I Just Want to be Happy!

“I just want to be HAPPY.”

How many times have you said that to yourself? How many times have you heard someone say this? Humanity has been on a quest for happiness since the beginning of time. We’re always looking for it, whether we know we are, want to admit to it or not. We don’t have to be told to seek the things that gives us pleasure, we just naturally, innately, instinctively want to be happy. Consequently, we chase down happiness with everything within us. But is happiness something you chase?

The state of being happy is defined according to the Wester’s Dictionary as “feeling or showing pleasure or contentment, being satisfied with the quality or standard of….” Many of us seek to be happy in material things, friends, our children, spouses and other relationships. We seek to be happy having sex, doing drugs, eating or drinking our favorite drink. Some of us even think we can be happy gossiping, nagging or being shady. But we soon find that none of these things make us happy. This past weekend I ministered a teaching at my mother’s church, Wake Up. Grow Up, and in this message, I was lead to serve a teaching for those feasting at the table to not look for happiness outside of themselves as happiness is an inside job.

So How Exactly Do We Find our Happy?

This is something that I have had to recently relearn. I am generally a happy and joyful person, but as I have shared I have experienced some serious disappointments in recent months that have had me looking through cloudy glasses that could not see the rose color or the glass half full in the situations. I was forced to look through different glasses to know that One who created all things, rules all things and planned this strange ironic reality and I must make a choice to be happy despite what I see or feel — as He desires for me to be happy and I had to make a choice to be happy.
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Our state of happiness is contingent upon our external circumstances. Happiness is based upon what’s happening in our lives and what happens in this life is certainly not always happy. We deal with so many pressures, disappointment, sadness and grief, it can be difficult to find our happy place. It’s important to note that joy is not the same thing as happiness because happiness is based upon happenings and happenings are temporary, but the joy of the Lord endures forever, even in hardships in this life. That’s why you must know that being happy is a choice. 

Maybe you’re skeptical that He wants you to be happy because you have had so many not so happy moments, or there have been teachings that have persuaded your thinking that you will not discover happiness in this life, Well, I am going to challenge your thinking and what you have heard. I believe that God made pleasure and the feeling of being satisfied and He made them because He actually wants us to be happy. 

The Hebrew word in the Old Testament for happy is “esher”, the Greek word in the New Testament is “Makarios”. Both of these words are also translated “blessed.” The person who feels blessed is happy. “Happy are the people whose God is the Lord” (Ps 144:15) In this scripture David penned a happy Psalm about the God who delivered him from the sword of his enemy who was once his friend. And in this midst of the disappointment of a friend becoming a foe, David rejoiced over the fact that his happiness was not contingent upon his external situation, but it was solely based on his relationship with His God; which was unwavering and eternal and not based on circumstances and people which come and go. His happiness was a decision and the result of a decision. 
 
We frequently make the error of thinking that happiness is related to our circumstances. We think if our circumstances get better, we will be happy. Happiness has absolutely nothing to do with circumstances. Happiness is a decision and the result of a decision to not live under those circumstances and to not let those circumstances change us. This is the secret to Happiness. The Scriptures lets us know that we are to live happy regardless of the circumstances that’s our inheritance as Believers; to be happy always. (Deuteronomy 33:29)
 
So, if you want to be happy, change your perspective. Make a decision to be happy not because of  “stuff,” “people,” and “relationships” but like most good things that gives us pleasure you are content and dependent on your relationship with God.
 
HE MAKES YOU HAPPY! ​

Listen to the "Wake up. Grow up teaching here.

WHAT WILL YOU DO TO FIND YOUR HAPPLY PLACE? COMMENT BELOW AND THEN SHARE TO INSPIRE AND ENCOURAGE SOMEONE!
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