God is Happy

Amen.

Well, uh semi-random exercise to get our conversation started this morning.

May seem random, but we'll bring it back in later.

I want you to do your best just for a second to picture God.

Just to visualize God in your mind.

You don't have to close your eyes or anything like that.

We're not gonna make everyone close their eyes.

Just however you see him, just get that picture in your mind, lock it away.

It could be God the Father, it could be Jesus, it could be the Holy Spirit, maybe even some other image of God that you have.

Just get that image of God in your mind's eye and then lock that away, and we'll we'll bring that back in here in a few minutes.

Today we begin a conversation, a new series based around a very simple question.

Are you happy?

Are you happy?

At first glance, that seems like a really surface-level question.

In fact, it might even seem shallow.

Whenever I was praying a few months ago about what God wanted us to talk about to start the fall, the word happy kept coming to my mind and it made me kind of mad.

Which might say a lot about me and stuff I need to work on.

But it really did, because I'll be honest, I sort of equate the word happiness with this very shallow, very shallow approach to life.

And one of the things I love about this place is the opportunity for us to go beyond the surface.

It's an opportunity for us to go a little deeper and deal with heart issues and hopefully take big steps forward in our lives with God.

And that, at least in my life, usually occurs when something inside me stirs deeply, not just at the surface.

And so I kind of think about it like a pond.

I don't want to skip rocks.

I don't want us to just cover a lot of ground but never penetrate the surface.

I want I want to see like a giant rock, like a boulder, go in the water.

And that that boulder itself may not cover a lot of territory, but it its effect is felt throughout the entire entire pond.

And happiness to me seems more like a pebble meant for skipping rocks, right?

For skipping on the water, than a giant boulder that's supposed to create a shockwave.

And so I was really frustrated with God, and I kept praying, no, that's not it.

God, give me something to talk about in the fall.

And the word happy kept coming to my mind, and I started to get upset with God.

And I do that pretty often.

I'm like, God, you're not, you're not doing things the way I want you to.

I have a plan.

And over the course of the next few months, as I was getting ready for today and for this date, God started to correct me, which he does pretty often, and show me how absolutely wrong I was about happiness.

That happiness is not some surface level thing to talk about, that happiness is definitely not shallow.

Happiness is serious business.

I mean, go back to that question: are you happy?

That is a very simple question.

That's a yes or no question, but how often is the answer a simple yes or a simple no?

Kind of depends, right?

Are you happy?

Well, what part of life are we talking about?

Are we talking about my home life?

Are we talking about my job?

Are we talking about my family?

Are we talking about emotions?

Are we talking about my sports team?

Like, what are we talking about?

In fact, sometimes we get really frustrated if we're gonna be honest with ourselves, because we should be happy.

We look at our lives and circumstantially we're we're doing well, and we think to ourselves, there's no reason I'm not happy, but I'm not.

What does that say about me?

Why am I not happy?

Happiness is no joke.

See, everyone in the world is searching for happiness.

Everyone's looking really hard to find happiness, to grab a hold of it, to hold on to it, but happiness is the most elusive thing on this planet.

One in three Americans say that they're very happy when asked about their lives.

Only one in three.

70% of Americans say they're unhappy in their job or their career or whatever their life role is.

The number of people who say they're happy when asked about their marriage or their significant relationships is less every single year, statistically.

So we live in this country, in this culture, this world that has a happiness problem.

Everyone is looking for happiness, but no one can seem to find it.

And if they do, they don't seem able to hold on to it for long.

And we've all experienced that.

We've all experienced how elusive happiness can be, because we've all had moments in life where we had something in our mind, something we were convinced would make us happy.

And we worked for that, and we worked toward that, and then maybe we actually got it in our lives.

We had that thing or that experience, and we weren't any happier.

Could be a relationship, right?

Could be a job, a career, it could be some type of experience, going somewhere, seeing something, traveling, you name it.

It could be something really inconsequential and petty.

Like for me, it was a man cave.

You guys familiar with the concept of a man cave?

If you're not, it's it's not like a literal cave where men go.

It's uh it's a place in a home that is only for men.

