THE HAPPINESS THAT GOD GIVES AND ENLARGES YOUR SOUL

In the midst of some of the most difficult times of my life I have found great comfort in reading Jonathan Edwards. I love him because he helps me get my eyes off of myself, my problems, and my circumstances which bring me no comfort, no peace, no joy, no faith, and no hope. Instead, he reminds me of a God who is full of glory and who brings me great happiness, peace, hope, and life when I see Him in all the glory of who He is.

Edwards wrote, "It appears that all that is ever spoken of in scripture as the ultimate end of God's works is included in that one phrase, THE GLORY OF GOD...God in seeking His glory, therein seeks the good of His creatures"

Oh what a wonderful and amazing being our God is! God had made us to know Him intimately, to see Him, to enjoy him, and to treasure Him above all things. It is an amazing truth that God finds pleasure and joy in our knowledge and experience of Him in His glory and that our knowledge and experience of Him is the means of our supreme happiness that He lovingly has purposed for us.

Have you noticed how empty and fleeting are other means that we use to try to find happiness? I have never been able to find any happiness in my attempts to find happiness outside of Him. Happiness has especially not come from my the gratification of my own selfish and self centered instincts. Is it no wonder why Jesus said that "whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever looses his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 16:25).

Augustine, in the year 386, found his freedom from the pleasures of lust in the superior pleasures of God. "How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! . . . You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure."

Lately, many of the things that once made me happy in this world have been taken away from me.My natural reaction has been to try to get them back or to sink into despairing sorrow and grief. I have discovered that God's fundamental gift is not a life without great pain and challenges and sorrow, but a state of happiness rooted in Himself that can help me to rise above all situations good or bad in this life. This is a happiness that is not a mood or an emotional high. It is a persevering, bold happiness that is sorrowful, but always rejoicing, deeply rooted by faith in a glorious God.

It is so easy living in this world to be disconnected from Him and the very reason that we were made by Him. I want to be staggered and wooed by the amazing glory of God in my life; not by stuff, people, ministry, popularity, low level pleasures, trite, trivial, banal, empty, and silly things. The secret of true happiness and pleasure is to gain a new and fresh vision of the infinite, everlasting, astonishing, amazing, lovely, magnificent, liberating, comforting, unconditional loving, grace giving and mercy showing, powerful glory of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The soul enlarges or shrinks based upon the magnitude of its source of happiness. Life, if you let it, can diminish and shrink your soul.Both prosperity and adversity can do this. I have seen in my own life that bad things that happen to me can be given the power to kill me inside as well. Death outside can be used to bring death within our soul if we let it. Only a vision of Jesus Christ can enlarge our soul and rob adversity and prosperity of their soul killing power.

I am sick and tired of letting my soul shrink by pursuing pleasures outside of Christ alone. I am learning to reorient my thoughts, my words, and my actions on this God who is glorious and wants me to find my greatest pleasure and happiness in Him no matter what is going on in my life whether from prosperity to painful adversity. I daily keep telling myself that He truly has my happiness in mind because He loves me and that communing with Him and serving Him no matter what will bring me ultimately the greatest joy and pleasure while bringing Him glory.

Let me close by speaking of why a vision and experience of this God will bring you such joy and happiness. I quote John Piper's breathtaking description of the supremacy of Christ.

I am praying for you and myself that the risen, living Christ would come to us (even now) by His Spirit and through his Word and reveal to us:

—the supremacy of His deity, equal with God the Father in all his attributes—the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature, infinite, boundless in all his excellencies;

—the supremacy of His eternality that makes the mind of man explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a beginning, but simply always was; sheer, absolute reality while all the universe is fragile, contingent, like a shadow by comparison to his all-defining, ever-existing substance;

—the supremacy of His never-changing constancy in all his virtues and all his character and all his commitments—the same yesterday, today, and forever;

—the supremacy of His knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox, and all the information on the Internet look like a little 1940’s farmers almanac, and quantum physics—and everything Stephen Hawking ever dreamed—seem like a first-grade reader;

—the supremacy of His wisdom that has never been perplexed by any complication and can never be counseled the wisest of men;

—the supremacy of His authority over heaven and earth and hell, without whose permission no man and no demon can move one inch, who changes times and seasons, removes kings and sets up kings; does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; so none can stay His hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

—the supremacy of His providence without which not a single bird falls to the ground in the furthest reaches of the Amazon forest, or a single hair of any head turns black or white;

—the supremacy of His word that moment by moment upholds the universe and holds in being all the molecules and atoms and subatomic world we have never yet dreamed of;

—the supremacy of His power to walk on water, cleanse lepers and heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to hear and storms to cease and the dead to rise, with a single word, or even a thought;

—the supremacy of His purity never to sin, or to have one millisecond of a bad attitude or an evil, lustful thought;

—the supremacy of His trustworthiness never to break his word or let one promise fall to the ground;

—the supremacy of His justice to render in due time all moral accounts in the universe settled either on the cross or in hell;

—the supremacy of His patience to endure our dullness for decade after decade; and to hold back His final judgment on this land and on the world, that many might repent;

—the supremacy of His sovereign, servant obedience to keep his Father’s commandments perfectly and then embrace the excruciating pain of the cross willingly;

—the supremacy of His meekness and lowliness and tenderness that will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick;

—the supremacy of His wrath that will one day explode against this world with such fierceness that people will call out for the rocks and the mountains to crush them rather than face the wrath of the Lamb;

—the supremacy of His grace that gives life to spiritually dead rebels and wakens faith in hell-bound haters of God, and justifies the ungodly with His own righteousness;

—the supremacy of His love that willingly dies for us even while we were sinners and frees us for the ever-increasing joy in making much of him forever;

—the supremacy of His own inexhaustible gladness in the fellowship of the Trinity, the infinite power and energy that gave rise to all the universe and will one day be the inheritance of every struggling saint;

And if he would grant us to know him like this, it would be but the outskirts of his supremacy. Time would fail to speak of the supremacy of his severity, and invincibility, and dignity, and simplicity, and complexity, and resoluteness, and calmness, and depth, and courage. If there is anything admirable, if there is anything worthy of praise anywhere in the universe, it is summed up supremely in Jesus Christ.

He is supreme in every admirable way over everything:

over galaxies and endless reaches of space;
over the earth from the top of Mount Everest 29,000 feet up, to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean 36,000 feet down into the Mariana Trench;
He is supreme over all plants and animals, from the peaceful Blue Whale to the microscopic killer viruses;
over all weather and movements of the earth: hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, earthquakes, avalanches, floods, snow, rain, sleet;
over all chemical processes that heal and destroy: cancer, AIDS, malaria, flu, and all the workings of antibiotics and a thousand healing medicines.
He is supreme over all countries and all governments and all armies;
over Al Qaeda and all terrorists and kidnappings and suicide bombings and beheadings;
over bin Ladin and al-Zarqawi;
over all nuclear threats from Iran or Russia or North Korea.
He is supreme over all politics and elections;
over all media and news and entertainment and sports and leisure;
and over all education and universities and scholarship and science and research;
and over all business and finance and industry and manufacturing and transportation;
and over all the Internet and information systems.

As Abraham Kuyper used to say, “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” And rule with absolute supremacy. And though it may not seem so now, it is only a matter of time until he is revealed from heaven in flaming fire to give relief to those who trust him and righteous vengeance on those who don’t.

Oh, that the almighty God would help us see and savor the supremacy of his Son. Give yourself to this with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Pray for this vision.

Pastor Bill