On my way to heaven, I stumbled upon this truth…stop looking for happiness; just live it. Happiness hunters will never find it. Happiness is not the elusive unicorn or the El Dorado treasure waiting to be found. A life spent looking for happiness will invariably be a life spent in a futile, frustrating and vacant search because happiness comes from within and you cannot find something that has already been found long before you even decided to look for it. This may sound too corny or blasé for you. And you may even have heard this “happiness is inside of you” tune played in your head too often and too much. But most truth is “old fashion” and such old tunes never die. And the old tune that “happiness resides in your heart” is an evergreen classic that sounds better each time you hear it.
Here are just three scriptures that sing of this timeless melody. Psalm 4:7, “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound.” Psalm 97:11-12, “Light is shed upon the righteous and joy on the upright in our heart. Rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous and praise his holy name.” Lastly, Psalm 33.21, “In him our heart rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.”
If we treat happiness as a goal to be attained, then the effort expended by us to achieve that goal would be a very unhappy event for us. Put it in another way, the journey becomes a chore or a toil before the destination is reached. For example, we slog and labor for the month-end pay only to find out that the joy attained quickly dissipates because we have to slog and labor for another month and the dreaded cycle goes on and on. We feel this way because we view our job as a job and nothing more. Of course, some jobs are truly mentally bland and physically exhausting. It is therefore difficult to derive any physical satisfaction from it. Try telling a cleaner that she should enjoy her job. Or try telling a clerk that he should do the jig at work. Enjoying such work normally goes against one’s worldly nature.
But we, as Christians, do not go with the flow of the world. To the world, we are heretic, isolates or outcasts. Conforming to the worlds’ standard will only make us unhappy in the long run because the worldly definition of happiness runs counter to Jesus’ teachings at the Mount (Mathew 5:3-12). To the world, the sermon at the Mount carries one of the most negative messages in the bible – not to mention the glaring contradictions. How can the poor in spirit, the ones who mourn and those who are persecuted be called blessed? By the world’s standard, they should be called “loser”, “cry baby” and “weakling”.
The world will be hard pressed to make sense of how one can attain joy and gladness in the face of men reviling you, persecuting you and uttering all kinds of evil against you. Yet, Jesus makes it his point to tell the small, attentive audience that morning that true blessing, rejoicing and gladness only come to those who are humble, contrite, broken, thirsty for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart and faithful under persecution.
The world can only scratch its head in confusion and resignation from such a perverse logic that makes utterly no sense to them, whatsoever. The poor in spirit will be condemned by the world. Humility has never been a prerequisite for the making of a tycoon or a billionaire. The lexicon of the world has no room for people of meek and mournful backgrounds. Neither does it have room for the merciful. Showing mercy only hampers one’s effectiveness in cutting costs and exercising corporate downsizing. Needless to say, standing still while others spit at you, revile you and persecute you is a sure fire way of losing your respect, your integrity and your job.
So, Jesus is our “heretic” leader. He is the champion of a counter-cultural revolution. He is our against-the-grain trailblazer.
Earlier I said that happiness comes from your heart and this squares with the nine blessings listed out in the sermon of the mount. If you read through all of the blessings, you will realize that none of them talked about riches, fame and power. I thank God that Jesus did not preach, “Blessed are the rich in local currency, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Neither did Jesus teach, “Blessed are those whose names are well known and famous, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Indeed happiness comes from within and your search for more money, more fame and more power will only lead to more worries, more temptations and more corruption. A wise man once said, “if a man who has just moved into a luxury apartment on the hundredth floor of a brand new building is deeply unhappy, the only thing he’ll look for is a window to jump out of it.”
Most of us spent half of our lives battling with meaninglessness and disappointment that comes with material success. This is because we mistake true happiness for material or sensory pleasure. The latter is only skin deep.
Outward focus on happiness is insatiable because our appetite grows larger as we own more and more of material possessions, crave more and more for fame and hunger more and more for power. It is instructive to note that as we gather more of material success, we have less room for spiritual success.