It's it's dark and it's it's basic, like it's a couch and a TV, and the only thing that can happen in a man cave is manly things.

It's sports and video games and movies with explosions, it's that kind of stuff.

And for years I really felt like if I had a man cave, I'd be happy.

Because, you know, I have children, I have three kids, and so they they just they just take over our entire home.

I don't know how it works.

Our house looks like like IKEA and Toys R Us just vomited everywhere.

That's our house.

It's just so much of their stuff.

They just consume every part of our home, and and my wife has put her touch on every part of our house, and I'm not complaining about that.

I didn't have a lot of input, but she's put her feminine touch everywhere.

So we have like, I don't know, 150 decorative pillows in our home.

When I got married, I did not know we would spend so much money on decorative pillows and scented candles and those kinds of things.

I didn't agree to that.

But we have all these decorative pillows, and and and I'll be honest, as a man, decorative pillows are like the biggest scam in the world.

It's a pillow you're not allowed to put your head on.

And that doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Half the ones we have, they're not even comfortable.

They have like buttons and other things on them, and if you sat on them, you're like, ow, what is this?

It's a pillow.

Why am I uncomfortable?

Because there's a pillow on my back.

But we have we have hundreds of decorative pillows, and I am, I am exaggerating, but not by much.

Okay?

So, like in our bedroom, we probably have 15 decorative pillows that are supposed to go on our bed.

My wife bought.

And they're never on our bed, ever.

Because it would be kind of crazy for us to put the pillows on our bed every morning just to take them off every night to sleep.

And by the way, if you do have decorative pillows on your bed and you do that, I'm not saying you're crazy, but you might want to reevaluate how you spend your time.

Okay?

And so we don't we don't put them on and take them off, but we still have them.

So we literally have a giant pile of pillows next to our bed, and that it just stays there.

It's been there for like a year and a half.

We vacuum around it, they never move.

The only thing they get used for is when our children jump off of our bed, they use the pillows as like a landing pad.

So I guess it's a safety feature in our home.

It's decorative pillows.

There are no decorative pillows in man caves, okay?

And if you have a man cave and there's a decorative pillow in there, go home and burn it today, okay?

If that's the only thing we accomplish today, I'm okay.

Just no decorative pillows in man caves.

So, so for years I felt like if I could have a place that was my own, no feminine touches, no kids' stuff, just a space where I could go and watch a game or watch a movie, just do something masculine with no one bothering me, shut the door, just be alone with my thoughts.

That would make me happy.

And then we we bought this house.

And as soon as we looked at the house, there was this one room in the basement that just screamed man cave.

I mean, this room has no windows, you can make it as dark as you want.

The lights in the room are already dimmable.

It came that way.

I mean, it just screams man cave.

And I looked at that room and it was blank, and I said, Man, if you put a couch there and if you put a TV there, man cave.

I could not convince my wife to take money out of the pillow budget to put into the man cave budget.

She wouldn't budge there.

But I made it, I made it like my purpose for a solid two years to get the components I needed for that man cave.

Because I knew it would make me happy.

And so eventually I got I got a couch for free.

It wasn't really a couch, it was the middle section of an old sectional couch that someone was throwing away.

But it works, you can sit on it.

And so I got that couch and I put it in that room, and literally for three or four months, it was just a couch looking at a blank wall.

But it reminded me what could be there.

And then I had a friend that had a business and he was moving out of the organization he was part of, and he was starting something new, and the business that he had had a bunch of TVs that they used in the office, and he didn't need them anymore.

And he asked me if I knew anyone that was maybe looking to buy some some TVs, and I said, Well, I don't I don't know anyone looking to buy TVs.

I do know a guy who wouldn't mind one.

And we started talking about it, and I was, you know, I was I was joking with him, but he did say he said, Well, you know what, I do have this older TV.

You know, it's like a flat screen TV and all, but it's not it's not like the latest and greatest.

It doesn't have like smart TV features and that kind of stuff.

He's like, but if you want this one, I probably couldn't sell it anyway, I'll give it to you.

And like on the outside, I acted, I acted uh very grateful, but together.

