What Makes Man Happy?

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God has moved within me!  Because of that movement in recent moments, I have received great clarity on the idea of happiness.

The question that heads this essay is one that might have a thousand different answers from a thousand different men.  However, because I am a man who has experience in many different states of life, and because I know that there is one Ultimate Happines, I know that I am "qualified" to answer such a perplexing question.  In fact, the question becomes quite an easy one because of the various perspectives from which I have seen, endured, and lived this human life.

The first Psalm of David says:

"Blessed [sometimes translated 'happy'] is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night" (vv. 1-2).

I certainly am a man who has walked in the counsel of the wicked; I have stood in, and even danced, in the way of sinners.  I spent many nights trying to find happiness in such sensuality.  After all of that searching, only one thing is clear: the wickedness in which I wallowed was only an erroneous happiness.

In recent years, that erroneous happiness has been replaced by a true blessedness, one that brings more peace, joy, and fulfillment than I have ever known.  I find more pleasure in being a Christian, husband, father, and minister than in seeking base sensual pleasures.  To use a modern (or not-so-modern) example, I would rather sit with my son's head resting on my shoulder, and know that my wife is cared for and content, than seek my next drink.

Indeed, the counsel of the wicked and the way of sinners would have me seek over-indulgince in alcohol, misguided sexual pleasures, gluttony, and, impatience among other things.  Yet those things seem grotesue and unfulfilling anymore.  True happiness, rather, comes from the latter portion of the Psalm quoted above: seeking, knowing, and doing the law of the Lord day and night, even when opportunities to do the opposite arise.

God has blessed me with a plethora of opportunities to seek, know, and do His will.  Those opportunities, then, are where this man, and humanity as a whole, will find infinite happiness.  There exists nothing as pleasurable as casting off those things that the world and the Enemy advertise as the means to happiness.  It is, without a doubt, one of the great paradoxes that a person can learn when He knows Truth: greater happiness, true happiness, is found in denial of selfish pleasures; in making a gift of self to another of the Creator's creations.

I pray that the Holy Spirit will impregnate this world with true happiness and peace.  And, I pray that all men will learn to dwell in that happiness and peace for all the days of their lives.

God bless!

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