“Happiness is good for you.” Jeremiah Burroughs

“Happiness is good for you?” Seems a bit of a no-brainer, doesn’t it. But Burroughs then gives eight reasons happiness is good for the Christian.

1. Happy Christians worship God as He ought to be worshipped. True worship is more than just outward form; it includes inward feelings, especially of delight. Worship and happiness go together.

2. Happy Christians make best use of the spiritual gifts God has given to them. God gives happy Christians more gifts and graces because the the lives of happy Christians are often a helpful influence on non-Christians.

Read the other six reasons at HappyChristian.net or on The Happy App.

Over the last few months I’ve been developing an App to accompany my book, The Happy Christian. Initially I got some quotes from specialist developers, but even the cheapest quote was running into many thousands and would have required me to charge a fee for the App in order to recoup costs.

After quite a bit of research and experimentation, I settled on Como.com, which is a sort of “DIY Apps For Dummies” service. Although the end result is quite basic, and there’s still a monthly cost for me, it’s low enough to let me offer The Happy App for free.

I hope you’ll take a look at it and consider downloading it to your phone or Tablet at either the Apple or Google store. Here’s what you’ll get on the three main tabs.

The Happy Christian
On the first tab you’ll find the daily posts on Christian joy over at the Happy Christian blog. These are mainly meditations on Christian joy, together with quotes on happiness and links to other relevant articles. The aim is to provide a daily diet of Christian joy as an antidote to our gloomy world.

HeadHeartHand
The second tab pulls in the daily blog posts from HeadHeartHand, which means you can read my usual blog articles there without using your browser.

Video
On this tab you’ll find a Philippians 4:8 mix of videos. That’s an important verse in the book, and this is one of the ways I want to help readers build healthy and edifying media into their lives. This content is unique to the App and not available at either the HeadHeartHand or Happy Christian blog.

On the phone version of the tab you can choose videos from a YouTube stream or a Vimeo stream. For some reason, only the YouTube stream is showing on the iPad at the moment, but I hope we’ll get that fixed before long.

App Stores
You’ll notice on the Happy Christian website that there are only links to the Apple App store. That’s because Apple don’t allow Google Play Store links to appear on any of their Apps! However, it is available for Android in the Google App Store.

Hope it makes you happy!

Given the dozens of books about guidance on the market, it’s obvious that knowing God’s will is a huge concern for most Christians. But how? How can we know God’s will for us? Here’s a selection of questions that might be used not only to help someone discover what God wants them to do, but also train them to make good decisions in the future as well.

1. What is your dilemma? What are your struggling with?

2. Is this something that God’s Word clearly prohibits or commands? Or is this a subject that requires wisdom and discernment in applying the general principles of God’s Word to a specific situation?

3. What general Scriptural principles or examples are relevant to this question?

4. How would you describe your general spiritual state or condition? Close to God, distant from God, or somewhere in between?

5. What is your overall motive and aim in your life?

6. Are there any areas of sin or folly in your life that may be hindering you from knowing and doing God’s will?

7. How have you made decisions before? How did they turn out? What did you learn from that?

8. On this issue, what have you done to find out God’s will already and what do you yet plan to do?

9. Have you ever tried using a fleece (Josh. 18:6, 8, 10)? Or casting lots? Or any other superstitious methods? 

10. What options are you considering and what are the pros and cons of each?

11. Is there any way of reducing the options?

12. Which option do you prefer and why?

13. Have you prioritized the factors that are influencing this decision?

14. Have you already made a decision in your heart?

15. What are you looking for that will help you to know what to do? 

16. Are you looking for particular feelings, or a voice from heaven, or some other indicator to guide you?

17. How often have you prayed about this and what are you praying for?

18. What motives and desires can you detect that are influencing your decision-making? 

19. What are you afraid of happening as a result of your decision?

20. Is there any fear of man or desire for someone’s favor that’s impacting you in this?

21. Who have you consulted and what did they say?

22. Are you completely willing to do God’s will whatever it may be?

23. What doors are you seeing that are opening or closing?

24. Which option will draw you closer to God and help you glorify God most?

25. Which option will best develop your gifts and talents?

26. How will this decision impact your family, your church, your employer, others in your life? What other consequences can you foresee?

27. How long have you been thinking and praying about this?

28. How soon do you have to make a decision?

29. Is there a command you can obey while you wait? Are you doing your duty today? Are you living in the light God has given you while you wait for Him to give you more?

30. What indicators of God’s providence have you discerned?

Any other questions that you would add?

“The sum of all obedience for man was to love the Lord his God with all his heart. This was not only easy to an uncorrupted nature, but his highest happiness was connected with it.”  Archibald Alexander

For many people, holiness is the opposite of happiness, perhaps even the enemy of it. Happiness and holiness are competing forces, pulling in opposite directions. You can have one; but not both together. No surprise then that most people choose happiness, but soon realize they have neither happiness nor holiness.