I was like, oh man, that really?

Wow, that would be amazing.

I can't believe you'd do that.

That's so so kind of you.

But on the inside, on the inside, like I was like a five-year-old kid.

I was I was literally on the inside going, like, I'm gonna have a man cave.

I'm gonna, this is gonna happen, this is real.

And so he brought it to my house, and I hung it up that night, and I ran cable from another room so I could get a signal, and I'll never forget, I had my man cave.

Not a feminine touch anywhere to be seen.

And I went in that room and I turned the lights off and I turned on the TV and I turned it on to a game, and I sat down, I shut the door, and I watched this game for 20 minutes, and then 20 minutes later, I was bored out of my mind.

Like I remember thinking to myself, man, I wonder what the kids are up to.

And I had to tell myself, no, no, you don't think those thoughts in a man cave.

The kids are fine.

And then I was like, I wonder if Megan's overwhelmed with all three of them.

I mean, she's I'm sure she's fine, she's an amazing one.

She's probably not mad at me for being in here, having some me time, right?

She understands that as a man, life's hard, and we don't give birth and get pregnant and push babies out of us, but you know, we have our stuff.

She probably, no?

And so literally 20 minutes into this man cave experience, I walked out of the room.

Because it did not make me happy.

And now the man cave has been taken over by our children, it's the kid cave now.

We still call it the man cave, which is a little bit grating to me because the only thing that happens in the man cave, really, on a consistent basis, is my two-year-old daughter watches Little Einstein's.

Because we are sick of that show.

And so when she wants to watch Little Einsteins, we say, You can you can go on a trip in your favorite rocket ship over there, right?

You go in that room.

If you know that show, you know that song.

So that's all that happens in my man cave.

Little Einstein's.

But the reality is this, I really believed, I really believed for two years that if I had a man cave, I would find a happiness that I I had never found.

I thought I'd be happier, I thought I could be alone with my thoughts, and I thought I could rest and relax, and it did not make me happy.

And how many of us have had an experience like that?

Where we had something in our minds that we were convinced.

If we just had this, if we could just do this or be here or be there, or see this change, if we could just have this, then we'd be happy, and then we got it, and we weren't.

And so what do we do?

We we search for something else.

The search goes on.

Because there's one thing that's certain, we're not going to abandon the search for happiness.

Because we desperately, desperately want to be happy.

We do.

We don't have to pretend otherwise.

I mean, this we don't play church at his hands, so we don't have to pretend like we're people who are too spiritual for desiring happiness.

In fact, it's kind of funny when you think about happiness in the context of God, I think sometimes we might even wonder if it's okay to want to be happy.

Is it okay to desire happiness?

Like, is God okay with me desperately wanting to be happy?

Or am I supposed to sacrifice my happiness on some altar to please God?

If I'm really spiritual, shouldn't I say, oh God, here's my happiness, just take it away from me, because I can really glorify you and honor you if I'm not happy.

That's what religion thinks.

That's why so many religious people are the most miserable people in the world.

Because happiness isn't valued.

And the idea comes across that maybe God doesn't care so much about your happiness.

Maybe God doesn't care about you being happy in life.

Maybe you're supposed to just grow up and get over that desire.

Well, as we as we kick off this series, what I want to accomplish today is very simple.

I want every single one of us to leave the room today, understanding that God very much desires you to be happy.

That not only is God okay with you being happy, God wants you to be happy.

God has called you to be happy, so you need to leave today knowing that you have permission from God to pursue happiness.

I grew up in church and happiness was kind of a bad word.

There was happiness and there was joy.

I was always taught that happiness is circumstantial, so you don't want to settle for happiness.

You need joy.

Happiness bad, joy good.

Joy was like above happiness.

And so I really believed that for a long time.

God doesn't care about happiness, he's all about joy.

And you know, it's easy to play semantics in church because have you ever known someone that was incredibly joyful but really unhappy at the same time?

Have you ever had a friend and you're like, oh man, they are like the most unhappy person I've ever met, but man, do they have joy?

No.

That's insane.

Happiness and joy are not opposing forces.

