Today my pastor started a teaching series on the Beatitudes from Matthew 5. He made a summarizing point that caught me off-guard - "Happiness is God's approval on your life." He translated 'blessed' with the word 'happy.'
When I think of happy I think of sad. Makes sense, right? Opposites...what is said of one then the opposite should be true of the other? So, then do you say "sadness is a lack of God's approval on your life."
"Most assuredly, I [Jesus] say to you that you will weep and lament but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful but your sorrow will be turned to joy." (John 16:20).
"I [Paul] tell you the truth...that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart." (Rom. 9:1-2)
"Then Jesus said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death." (Matt. 26:38)
That said, then Sadness is not indicative of God's approval or lack thereof on your life.
John the Baptist voiced this issue when he asked, from within his prison cell if Jesus was the "One." Jesus replied saying "Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me." (Luke 7:17-23) Jesus knew that John the Baptist was going to be killed for following Jesus and Jesus offered him a blessing in the face of death. A blessing that is God's approval on your life.
Happiness?
Kenneth S. Wuest (Eerdman Publishing) said "In the N.T. makarios is quite a religiously qualified conception, expressing the life-joy and satisfaction of the man who does or shall experience God's favor and salvation, his blessedness altogether apart from his outward condition...It always signifies a happiness produced by some experience of God's favor, and specifically qualified by the revelation of grace....It refers to the spiritually prosperous state or condition of believer who is the recipient of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who is enabled to minister these blessings to him when the believer yields to Him for that ministry and cooperates with Him in it."
So, happiness is God's approval on your life, yes - but happiness not in relation to our situation which could be sorrowful unto death (as when Jesus faced the cross) - but in regards to submitting (kneeling) to the work of God in us.
The question is, will you kneel even when you are sorrowful unto death and in-so-doing experience the happiness that only God could grant in his grace?
Happiness, then as we think of it, is not the measure of our alignment with God's will, neither is sorrow. Happiness is God's grace given to us in response to our yielding to His will over ours. We can not work to achieve this happiness, we can only bend our knees before God who in His grace transforms us by His Holy Spirit.
In response, I repeat, to what do I need to bend my knees?
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