How To Find Happiness Series

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS - GOODNESS, SERVICE AND HOPE

“Blessed (happy, to be envied) are you who mourn, etc…

Matt. 5:3 / Luke 6:20

We are all searching for the same thing. Some seek it by getting married, and others by staying single. Some turn to God to find it, and others turn away. Some seek it in possessions, and others in vows of poverty. Our approaches differ but our aim is the same – we all want to be happy.

And perhaps the saddest fact about life in America is that in the land where we are guaranteed “life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness,” so many never find it. Behind smiling faces we hide our quiet desperation. Ann Landers, after receiving thousands of letters from troubled people, wrote, “I know that millions of Americans earn an Academy Award every day, as they struggle heroically to present a cheerful face to the world and give no hint of the civil war that rages within.” The Oriental philosopher, Lin Yutang, remarked, “Americans must be a very unhappy people. They laugh so much.”

The symptoms of misery ooze from the pores of our land. Our suicide rate is steadily climbing. Our youth and adults turn away from life by turning to drugs, the worst of which is alcohol. The prevalence of drugs and crime and our obsession with pornography and violence are all symptoms of an unhappy people.

A few years back, John Steinbeck, the great American author, traveled across America in a camper with a dog named “Charlie.” For months, he traveled incognito, not as a famous author but as just another citizen. He got to know the American people and in his book TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE, concluded that most Americans are unhappy. Nearly everyone, he says, wanted to be somewhere else or to be doing something else.

In his book PEACE WITH GOD, Billy Graham said is well, “The more knowledge we acquire, the less wisdom we seem to have. The more economic security we gain, the more boredom we generate. The more wordly pleasure we enjoy, the less satisfied we are with life. We are like a restless sea, finding little peace here and a little pleasure there, but nothing permanent and satisfying.” And so, when Jesus begins His greatest ethical sermon with the word MAKARIOS - “Blessed, happy, to be envied” (Amplified Version), we all sit up and take notice.

Jesus, in the Beatitudes, gives us eight character traits He wants us to possess. And I take MAKARIOS, happiness, blessedness, peace, joy, as the ninth. It is the one He will give us as we seek the other eight. The Beatitudes give us the secret of happiness according to Jesus.

And in showing us the way to true blessedness, He exposes the errors of our way. Jesus gives a totally different way than that we are taught to travel.

He differs FIRST by teaching that true and lasting happiness must be independent of CIRCUMSTANCES. He says, “Blessed are the POOR...THE HUNGRY...THE MOURNERS...THE PERSECUTED.” We say the opposite, “Blessed are the RICH...THE LAUGHERS...THE UNTROUBLED.” His strange words must have seemed like a slap in the face to those who looked for Him to be their Champion and change their lot in life. Alexander Maclaren says His words were like Gideon’s test, to sift out those whose appetite for carnal good was uppermost.

Happiness can never be found in circumstances. The Greeks used this word MAKARIOS to describe the life of their gods on Mount Olympus, where they were sheltered from the bad side of life. But we do not live on Mount Olympus, we live in a real world where life can come crashing down at any minute. Our word “happiness” betrays our dependence on our surroundings. It comes from the Scandanavian word HAP which means luck, chance, or fortune. We say, “I would be happy IF I could be married...IF I could be single...IF I had a job...IF I didn’t have to work.

The trouble is, everything does not go our way. We have no control over some circumstances and we must learn that happiness does not depend on what happens to us but what happens to what happens to us.

But Jesus differs from us SECOND by teaching that true and lasting happiness is always a BY-PRODUCT of something else. He says, “Blessed ARE you...” It is a pronouncement. It is a congratulatory exclamation of something which IS. We are never told to seek to be MAKARIOS. It is a bestowal of God. Jesus said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.” An inviolate law of life is that happiness eludes the pursuer of happiness and comes to the ones who seek and find what God places above personal satisfactions. Seeking to be Christ’s kind of Christian, we find true joy as a by-product.