Good evening. Are you happy? Amen. We're going to talk tonight just for a few minutes about happiness and holiness.
If you have your Bibles and want to open to Matthew, chapter 10, verse 39, that's where we will start tonight. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. When it comes to holiness and happiness, we as Christians must lead the way. A deficiency, if we find ourselves with a deficiency in holiness or a deficiency in happiness, it points to a separation from God.
And people in the world do not automatically realize that they're desperate need for holiness. But we all have this realization of our need for happy. It's instinctively in us. So happiness is, and we've said this throughout the series, happiness is the bridge between us and leading people to Christ.
Nobody's going to come to the Lord because of an unhappy Christian. Amen. And our message is to seek holiness, but at the expense of happiness. Or when we seek happiness at the expense of holiness, we lose both the joy of being holy and we lose the happiness that is birthed by obedience.
And God commands holiness, knowing that when we follow his plan, we will be what? Happy. One follows the other. He also commands happiness, which makes obeying him not just a duty, but a pleasure.
It's a pleasure to serve the Lord. It's a pleasure to obey him. One of the greatest ways that we can experience happiness and holiness is through self-forgetfulness. How many of you know who George Washington Carver is?
You all know that. He was born in 1864. He was born into slavery on a Missouri plantation. And when he was an infant, he and his mother were kidnapped from that plantation.
He was later returned to that plantation, but his mother was never heard from again. When Carver was ten years old, he went to Kansas and he put himself through high school. Then in 1891, he entered a school that is now Iowa State University and he became its first black student. And after graduating in 1894 with his bachelor's degree and two years later a master's degree, he became the first black professor at that university.
Carver became internationally known for what? Peanuts. We all know what he was famous for. How many of you like peanut butter?
You can thank George Washington Carver. I love peanut butter. Carver became internationally known as a botanist, an educator, an agricultural researcher. He was famous not just for innovative ways to use peanuts, but also soybeans and sweet potatoes.
And he was also, I did not know this, an accomplished musician and artist. Carver wrote this statement to a friend who was battling racism. And I wanted to read this to you tonight because I think it's so important and goes right along with what we're talking about tonight. Keep your hand in that of the master.
Walk daily by his side so that you may lead others into the realms of true happiness, where a religion of hate, which poisons both body and soul, will be unknown. On Carver's tombstone, which is at the Tuskegee Institute, it reads a life that stood out as a gospel of self-forgetting service. He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world. That's something for us to emulate, isn't it?
I think all of us can think of a time when we have been self-preoccupied, when the big me, myself, and I has been number one in our thoughts and motives. I know I have, have you? Hello? Hello?
I think we all have. It's human nature in us, and it is at the time we are paying the most attention to ourselves that we are the unhappiest. Have you found that in your life? When we take ourselves so very seriously, when every sentence starts with I and my, truly happy people are not obsessed with themselves.
So how do we lose ourselves and find ourselves in God and in service to others? First of all, we need to test our thoughts. How often do we think about Christ and his grace? How often do we just meditate on the Word of God that changes our hearts and changes our minds?
How often are our thoughts focusing on how to serve others? Being happy is all about losing our self-obsession and replacing it with an obsession for God and others. As I was driving into work this morning, I had a really kind of unique God experience, and I just felt like the Lord gave it to me this morning because of tonight. It was so applicable.
And I have to admit, there are times that my thoughts can be pretty preoccupied with things in my little world and things that relate directly to me and my loved ones. And this morning, as I was driving along and praying on my way to work, as I usually do, praying for the usual things, praying for my family, praying for needs that are close to my heart, praying for the little situations in my little tight life. God just started opening up my mind and my spirit and my eyes to needs around me. All of a sudden, it came through like a flood of awareness.
I saw a man walking down the street who only had one hand. But I'm not heart hearted. I would typically think, oh, that's kind of sad. But my thought immediately went to what is his life like?
What challenges does he face every day? And my heart was moved to pray for him. I saw all of a sudden, lots of people that I know are seriously ill. Some that I just know of and some that I don't know that well just started flooding in.
And I was just prompted to pray for people today that are in desperate situations. I saw this mailman. He was trudging along the street. Now, how many of you see mailman all the time?
Every day. They walk along all of our streets. Each sack of mail he was carrying, he looked so hot and so uncomfortable. And it's just like the Lord shone a spotlight on him and his need to my eyes and my heart this morning to pray for him.
There was an ambulance that went screaming by. There was a homeless man holding a sign. There were kids out going just playing. And I was thinking about their starting school this week.
And all of a sudden, it was just like the Lord opened up the world around me and the needs around me with this lost and hurting world. And God by his Holy Spirit was giving me this self-awareness of the people and the needs that I pass by every single day with an appalling lack of awareness. He replaced the selfish and the mundane and the routine with a look into the lives of other people. Have you ever had something like that happen?