Happiness and joy tend to go hand in hand.

So it really doesn't matter if we call it happiness or joy or contentment or or even just a passion for living.

Every single one of us wants to have that thing in our lives that makes our life worth living.

That makes us look forward to waking up in the morning and going about our day, that makes us that makes us look back on our day at the end of the day and go, man, that was worth it.

That was worth my time.

I'm content, I'm pleased, I'm I'm happy.

See, God wants you to be happy.

And the reason He wants you to be happy is pretty simple.

He's happy.

God is happy.

Does anyone feel slightly uncomfortable at the sound of that phrase?

It's funny, isn't it?

How we could we could have a billboard in town and we could put God is awesome.

And there might be some people that don't believe in God that would take issue with that, and that's okay.

But but people who do believe in God, for the most part, would drive by and be like, yes, God is awesome.

No one's gonna like call if we put a phone number on that and be like, how dare you say God is awesome?

If we said God is holy, they'd be like, yes, God is holy.

Absolutely, God is powerful and huge.

If we said God is real, they'd be like, heck yeah, it's time someone someone said that.

God is real.

If we said God is love, everyone would drive by that and say, Yes, God is love.

But if you put up a billboard that said God is happy, it would make a lot of people who believe in God mad.

Because there's something about that phrase, God is happy, that almost seems irreverent.

It almost seems like it makes God less God to picture God being happy.

Go back to that mental image that you had of God at the beginning of our conversation.

And how many of our mental pictures of God was he smiling?

And how many of our mental pictures of God was God happy and full of joy?

See, we we have a hard time understanding that God is happy, but God is happy.

For example, the world likes to look at God and characterize him by anger.

And there are definitely moments in the Bible where God gets angry.

Happy people are allowed to get angry from time to time.

But God isn't by no means defined by his anger.

In fact, in Numbers, chapter 14, verse 18.

Numbers 14:18

The Bible says, the Lord is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion.

This verse says, it's really hard to make God mad.

He is slow to anger, but how many people actually believe that God is slow to anger?

It's hard to make God mad.

No, most people believe that God is this like temperamental lunatic.

And you take one false step and he's angry, he's upset, but that's not what he says.

He says, Look, I'm slow to anger.

I am filled with unfailing love.

If you're filled with unfailing love, you know what a big side effect of that is?

You're in a good mood.

God is in a good mood.

Like all the time.

His normal, Nathan talked about that this morning.

His normal, God's normal is being happy.

Look at the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

God makes everything in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

He makes the earth, he makes the sky, he makes people, he makes the animals, he makes fish, he makes everything.

And every time God makes something in Genesis 1, he looks at it and he says, It is good.

And if you've read Genesis 1, for the most part, you've probably read that.

I have.

That's how I usually do, with a very somber voice for God.

Like God makes it and he goes, That is good.

Right?

He makes He makes the birds and He says, They are good.

That's how we that's how we tend to read Jesus too.

We have this sort of stained glass filter that just takes all the emotion out of it.

But we do, we we read that and we think God is just going, it is good, it is good.

But but that's not what's happening.

Read Genesis 1 and picture God smiling.

God, God makes everything and He is excited about what He's made.

He's happy with the way it turned out.

It's God making, it's God making the creatures of this world and going, they're good.

Look at that, it's so good.

It's God making the earth and going, it's good.

It's God making us people and looking at us and saying, They are good.

I am happy with the way they turned out.

He's happy.

And you know what?

You were actually created by God to be like him.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 26.

Genesis 1:26

We use this verse a lot because we forget this so often.

God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.

This is God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit hanging out, inventing us, thinking us up, saying, Hey, I got an idea.

Let's make people and let's make them to be a little different than everything else we've made.

Let's make them to look like us, to reflect us.

And so if we were made by God to look like God and God is in a good mood and God is happy, we were created by God to be happy people.

We're meant to have joy in our lives.

We're meant to be happy because God is happy.

In fact, the Bible actually describes them that way.

In 1 Timothy chapter 1, Paul, who wrote most of the second half of the Bible, he's kind of gone on this tirade about the right way to live, because there is a right way to live.