Put it in another way, our spirit shrinks as we grow richer in earthy things. Alternatively, our spirit becomes burdened and cluttered as we pile up in our storehouse things of this world while losing all focus on things eternal. Left unchecked and unguarded, we will soon allow greed, blind ambition and pride to take charge of our lives, even without knowing it. We then become a prisoner of our own desires and suffer the consequences of a life driven by meaninglessness and quiet desperation. A worthy quote expresses the same sentiment, “Those who seek happiness in pleasure, wealth, glory, power and heroics are as naïve as a child who tries to catch a rainbow and wears it as a coat.”
In this sometimes harrowing life journey, it is spiritually refreshing to remind ourselves the most important lesson on wealth: Own nothing, have everything. We are called to be rich towards God. We are called to be stewards and not owners. We are called to stand ready to surrender all and not horde anything. Lastly, we are called to travel light and not be burdened by the cares of this world. The divine paradox that Jesus delivered in the sermon of the Mount is this - you own nothing but you gain everything.
A spirit that is fully dedicated to God counts nothing as his. He may be blessed with earthly riches but losing them all will trouble him least. His heart is eternity-focused and he fully understands that his wealth and blessings are but temporary and instrumental to his living a life pleasing to God and not an end in itself. He knows deep inside that his riches are in God and such riches cannot be robbed or pillaged. His financial security is in God even in times of financial hardship because in God, he has everything he needs and that is all that matters. Such mindset has to be conscientiously cultivated. The first and all important step in this direction is to gradually starve our desires or ego and to feed our spirit. When we make room for God in our spirit, our desires of this world will indeed grow “strangely dim”.
In his book, when the game is over, it all goes back in the box, pastor John Ortberg gave us a glimpse of what true richness is in God.
“Being rich toward God means growing a soul that is increasingly healthy and good.
Being rich toward God means loving and enjoying the people around you.
Being rich toward God means learning about your gifts and passions and doing good work to help improve the world.
Being rich toward God means becoming generous with your stuff.
Being rich toward God means making that which is temporary become servant of that which is eternal.
Being rich toward God means savoring every roll of the dice and every trip around the board (life seen as a game).”
When we are rich in God, our happiness is complete. We truly lack nothing because we are at peace with ourselves. We no longer feel the urge to compete for attention, strive for a larger house, compare our material wealth with others, envy our neighbor’s car or struggle to outperform our colleagues.
You can easily spot a person who is inherently happy. Basically, three traits stand out in their life. They are contented with their current station in life. This means that they are able to live joyfully with what they have. They do not experience an inner strife to outbid, outdo and outwit their neighbor, colleagues or friends. They are what I would call “wealthy beggars”. They are well secured in the knowledge of where their true riches lie and they see themselves as trustees of what they have and not owners. They are able to proclaim what Paul had in 2 Corinthians 6:10 proclaimed, “People think we are sad although we’re always glad, that we’re beggars although we make many people spiritually rich, that we have nothing although we possess everything.”
Secondly, they are always thankful with what they already have. If we are unable to enjoy what we have, our heart will always be a bottomless pit - empty, dark and hollow. Ever try filling water into a bucket without a base. The water will fall through even before the next scoop. Gaining the world and all its riches will still leave such a heart vacant and void.
However, a heart of gratitude takes nothing for granted. It takes the time to build existing relationships. It does not count it a chore to communicate more deeply with loved ones. It savors long walks, celebrates special occasions and rejoices in simple family gatherings; activities that money cannot buy and time cannot redeem. In the end, a heart of thanksgiving fills a life to the brim with untold joy and the fondest of memories.
Lastly, they give their best in everything they do regardless of the nature of their job. In other words, they engage fully and purposefully in their work. They do not just make a living out of it, they make a difference. They see their work as an opportunity to impact and transform lives. They envision their workplace as a harvest field for reaping, and not a minefield to be avoided. So, their joy at work is not derived from what they are doing, but from the lives they are impacting for God. Such is the happiness of a life that is rich towards God.
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