One of the symptoms of selfish thought and inward living can be depression. And it's a deep desolation of our hearts. And we are capable of fearing as human beings that we will never be happy again, never be truly happy. Even those in the family of God can experience this.
And the cure, the cure is owning the knowledge that God's grace is sufficient. Amen? That he promised to never forsake us that his presence will sustain us. And before you write this word off about depression as being unrealistic or kind of pie in the sky or I'm not looking at it in a real world way, yes, God can use Christ-centered counseling and therapy.
And yes, God can use medication at times to be beneficial. So I'm not writing those things off at all or being simplistic about it. I can personally empathize tonight with someone suffering through depression. I went through a two-year period about 30 years ago where I was in a deep, dark depression and very self-destructive in my thoughts.
I was a Christian. I was in ministry. I was involved in working in the church. My life looked very pretty on the outside, but I was drowning on the inside.
Nevertheless, or depression is very real, but I'll tell you what, the grace of God, but for the grace of God, I would still be in that place today. Nonetheless, I think some, certainly not all, but some long-term unhappiness is the product of unbelief and wrong belief and wrong inward thinking. We must allow the Holy Spirit to change our beliefs, to change our thought habits, in light of God's word. That fixes everything, amen?
Happiness is not the exclusive and ultimate goal that we have in life by any means, but it is certainly a welcome outcome to not be in that state of dark, deep depression, to be unhappy. How many of you have ever been very unhappy? Which would you prefer? Happiness or that deep, dark place?
The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 4, 4 through 7, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Rejoice in the Lord may seem unrealistic at times, but we have to remember that our rejoicing is not based in our life circumstances. Our rejoicing is based in the reality of Christ.
Amen. James 1, 2, tells us to count it all joy when we face hardship. Instead of saying, like we might say, my circumstances don't matter, they're not the source of my joy. Maybe we should be saying instead, God is in me.
God is with me. He can use my worst circumstance to produce Christ's likeness in me. Amen? I think sometimes I was thinking today of Johnny Eric's and Tata, and it is because of the worst circumstance in her life that she came to know Christ.
It was through her worst circumstance that made her a household word. That's why we all know her. If she had made that dive that day back in the early 1970s, and she had made a smooth dive and had not broken her neck, you know what? Johnny Eric's and Tata would not be a person that we'd ever heard of.
Dave Reaver, he had never sustained the horrible life-threatening injuries that he did in the military. He would probably have just come home to a mediocre life like so many of our Vietnam vets did. Nobody would know who Dave Reaver is. Cory Tinboom.
If she and her family had escaped Nazi persecution, the worst circumstance of their life, she would probably have never been heard of or had any influence like she does in so many of our lives today. Her books have changed my thinking. Her books have blessed my life. How about yours?
If it hadn't been for the worst circumstances in her life, we would have never heard of Cory Tinboom. Scripture calls us to actively cultivate the habit of happiness by rejoicing, by praying, and by giving thanks. That's right. Do we continually allow our eyes to be open and look past ourselves at the world around us, even in life's worst circumstances?
Do we regularly look for reasons to thank Him? Do we continually allow the gospel to startle and amaze us? We need to ask God for a renewed sense of the suffering of Christ and His abundant, unending love for us. We need to continue to be amazed by that.
We need to contemplate Christ and meditate on His Word and lose ourselves in His love, in His mercy, in the joy He gives us, in His grace. That is where we find real happiness. It is hard to stop thinking about ourselves sometimes. We are selfish people.
So from the moment we're born, it's that sin nature in us. It's that fleshly nature. Where we think about ourselves, it's hard to forget ourselves. Amen?
It can only be done when we are so in love with Jesus, so enamored with Him. When we get lost in worship, when we get obsessed by His Kingdom and serving those around us, that is when we can lose ourselves. And that is where we find happiness. Amen?
Lord, we just thank You tonight that You call us not just to be a holy people, but You call us to be a happy people. Father, I just pray tonight for a new infusion of happiness upon this congregation. That we aren't just looking at our circumstances and so concerned about how bad that might be, but Lord, we are looking at the world around us and understanding that You are our anchor in times of trouble. In our life's worst circumstances, You are not unaware and You are there to go through it with us.
We find tonight our happiness in You and we thank You for it. Lord, we love You so much. Guide us in direct as we pray. Just be a happy people and take Your name to a world that is hurting and lost around us.
We ask it in Your precious name. Amen. Amen. If you would like prayer tonight, if you would like to come forward and Pastor Paul will be here.
Pastor Jim will be here and we would be happy to pray with you this evening. God bless you.