A Prescription for Happiness

Are you a person who needs, or was prescribed to take medicine in order to make you happy? Do I believe that medicine is always wrong? No. But do I believe that the prescription the Bible gives will fill you with a joy that is unfading and lasts forever? Yes. There is a joy that is not dependent upon medicine. There is a joy that has an objective focus that springs from real knowledge. Follow me down a path I walked this morning...

(Proverbs 17:22) A merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. Do you feel at times that you have no strength in your bones? You feel dry and unable to find happiness anywhere? Is your spirit broken, and does it need mending? Because a merry heart does good. It does good like medicine. A merry heart will function for you like medicine, if you will let it.

(Ecclesiastes 7:9) Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; For (this is the reason) God has already accepted your works. Really? God has accepted and approved of the works that I do? Does he accept each persons works who may be reading this? Christian or non-Christian?

Peter said (Acts 10:34b-35) that God shown no partiality. But in every nation, whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him. Do you do that? Do you do righteousness? Meaning, do you do what the Bible affirms as righteousness? Do you walk in the fear of God?

Well if you are like me, you are saying to yourself; "I really don't do that perfectly, how well do I have to work righteousness and fear God?"

(Ephesians 1:3-6) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

God accepted us in the Beloved! Jesus is the Beloved! God sees the righteous lived life, and the God fearing life of Jesus, as your life. Do you understand that? The perfectly righteous life God requires of you was already lived for you. It was lived some 2000 years ago. The life you have lived, one of unrighteousness and walking in the fear of man; deserved wrath, punishment and dry, parched and unhappy bones. This punishment you deserved was taken for you some 2000 years ago. You were nailed with Jesus on the cross, so now it is no longer you who live, but Christ in you.

Let this truth sink deep down into your soul. The truth of knowing that you are already accepted by God because of what Jesus did. It will produce a joy that is everlasting, unfading, and is reserved in greater measure for you in heaven.