What Do You

Want More

Than Anything

Else in the

World?

You may have a long and unusual wish list, but the item at the top is not peculiar to yourself. As startling as it may seem, all human beings want the same thing.

1. ALL PEOPLE CHIEFLY DESIRE

HAPPINESS.

This may not seem obvious, but I think the following considerations will make it clear.

• You want other things for the sake of happiness.

You may want money, pleasure, power, sex, excitement, children or any number of other things, but the reason you want them is that you believe they will contribute to your happiness.

• You want happiness for its own sake.

Although you can give reasons for wanting other things, it is impossible to find a higher reason for desiring to be happy. You want happiness because you want it, and that is all you can say.

• You cannot desire to be unhappy. It is impossible for you actively to seek your own misery. Many people make poor choices that result in unhappiness, or they punish themselves to relieve a sense of guilt. Others kill themselves in an effort to escape from overwhelming despair. These suffering people still desire happiness, even if they have given up hope of finding it.

2. ALL PEOPLE NEED THE SAME

THINGS TO MAKE THEM HAPPY

Although material well-being--including health and enough money to pay the bills--certainly contributes to happiness, external things do not create happiness. Some of the healthy and wealthy are miserable, while a few of the sick and the poor are filled with great joy.

Long ago the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle recognized that happiness depends on developing certain life skills. Unhappy people have never learned or do not practice the habits of thinking and behavior that will make them happy. Frequently they refuse to recognize that they are the cause of their own misery, so they blame others or fate in order to mask their own deficiencies. Others seem to be born with a more cheerful frame of mind. They find it easy to practice the habits of happiness.

Though great thinkers of the past made many useful observations about human life, they missed the most important ingredient of happiness.

3. ONLY THE CREATOR CAN MAKE US TRULY HAPPY.

Just as an automobile manufacturer designs vehicles to run on a certain kind of fuel, so the God who created us knows how we were meant to live and what will enable us to achieve maximum happiness. The Bible is filled with directions for living a fulfilling and satisfying life, but in this essay I want to focus on the core issue. Jesus said, "Blessed [i.e. supremely happy] are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). This verse teaches two crucial truths.

• Seeing God is the secret to maximum happiness.

The Bible says, "Thou wilt make known to me the path of life; In Thy presence is fullness of joy; In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11). Happiness is not so much given as it is caught. It is a divine fever that infects those who get close enough to "the blessed [i.e. the supremely happy] God" (1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15).

• Purity of heart is the secret to seeing God.

The problem is that our hearts are not pure. Your own conscience witnesses to your moral uncleanness, as does mine. The Bible says that even our good deeds are so contaminated by unworthy motives that God regards them as "a filthy garment" (Isaiah 64:6).

So how can our hearts become pure? We cannot make them clean, but God can. The Bible says that He cleanses our hearts by faith (Acts 15:9), not by a general faith in God, but by a very specific kind of faith. That leads me to my final proposition.

4. FAITH IN CHRIST IS THE ROOT

OF HAPPINESS.

Faith in Christ involves two ingredients:

• A radical reorientation of your
whole life.

Ungodly people are not necessarily more wicked than others. They are

ungodly because they seek their happiness in an "un-god"--in something that is not God. Godly people are not always morally superior to others; they are still sinners, but they seek God and His kingdom as the primary goal of life. The first part of faith in Christ is to admit to God that you are an ungodly sinner, that you have centered your life and your search for happiness in something other than Him. You once thought that your career or your family or drugs or sex or insisting on your own rights would bring you happiness, but you were wrong. Now you want to let go of that whole approach to life and find a new life in Christ. Jesus said, "For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save it" (Mark 8:35).

• A whole-hearted trust in Jesus Christ

Jesus is not just an empty name for whatever you happen to believe. He is the eternal God who became a man to redeem sinful human beings. When He died, He voluntarily took on Himself the shame, the reproach and the penalty of our sins. On the third day after that He arose from the grave in the same body in which He died. At the end of this age He will come to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:30-31; 1 Corinthians 15:1-5).

You cannot see Him now with your physical eyes, but if you look at Him with the eyes of faith, He will purify your heart so that you can enjoy Him both now and forever. Scripture says, "and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls" (1 Peter 1:8-9).

I said earlier that faith in Jesus Christ is the root of happiness. There are, it is true, genuine believers in Christ who are not very happy, but as they come to know Him better, the root will send forth shoots and grow into a harvest of happiness. By the same token, cheerful people, who have mastered some of the habits of happiness without the Savior, will eventually lose everything. Without the root, the fruit cannot remain. As our Lord said, "Therefore take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him shall more be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him" (Luke 8:18).

I urge you to turn away from your former manner of life. Trust in Jesus to save you. Then draw near to Him daily, and He will infect you with His joy.

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