How Does Seeing God Accurately Promote Lasting Happiness?

How does seeing God accurately promote lasting happiness?

Oh, the joys of those who trust the LORD, who have no confidence in the proud or in those who worship idols.

Psalm 40:4, NLT

[We] must fight fire with fire. The fire of lust’s pleasures must be fought with the fire of God’s pleasures. . . . We must fight it with a massive promise of superior happiness. We must swallow up the little flicker of lust’s pleasure in the conflagration of holy satisfaction. JOHN PIPER

YOUSSUF ISHMAELO (1857-1898), the “Terrible Turk,” was an international wrestling phenomenon in the 1890s, known for demolishing his opponents. A suspicious man, he demanded his winnings in gold and strapped them into his belt, which he never removed. Then, while he was heading home from a victory in America, his ship sank.

Survivors remember Ishmaelo acting “like a wild beast.” With a dagger in hand, he forced his way through the frightened crowds who were waiting to board the lifeboats. He came to a fully loaded boat that was already being lowered. Ignoring the shouts of the crew, he jumped into it. His significant weight, together with the force of his leap, overturned the boat, and all its occupants were thrown into the sea. Ishmaelo, though a good swimmer, was dragged down under the weight of his $10,000 gold belt.^a

Contrast Youssuf with Stanley Tam, who used wealth not as an idol but as a tool to worship God.

As a young door-to-door salesman, Tam met a farmer’s wife who told him about Jesus. He soon placed his faith in Christ. With twenty-five dollars in his pocket, plus twelve dollars added by his father, he launched the United States Plastic Corp. Tam later sensed that God wanted to run the business with Tam as his employee. So he legally made God the majority owner of the business, gifting 51 percent of the company’s stock to a nonprofit.

As the business prospered, Tam used all his profits to spread the gospel. His salary was a small fraction of what CEOs typically earn. He was careful not to rob God’s glory and continually sought to give more to missions, ultimately contributing more than $140 million.

Tam was inspired to give through Jesus’ story of the merchant who sold everything to purchase a pearl of great value (see Matthew 13:45-46). Like the man in Christ’s story, Tam joyfully placed 100 percent ownership of United States Plastic Corp. into a foundation that established churches in developing countries.

He guarded himself against idolatry by giving God prominence in his life. As I write this, Stanley Tam is a hundred-year-old man who has lived a happy life and is anticipating the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”^b

We choose where to place our affections—either on God or on God substitutes. Joshua called on the Israelites to follow God intentionally: “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15, NKJV). People will not turn from idols to the true God unless they know how great and satisfying God is and what destruction and misery idols bring.

Tim Keller states, “Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry.”^c

We worship whatever we believe will ultimately make us happy. But it’s possible to worship the God of the Bible while believing things about him that aren’t true. So we worship a false object in a way that makes even what we call “God” into an idol.

It’s common to hear people say, “I like to think of God not as my judge but as my papa,” or “I like to think of Jesus as my friend, not my master.” But he’s all the things Scripture reveals him to be, all the time, including Judge, Father, Friend, and Master. His attributes aren’t a smorgasbord for finicky Christians to choose what they want and leave the rest untouched.

If we take one attribute of God—his love, for instance—and divorce it from his other attributes, including his holiness, we end up worshiping our own distorted concept of love instead of the true God. He is indeed love, but love as he defines it, not as we do. And he has many other qualities as well. We’re to worship the God of love and holiness, grace and truth, justice and compassion, wrath and happiness.

Jesus is not only the Lamb of God or the Good Shepherd. He’s those and much more. The gentle, compassionate Jesus is also the Jesus who drove the merchant-thieves from the Temple and spoke condemnation against self-righteous religious leaders. Were Jesus as meek and mild as many think, he never would have been crucified. But his less popular qualities so outraged people that they nailed him to a cross.

We should believe all that Scripture says about God—the parts that make sense to our finite, little minds and those that don’t. Only then can we avoid idolatrous thoughts about him.

A life characterized by an eternal perspective focuses on long-term happiness. In saying no to idolatrous pleasures and false perceptions of God and in saying yes to the pleasures of God—present and future—we choose what is for both his glory and our good.

Lord, help us to love and serve you with all that we are. Keep our hearts free from idols and false ideas about you. Help us not to settle for counterfeit substitutes but yearn for more and more of you. We need—and want—to exalt you as our one and only God.