Aligned

God created us holy and happy. Happiness and holiness were perfectly aligned. If one was absent, both were. If one was present, both were. Happy holiness and holy happiness.

Read the rest of this post at HappyChristian.net.

As I’ve been writing a critical review of Joel Osteen’s, Your Best Life Now, I’ve been increasingly struck by how God often overrules the evil intentions of false prophets in order to ultimately bless His church.

Now I don’t want to minimize in any way the horrendous damage that false prophets do to the church and to individual souls. But our sovereign and wise God can turn even this great evil into a good in four ways:

• by helping us discover the questions people are asking
• by guiding us to a better understanding of the Bible
• by highlighting where the church has been silent
• by encouraging true Christians

What’s the question?
If there’s one thing false prophets are really good at, it’s identifying the questions that people are asking. They “sniff the wind” with their super-sensitive marketing antennae and skillfully pick up signals about the issues people are struggling with. They provide the wrong answers of course, but they are experts at detecting where people are at, with the aim of maximizing their audience.

For example, when “evangelicals” start moving their churches to accept gay marriage, we should realize that they are responding to serious challenges and pressures from within their congregations and/or families.

When Rob Bell “questions” the doctrine of hell, we should understand that many are asking real questions about hell and are not liking the traditional answers.

When Joel Osteen promotes the prosperity Gospel, we should conclude that many are trying to find a way to think more positively about themselves and their lives.

When a preacher throws out God’s commandments and replaces them with his own “10 Guidelines,” we should figure that lots of people are wondering about how to get rid of God’s law.

What does the Bible say?
The second benefit is that we are forced to study the Bible more closely to figure out what God really says about these issues. That’s been the pattern throughout church history. For example, whole epistles of Scripture were written in response to errors in the New Testament church. 

Also, challenges to the deity of Christ in the early church resulted in more thorough Bible study and then clearer credal and confessional statements about what the Bible really teaches about Jesus Christ. Similarly for justification at the time of the Reformation.

And that’s what we see happening today as well. Witness the tremendous work that’s been done by conservative modern scholars in exegeting the Bible’s teaching about homosexuality and gender. The same goes for the multiple books and papers that have recently been written to prove the eternality of a literal hell. My own study of Osteen has forced me into the Scriptures to discern the accurate interpretation of passages that Osteen perverts, and also to find passages which disprove what he teaches.

Where have we been silent?
As lies thrive in a vacuum, false prophets usually target subjects that the church has neglected, moving in where Christians have been silent. For example:

• When ministers are not teaching and preaching about hell, that’s fertile ground for Rob Bell.
• When the church doesn’t explain the place of the law in the Christian life, you get the law being discarded or being re-written as personal guidance.
• When the church hasn’t constructively addressed sexuality, you end up with confused Christians embracing homosexual propaganda and caving in to the redefinition of marriage.
• When the church doesn’t address the nature and use of suffering, Benny Hinn will step in with promises to remove it for a fee.
• When the church doesn’t help people develop a healthy self-image, Joel Osteen’s self-image-making will attract many.

Whenever I see the particular emphasis of a false prophet, I ask myself, “When was the last time you taught or preached about that?”

Who are true Christians?
The Bible says that one reason for heresies in the church is to expose and highlight those who are not real Christians, but only have the name of Christian (1 Cor. 11:19). When people are swept away with false teaching, they demonstrate that they were never really true Christians. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us” (1 John 2:19).

But if we stay the course when others are dropping out, if we refuse to be swept away by false teaching, we may use that to encourage and assure ourselves that we really are true Christians by the grace of God.

Warning
Notice, I’m not saying that we should all study what false prophets are teaching – that would be a foolish waste of time for most, and a dangerous path for many. But in today’s hyper-connected world, it’s difficult not to encounter their teaching here and there, and even in some very surprising places. As we do, let’s use their falsehood to help us discern what questions people are asking, to make us study our Bible more thoroughly, to highlight where the church has been too silent, and to encourage ourselves that He who has begun a good work in us is continuing it until the Day of Jesus Christ.

“God is the only source of real happiness. He does not need anything or anyone to make him happy: even before he made the world, the three persons of the Trinity were completely happy with each other. What God does for Christians is to make them as happy as he is.” Jeremiah Burroughs.*

God is happy! Is that how you think of God? Perhaps you think of Him as cold, detached, disengaged, and stoical. Or worse, maybe you think of Him only as angry, bitter, and malicious. Not really someone you’d want to spend much time with.

But God is happy!

Forever happy

And as Jeremiah Burroughs points out, He’s always been happy. Even before there was a world, there was divine happiness, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were completely happy with each other.

Shared happiness

And yet, though perfectly happy within themselves, they did not want to keep it to themselves.

Read the rest of this article at HappyChristian.net