Does God promise happiness?
Victoria Osteen’s message to the congregation at Lakewood Church in Houston ,Texas, has been widely viewed and reported. She indicated that our happiness takes precedence over everything else.
She said that our worship of God is not really for God but for our sake because God’s greatest concern is our happiness. You can read my previous thoughts about Victoria Osteen’s views here: http://waylonbailey.com/2014/09/09/what-about-victoria-osteen/
Does God care about our happiness?
Yes, of course He does. There is nothing in your life that He doesn’t care about.
But my happiness is not at the center of the universe. More than anything in life, God wants me to be like Him. He wants me to be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29).
Happiness has to do with what’s happening now and with circumstances. And while God is very much concerned about our immediate lives and our circumstances, He is much more concerned about our eternity. God loves us deeply and wants us to know and serve Him for all eternity.
God is more concerned with our holiness than our happiness. While my happiness relates to what has “happened” around me, my holiness has to do with what happens in me. God is perfect moral purity. He desires that we become like Him. Holiness implies actions that please God.
The relationship between happiness and holiness is why Victoria Osteen’s remarks created such a firestorm among Christians. God wants us to obey Him. Our worship is very much about Him.
Here’s the paradoxical part about all of this. When we obey God and put Him first, we experience joy in our lives (even when life is hard). Joy has nothing to do with circumstances that occur today; it has everything to do with the indwelling Spirit and our efforts to serve God.
Joy for the child of God is what we can experience even when everything is falling apart around us. God’s Spirit in us produces love, joy, and peace (Galatians 5:22). These three fruits of the Holy Spirit will produce more “happiness” than any amount of money, power, or health could ever do.
Our worship is about God and Him alone.
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5 Responses
Thank you. God was speaking something to my heart this morning and you just confirmed it. Thank you for speaking His Word.
Thanks again Dr. Bailey, for an important, corrective message. Our focus in Christ is love, not happiness. We are to Love God with all that is within us, and Love others as we love ourselves [His commands]. This pathway involves sacrificial acts of service, taking up the Cross, etc.. It does, paradoxically, lead to the greatest happiness [joy] in life; but that is not the focus or the goal of the Christian life. As we are obedient to Him in staying out from under the clouds of the “worries and cares of the world” we certainly make space for joy in our lives; and we should also obey Him by being “thankful in all situations.” Practicing the Love that He embodied–allowing His Spirit to be manifested through us–and obeying Him regarding worry/anxiety and thankfulness, we discover deep, authentic, durable joy arising in our hearts like mercury in a thermometer on a warm Spring morning. I’m not sure what Victoria intended, but her words seemed to encourage the pursuit of happiness as an ultimate goal, which has never worked in human history.
Well said with such grace and firm conviction. Thank you
In one of your past sermons you said happiness is an outward emotion & is temporary, depending on our circumstance. I think, as believers we have joy that can only come from God. Your sermon taught me the difference in joy & happiness.
I like your blog a lot. Lots of church folks who say, “I don’t go to church for God. I go to church for me.” I feel like I go to church for God, because he IS God.