1 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

And he ends up by saying this phrase, the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious good news entrusted to me by our blessed God.

And it's interesting because the Greek word that we translate blessed in that verse can also be translated happy, and it's just as accurate.

It's blessed, like in the sense that someone walks up to you and says, How's your day going?

And maybe you go, Man, I'm so blessed.

I'm so blessed today.

I'm just having a blessed day.

It means happy.

This verse says, Our happy God.

Our God is happy.

He has joy.

He lives that way.

And he intends us to live that way, but we live in a world that makes it really hard to live that way.

So much so that we might even ask ourselves the question: is it okay for me to want to be happy?

It absolutely is.

See, God has created you for contentment, he has created you for purpose, he has created you for meaning, he's created you for a deep joy unlike anything this world can ever give you.

God has created you to have a joy in your heart that is so powerful that nothing can explain it.

He's created you to have a joy in your heart, a happiness that is so real and so lasting that no circumstance can take it away.

That no situation can rob it from you.

He's created you to have this light inside of you that shines so brightly that nothing can make it grow dim.

That is the joy and the happiness that God brings, and it's meant for you.

In fact, in Nehemiah, I'm with you four people that clapped.

I'm with you.

We can clap about that.

Sometimes people don't know.

Is it okay to interrupt?

Yeah.

My wife interrupts me all the time.

So feel free.

I'm so sorry, Megan.

Are you in the room?

I'm in trouble.

All right.

Nehemiah 8.10.

Nehemiah said this, and I'll kind of explain the context in a second.

He says, Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

The joy of the Lord is your strength.

Nehemiah was this man long time before Jesus who uh who did a pretty amazing thing.

Jerusalem, the city that was so connected to God and his heritage, had fallen into disrepair.

The Israelites had been conquered, and then the people that conquered them got conquered, and so Jerusalem had just sort of fallen off the radar a little bit.

And the result of that was that the wall in Jerusalem had collapsed.

And in those days, if you didn't have a strong wall surrounding your city, you were susceptible to attack any day.

And you were one day away from disaster if you didn't have a wall around your city.

So Nehemiah finds out that there's no wall around Jerusalem.

He lives a long way away.

He's been displaced like a lot of his people.

But but he goes, No, that can't be.

We've got to build a wall.

And so he Goes back to Jerusalem and they build a wall.

He rallies the troops and they they build a wall.

And I love the story because there's no miracle.

They don't wake up one morning and there's a wall.

They build it, they pay for it.

They work, they sweat, they put in extra hours, and they build that wall.

And when the wall is built, and now for the first time in who knows how many years, they can breathe easy because they have some security.

Nehemiah tells them that the joy of the Lord is their strength.

And it's so interesting because it would have been so easy for Nehemiah to turn around and say, That wall is your strength.

So breathe easy.

Because you've got a wall.

This external thing that we've created, this is your strength.

This is what gives you your security.

That's how we tend to think as people.

We love safety nets.

We think a big bank account or job security or economic security or our government or whatever.

We think that's all that's all the safety net.

And when we have a strong safety net, it frees us up to try some things, right?

If you have a safety net underneath you and you happen to be an acrobat, you're probably more likely to try some cool stuff.

But if there's no safety net and I'm an acrobat, I'm just holding on to that bar.

I'm not letting go.

I'm just gonna swing.

I'm just gonna swing.

There's no net underneath me.

Forget flips, forget twists.

I'm just holding on.

But Nehemiah reminds his people that this wall, it is not your safety net.

This wall is not your security, this wall is not your strength.

You were strong before the wall was there because you built the wall.

The joy of the Lord, the passion for living inside of your spirit that gave you what you needed to get this wall built.

That is your strength.

And you should never forget it.

He's telling all of us that there is a joy from God that is meant to be our strength.

It's not just some circumstantial happiness where we have a good day and things are going okay.

Chick-fil-A got our order right, traffic was alright, it was light.

Our kids are quiet or asleep.

I'm happy.

No, no, no.

He's saying, look, guys, there is a joy for you that is so intense that it is strength.

It's not often that we equate happiness and strength together, but it's how it's how it is, according to God.

