last week we saw it in Psalm 32, and it is even more prominent in Psalm 33. Psalm 33 is a liturgy in praise of the LORD.
God loved his chosen people Israel when this Psalm was written and sung at the temple, and he loves his chosen people, the Church, now:
The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love (5)
The eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love (18).
May your unfailing love be with us, LORD, even as we put our hope in you (22).
Because of God’s unfailing love, his people are happy:
Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him (1).
Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy (3).
Happy is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance (12).
In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name (21).
God’s love for us is steadfast and never fails. He loves the righteous; those who live in right relationship with him and with their neighbors. He delivers them from the Evil One, from their enemies, and from themselves. In this Psalm, the people are especially happy, it seems, because they have just been delivered from a large army knocking on their door. Verse 10 says that the LORD foils the plans of the nations (those unrighteous nations who do not want to live in right relationship with God or their neighbor Israel). Verse 16 says that no king is saved by the size of his army and that no warrior escapes by his great strength. Verse 19 refers to the LORD delivering his people from death.
Sometimes we have an evil army knocking on the door of our lives, our family or our community of faith. But when we trust in God’s unfailing love and “wait in hope for the LORD” (20), we will come out of the situation, in the end, victorious! We will sing joyfully to the LORD and our hearts will rejoice in his holy name.
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Before you ever get a problem, God already has your deliverance planned. Joyce Meyer
God loves us and wants us to be happy. How do I know this? The Bible tells me so. Its repeated many times in the Psalms. The LORD is good and his love endures forever. Give thanks to the LORD for he is good; his love endures forever.
One key to understanding that God loves us and wants us to be happy, is the word “good”. In the beginning, in Genesis 1, God makes light, land and sea and it is good. He makes plants and trees and calls them good. He makes the sun, moon and stars, and guess what? They are good. He creates animals, birds and fish. He says, ” They are good.” They are all good in their own right, but who are they good for? Humans! I don’t think the creation so far made God particularly happy, but he knew it would make humans happy. Adam and Eve; you and me. Finally he makes humans in his image and likeness, and then stands back and takes a look at it all and declares, “It is very good!”
The second key to understanding that God loves us and wants us to be happy, is the word “love”. All of us who have children love them and want them to be happy. We are not perfect, and often make mistakes in showing our love for them. Those who are in Christ are God’s adopted children. Our heavenly Father never makes mistakes in loving us. I like what Jesus said in Matthew 7, ” If you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good gifts to his children. ” This goodness all starts with God’s love. Not with us. 1 John 4:10 tells us, “This is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice for our sins.”
If that thought, act, gift and love doesn’t make us happy, nothing will!
As we enter a new year, we can imagine it as a kind of new creation. A blank slate, an empty book, and we can look forward to seeing what good words that God is going to write on the slate of our hearts; on the pages of our lives. We can anticipate wonderful gifts that our Heavenly Father is going to give us. Let’s look forward to the new year with excitement, joy and anticipation, knowing that God loves us and wants us to be happy!
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Praying that in 2023 you have –
12 months of success
52 weeks of laughter
365 days of fun
8760 hours of joy
525600 minutes of blessing
and 31536000 seconds of happiness
I truly believe that God loves us and wants us to be happy. I believe that because the Bible tells me so.
The phrase in the Bible that leads me to that conviction is “The LORD is good, and his love endures forever.” These words are found 11 times in the Old Testament, from 1 Chronicles (16:34) to Jeremiah (33:11). It is found most frequently in Psalms (100:5; 106:1; 107;1; 118:1; 136:1).
Most of the time, this scriptural nugget is preceded by the words, “Give thanks to the Lord” as in Psalms 106:1 and 107:1. “Give thanks to the LORD for he is good; his love endures forever.”
I try to practice that admonishment everyday. When the sun pokes its head over the horizon every morning, I tell myself and those around me, “Look, he did it again!” God doesn’t have to make the sunrise everyday, but he does because he loves us and wants us to be happy!
I am the gardener at a home for needy children in Oaxaca, Mexico. When I see the Birds of Paradise, Hibiscus, Geraniums, Canna Lilies, Bougainvilles or Roses in bloom, I can see how God is so good and loves us so much, and I happily give him thanks and praise his name. He didn’t have to give us all these beautiful flowers, but he did, because he loves us and wants us to be happy.
