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 God Wants You to Be Happy By Carmen Seibold
Sound familiar? Most of us can remember making the same complaint when we were children. We adultsin different guises, of courseoperate with similar ideas about happiness. Consider how many times we equate happiness with having more opportunities and more freedoms and our tendency to define unhappiness in terms of what limits or restrains us. My sisterd be much happier if she didnt have to work weekends. Id love to go on that cruise, but my husband wont hear of it. Management should let us do thatmorales pretty bad right now. He wouldnt look so happy if he had my responsibilities. I used to be happybefore I got sick. Given our frequent chafing against restrictions, probably the last thing wed look for in our search for happiness is for more restrictions. So I may surprise you by suggesting that the Ten Commandments are Gods rules for our happiness. To ensure our happiness Gods law? you might ask in disbelief. Isnt that exactly the kind of thing were trying to break free from? God couldnt possibly want us to enjoy life. Look at all those thou shalt nots that He came up with to keep us in handto keep us from doing what we really want to do and from being whom we really want to be. As unlikely as it may seem at first, however, God did give us the Ten Commandments to ensure our happiness. Real happiness. The kind that doesnt fluctuate with the stock market or your latest date. Think about it: we usually try to extract happiness from people, things, and experiences. But while people, things, and experiences can add to life, they cannot make us into happy people. Gods law points us the other way. It urges us to look inward, to focus on becoming the kind of people we should be. But you may still be wondering how Gods Ten Commandments can be rules for happiness when we dont usually like living by rules. Are we not the best judges of what we need? Dont Gods laws forbid the very things that would make us happy? Maybe the problem is that weve seen too many petty and even cruel people establish arbitrary rules just to flex their power. But neither God nor His rules are arbitrary. The Bible assures us that the God who created us is loving. And because He made us, He is the infallible source of the manufacturers directions for our optimal functioning. No one knows better what will make us happy or unhappy. And no one desires our happiness more than God does. When my husband and I need help with our computer, we follow the manufacturers operating instructions. Wed be foolish to assume that the maker wants their product to fail. Yet we human beings are willing to risk our happiness by ignoring our Makers recommendations and warnings. Its true that we dont like being told what to do and what not do. We yearn to be unfettered. And the Ten Commandments seem to restrict our personal freedom. However, Gods laws dont actually take away our liberty. It was God Himself who granted us freedom of choice. He did so because He wanted our response to Him and His love to be sincere. So we are free in the deepest sensefree to reject Gods commands, and free even to reject God Himself. However, free as we are, we dont have unlimited freedom. Its not because God wants to hold us back from happiness. We are limited simply because of the kind of creatures we are. We need air, for example. We can choose to do without it, but that choice will kill us. Similarly, we cant lie, steal, or kill without destroying something within ourselves. And these actions destroy something in the lives of others as well. So, in restricting us, Gods laws clarify how we can use our freedom to make choices that will result in our own happiness and protect the happiness of others. His laws provide us with just the right amount of freedom. We shouldnt fear, then, that Gods laws might diminish our happiness by keeping us from what we most want to be and do. Our great potential God has created us with the ability to accomplish great things. To understand our potential, we have to go back to our creation. Scripture emphasizes that God created us in His image. Its not exactly clear in what way we bear Gods image, but we know that at least in some way God made us to resemble His divine characteristicsHis love, wisdom, justice, righteousness, compassion, and faithfulness. When sin entered this world, that image of God in us weakenedand sometimes may seem to have practically disappeared. Yet when we accept Gods offer of salvation, He begins to restore His image in us. And He calls us to imitate Him. What can serve as our pattern? There is something else that bears the divine imprint: the law that God wrote. We can glimpse His glorious character there. And it will guide us into all that He wants us to be. Once we know Gods intentions for us, our previous dreams seem paltry indeed. We can be happy because the possibilities before us have been expanded by Gods vision for us and not limited to our own restricted views. Gods laws fit us and our potential. But, you may protest, arent we living under grace rather than under the law? Absolutely! We can live happy lives now and have hope for an even happier future because of grace. The word grace is shorthand for Gods indescribable generosity and love for us. He knows our weaknesses. He knows that His law describes the ideal that not one of us has reached. Grace means that God doesnt count against us those times when our journey toward Him is crooked and slow. But please be very clear about this: Grace hasnt done away with the law. If there were no law, thered be nothing for grace to mitigate. All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God, said Paul. Be very clear about this also: God saves us out of His goodness, and not because through keeping the law weve earned salvation. The law serves as a map for our journey, but it isnt in charge of the trip; grace is. All that the law can do is tell us where we are and what direction and distance we have to go to reach our divine destination. God, fortunately, doesnt value us by where we are on our trip. He promises to look at us through the lens of grace. People covered by Gods grace have every reason to be happy. Gods grace overarches His law. Gods Ten Commandments truly are His ten rules for our happiness. They help us get along with Him, with each other, and with ourselves, so that we can be at peace. And a person at peace with God, with Gods other children, and with himself or herself possesses true happiness. Notice what those commandments tell us to do and not do, and try to imagine how wonderful this world would be if everyone followed them. Then let that wonderful world begin with you and me. Does this make sense to you? Carmen Seibold writes from Worthington, Ohio. |
        
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