Happiness is the most elusive thing in this world, but we're meant to have it.

And so we're gonna spend the next few months together pursuing happiness and pursuing it with passion, with a reckless abandon.

We're gonna be a church, a family of people saying, we are on a mission to have real lasting happiness, to have the joy of the Lord in our lives.

And it's not gonna be easy.

I waited until after you clap to say that.

Because the way we approach it is everything.

See, we need to understand this morning that we have been given permission by God to pursue happiness.

So we're gonna pursue it.

We wanna be like our happy God.

But the way we pursue it is everything.

Because the truth is, a lot of selfish, destructive things have been done in the name of someone being happy.

I mean, I've done selfish, destructive things in the name of my own happiness.

If I look back on most of my mistakes and my biggest regrets, it's a long list to look back on, but if I do, I can pretty much simplify every single decision as me trying to find happiness in an unhealthy way.

Me wanting to be happy, feeling like something was missing, and so I went after happiness in the wrong way.

But just because just because we have a tendency sometimes to pursue happiness selfishly doesn't mean it's selfish to want to pursue happiness.

Because if we can get our our natural God-given desire for happiness to line up with God's way, to line up with God's approach, that that is powerful.

If we can be people who aren't ashamed to say, yeah, I want to be happy, but I want to be happy the way God wants me to be happy, so I'm gonna pursue happiness and I'm gonna pursue it the way God instructs me to pursue it.

If we can do that, we will find the joy of the Lord.

And when you have it, nothing can take it away.

So I'm really excited about the next several weeks.

Because I'll just say this, I want to be more happy than I am right now.

I have a I have a blessed life.

I have a I have a knockout of a wife.

Like how how I married Megan makes no sense.

If I could go back and show my 15-year-old self a picture of my wife, he'd be like, yes! Sweet! All right, it's gonna be okay.

I have these three amazing children.

I get to be part of this church.

You guys are incredible.

I mean, here it is, it's it's it's August, so everyone's back from our summer pursuits, and the parking lot is like jam-packed, so thanks for enduring that.

And I love that we're a part of a church where something's happening.

So it is busy and it's good.

I love this church.

I love my family, I love my kids, I love my friends, I love this world that I'm in.

But if I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm not nearly as happy as I should be.

I'm not nearly as happy as I want to be.

And I believe that there is a joy for me, and I believe it's the same for you.

There's a joy that I've yet to fully grab hold of in my life.

And it's the joy of the Lord.

So I'm really looking forward to being happier, to have real lasting happiness, the most elusive thing in the world in my life, and that's what I want for all of us.

So, today, as we kick this off, please understand you have permission to be happy.

God has given you permission to pursue it.

So just be in your heart dedicated to the pursuit of happiness.

And then let's be together for the next several weeks to pursue it the way that God tells us will actually work.

We're gonna wrap up with one more song, like we always do.

And this song is all about God being joy.

And so it's a chance for us to celebrate that.

I think it's the perfect way to kick today off or wrap today up or whatever you want to call it, because there's a lot of the day left.

I encourage you to hang out in here for the next three, four minutes as we sing and worship and celebrate a God who is happy and a God who desires his children to be happy.

Pray with me.

Jesus, we uh we are so glad that you are joy.

And Lord God, I think about that, I think about that statue in front of our building.

And I think about the joy on the face of the Jesus in that statue, the way that children run up to that statue and wrap their arms around it.

And that's exactly what you were like when you were on this earth.

Children loved you, they ran up to you, they hugged you.

Because you, Jesus, are happy.

And Lord, you know, forgive us because sometimes we we get in our own way, we struggle to find happiness.

Sometimes when we're really devoted to you, we we almost think we should sacrifice happiness.

But that's not what you want.

You want us to be light in a dark world, and we can't be light without joy.

So fill us with joy.

Let us walk out of here excited that we've been given permission by our God to pursue happiness with reckless abandon.

Help us come together week in and week out, pursuing that together, Lord, unified by our love for you and your love for us more than anything else.

And we just love you so much, Jesus, and we ask all this in your name.

Amen.