My wife and I have a little piece of property not too far from the home for needy children. I am constantly planting and caring for many flowers, bushes and trees that I planted. They need a lot of TLC to flourish and thrive (kinda like us humans). I was pleasantly surprised about a month ago, by the appearance of the Passion Flower pictured above. It is beautiful. I did not plant it. God did. Why? Because the LORD is Good and his Love endures forever and because he loves us and wants us to be happy. Just ask Benjamin Franklin.
“The trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, the singers raised their voice in praise to the LORD and sang:
He is good; his love endures forever.
Then the temple of the LORD was filled with the cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the temple of God. 2 Chronicles 5:13,14
God loves us and wants us to be happy. This verse from Romans emphasizes that truth. Notice it does not say, “May the God of misery fill you with all despair and anguish as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hopelessness by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
No, it is all about being filled with all joy and peace and overflowing with hope. If there are three words in our vocabulary that are the essence of happiness, they must be joy, peace and hope. And Paul’s prayer is that his readers would not just possess a little bit of joy here, and a taste of peace there with a smidge of hope thrown in. No. He wants his readers to be filled with all joy and peace and overflow with hope.
How is that accomplished? Paul says it comes from trusting in God. Trusting in God like a little baby trusts in its parents. Trusting in God so deeply that, like a baby, you don’t even realize how much you are trusting him. Sometimes when I am praying, I will all of a sudden say “Goo, Goo – Ga Ga”, just to remind myself of how much I truly depend on him for every little thing I have, like bread, breath and water. It also reminds me of my insignificant knowledge in comparison to the infinite knowledge of our omniscient Father. There are so many things that I don’t understand about life and God, that I would like to understand, but I can’t. Then I get this image of Einstein trying to explain the theory of relativity to a toddler. There is no way the toddler can understand. Like me. There’s no way I can understand a lot of the things that I would like God to explain to me. So I say, “Goo, goo – ga ga”, and go on happily trusting God.
So let’s trust in Lord; taste and see that God is good, all the time, and celebrate the fact that our Father in heaven loves us and wants us to be happy.
In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians he writes in chapter four, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” (12,13)
There is a progression here that could be helpful to us in our world today. That progression is Knowing, Learning and Doing.
Paul writes that he Knows what it is to be in need, and he Knows what it is to have plenty. There is the Knowing. He tells his readers of his basic experience in life. He has experienced want and abundance. He Knows what it’s like.
What does he do with those basic experiences of his life? With his knowing? Well, he Learns from them. He has Learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or want. Now that is quite a useful secret to Learn – contentedness!
As a result of learning to be content, Paul is able to write that he can Do all this through him, Jesus Christ, who gives him strength. What is “all this“?
“All this” is life. Paul is telling the Philippians, and ultimately all of Christendom, that he can Do life! He can Do riches and poverty. He can Do sickness and health. He can Do being praised and being persecuted. He can Do it all because he knows the Creator of life. Jesus Christ, who created Paul, walked with Paul and loved Paul, gave him the strength to be content Doing life in all its ups and downs, good times and bad times, successes and failures, beauty and ugliness.
The word “content” is an adjective used to describe a state of peaceful happiness. It means to be satisfied with a certain level of achievement, good fortune, etc., and not wishing for more.
I think with everything that is going on in the world, we could all do with a heaping helping of contentment. There are a lot of people who have known a lifestyle of excess, and now they know what it is like to not be able to pay the rent. There are a lot of people who have known wonderful health, and are now suffering the painful effects of the virus. There are a lot of people who had close relationships with family and friends, and now they are separated from those loved ones either because of quarantine or death. There are a lot of people who know what it is like to be respected in their community, but they also know what it means to experience racism.
What if we all learned what Paul learned? The Secret to Being Content in any and every situation. What if, come hell or high water, we were able to live in a state of peaceful happiness? What a wonderful world that would be!
God wants us to have such a world. Jesus gave us a prayer to pray everyday. In that prayer, we are to ask our heavenly Father to make this life on earth like the happy kingdom in heaven where everyone does God’s will. Or, in other words, to do life, with a feeling of satisfaction that everything will work out in the end because we walk with Jesus, the creator of the universe, and the creator of us. He made us and loves us and wants us to be happy, by trusting him in every situation. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future! Paul learned that secret. Hopefully we can too.
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