Redefining Happiness

Does happiness, like a butterfly, almost flutter within reach but just when you think you have grasped it… it’s gone?

Do you feel trapped in a dead-end marriage or a dead-end job? Perhaps life seems to be a never-ending drudgery of the same, sad routine.

Or perhaps you feel your marriage is okay, and your job is acceptable. Yet you feel as though something’s missing.

It’s easy to forget that life is supposed to be hard. God wired the world this way. Even Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble [italics mine].” Life is meant to be difficult. For some, it is downright crushing and they’ve convinced themselves that unhappiness is here to stay. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Perhaps the answer is not to get rid of unhappiness but to find a new definition for it.

Elisabeth Elliot has suggested that we redefine happiness as duty and honor, sacrifice and faithfulness, commitment and service. The feeling of happiness is fleeting and elusive, but joy is an overflow of the perseverance and hope that comes from demonstrating faithful sacrifice and committed service. And when our sacrifice and service is focused on Jesus Christ, we will truly be overcomers. For as Jesus concluded in John 16:33, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

How would you redefine happiness in your life?

How can you better persevere in your sacrifice and service?

How much do you value honor, duty, and courage?

The world says, “What can’t be cured must be endured.” Christians say, “What can’t be cured can be enjoyed.”

©marekuliasz

Choose gratitude...because it is the only fitting response to a good and gracious God who has delivered us from our guilt.… To a significant degree, your emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual well being, as well as the health and stability of your relationships with others, will be determined by your gratitude quotient. Cultivating a thankful heart is a safeguard against becoming bitter, prickly, and sour. A grateful child of God can’t help but be a joyful, peaceful, radiant person

—Nancy Leigh DeMoss

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