Would you like to be happy?
So would most people—but for the majority, happiness is proving to be more of an elusive dream than an attainable reality. The Harris Poll found that in 2017 only one out of every three Americans was truly happy, while the World Happiness Report for that year pegged the United States as the 14th happiest country in the world.
The 14th happiest country in the world, and two-thirds of its citizens are unhappy.
Those aren’t exactly encouraging numbers—especially when you consider that the United States was founded on the belief that “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” are three immutable, God-given rights that governments are honor-bound to protect and foster.
For almost two and half centuries now, the American people have been pursuing happiness—and in spite of living in a land of incredible opportunities with an enviable economy and a historically unusual amount of freedom, Americans are often riddled with stress, anxiety and depression. Happiness, not so much.
Why? What are we missing? Why is happiness so hard to find?
Here’s the problem:
Happiness is the wrong target.
It sounds counterintuitive. Why on earth wouldn’t we want to pursue happiness? After all, Paul listed joy as a component of the fruit of the Spirit. Joy is part of what it means to be a follower of God. It’s something all Christians should have in their lives.
That’s true, as far as it goes. But joy is a lot like love—it’s a word we can use a lot without always understanding what it really means. Joy is an important part of the fruit of the Spirit, but it isn’t necessarily tied to what most people would call “being happy.”
When we make happiness our goal, we often couch it within conditions. “I’ll be happy when … ” or “I’ll be happy if … ” In this framework, our happiness depends on the state of our life—if the conditions change, our happiness can change along with them. That makes happiness a transient, fleeting thing—having it today is no guarantee of having it tomorrow, and vice versa.
That’s not how godly joy works. When the New Testament talks about joy, it’s rarely in the context of a situation where everything is going well. James opened his letter to the Church by saying, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (James 1:2). Peter talked about rejoicing “with joy inexpressible” (1 Peter 1:8) despite being “grieved by various trials” (verse 6). Paul told the Corinthians, “I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation” (2 Corinthians 7:4). And when the early disciples were threatened and beaten for spreading Christ’s gospel message, the Bible shows them “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name” (Acts 5:41).
These are not situations where most people would normally expect to find happiness. And there is the primary difference between joy and happiness—while happiness tends to exist because of our circumstances, joy often exists in spite of our circumstances. Happiness is a response to the moment; joy is a way of looking at the world that sees beyond the present moment. There’s nothing wrong with happiness, but what a Christian really needs—what we really need—is joy.
Like true, godly love (and like every trait we’ll be covering during the rest of this Journey), joy isn’t something we can conjure up on our own. It’s produced by the Spirit, not our human nature—which means the secret to lasting joy rests with God. If we’re looking to find it deep within ourselves, we’ll come up short every time.
The secret to joy is perspective. The reason the New Testament writers could talk about joy in the middle of severe trials was because their focus was somewhere else.
Let’s look a little deeper at what they wrote and see if we can figure out where their attention was focused.
James wrote, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:2-4).
Trials hurt. They stretch us to our limits and wear us down. It’s hard to be happy when we’re struggling to keep our head above the water.
But the book of James doesn’t tell us to be happy. It tells us to have joy.
Why?
Because the trial we’re experiencing is a tool God is using to perfect us, sanding off our rough edges and filling in what’s missing. It’s there to refine us, to help us overcome our own weaknesses and shortcomings. And that’s a reason for our rejoicing. The various trials we fall into have purpose and meaning, and each one is bringing us closer to becoming the child of God we were called to be.
Peter’s encouragement followed a similar line of reasoning: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).
Yes, trials can grieve us. Yes, they can cause us pain and discomfort and even, sometimes, agony. Joy looks past all that, because joy understands the purpose and sees the finish line. Trials are the flames used to refine gold. Trials shape our faith into something that will bring praise, honor and glory at the return of Jesus Christ.
It doesn’t mean we stop hurting. It doesn’t mean we pretend like everything is fine when it isn’t. But knowing there’s a purpose behind it all can help us to rejoice when life looks bleak. When we understand that God is preparing us for His Kingdom, we can learn to look at trials as the stepping-stones leading us there.
Paul was not a stranger to trials, but he wasn’t a stranger to joy, either. “I am filled with comfort,” he told the Corinthians. “I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation. For indeed, when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were troubled on every side. Outside were conflicts, inside were fears” (2 Corinthians 7:4-5).
Things weren’t looking good, but that’s not where Paul’s focus was. Paul was focused on the work God was doing: “Nevertheless God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was comforted in you, when he told us of your earnest desire, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more” (verses 6-7).
Paul saw God actively building His Church. He saw the developing faith and zeal of God’s people, and that was a source of joy for him.
Paul told the Corinthians that he’d been “in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:26-28).
In spite of all that, he had joy. Joy because of what God was doing. Joy that he had the privilege of being part of it all. Joy that he and all of God’s people were moving steadily toward the Kingdom.
Joy doesn’t just happen. It takes effort and practice to train ourselves to have a positive outlook in the middle of life’s storms. But once we have that perspective, we can weather the worst of those storms with joy, secure in the knowledge that something magnificent is coming and that God has chosen us to be part of it.
Before His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples, “A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (John 16:21-22).
There’s nothing wrong with happiness. God wants us to have happiness in our lives—but it’s the wrong focus. Happiness is impermanent and transitory—joy isn’t. Happiness depends on what’s happening in our lives—joy doesn’t. When we make joy our goal, we make the choice to use God’s Spirit to see beyond our present unhappiness and focus on the purpose of the trials in our lives—to refine us for God’s Kingdom.
In the middle of a difficult trial, one psalmist called God “my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4). He understood an important lesson—the closer we are to God and His Spirit, the better-equipped we are to maintain a sense of joy regardless of what we’re facing. When we look to God as the source of our joy, we look toward a time and a place where the trials of this life will be nothing more than a distant memory.
If we want to find a joy that no one can take from us, we’ll only find it here, in the fruit of the Spirit.
