Christianity seems to have become a way to be happy. Having marital problems? Become a Christian and go to church and you will smile your way to wedded bliss. Financial problems? Just join and be happy. Health issues? Join the right church and do the right worship and get on the prayer list and amaze the doctors at your instant cure. Certainly, the above is a simplistic view of what much of our preaching and outreach has become but no one can deny that we have a huge problem. The most common retort about one’s lifestyle may be “Judge not that you be not judged,” but close behind it is, “God would want me to be happy.”
It has been said often, “God does not care whether you are happy, he wants you to be saved.” However, the problem seems not to diminish. When faithful attenders (note that I did not say, “Christians”) find it a challenge to spend more prayer time than screen time, more Bible study time than game playing time, more money to church, preachers and poor than to our recreation, the matter has moved beyond a problem into a crisis.
We need not be in pain to be servants, but surely the easy measure of attendance on cushioned pews is not even on the bottom of the scale of servanthood. Look at those who were written for our learning:
Abraham wandered homeless for 100 years and wondered for a quarter century when God would fulfill His promise.
David had one slip in an exemplary life and never had a moment’s peace thereafter.
Jeremiah probably never had one happy day in his life after he accepted God’s commission to be a prophet and was kidnapped to die in a foreign land after the horror of watching his predictions fulfilled. Feel his pain by reading LAMENT-ations. Also, read his curse on his own life and wish to never have been born (Jer 20:7-18).
Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch wished for something for himself for all that he suffered alongside Jeremiah. God replied that He would give Baruch his life (Jer 45, only 5 verses)
Hosea was told to marry an idolatress (i.e. non-Christian). The outcome of that was her predictable adultery. His misery allowed Hosea to write eloquently of God’s misery at the apostasy of Israel.
Paul wrote of thorns in the flesh and sufferings and that was before his Roman imprisonment and shipwreck (2Cor 11:23-28). James was beheaded. Stephen stoned. Unknown numbers of families were driven from their homes by Saul. (Acts 12, 7, 8).
These all found Joy in serving God, but happiness was a foreigner in a faraway land.
Meanwhile, many who consider themselves faithful Christians can discuss some near-pornographic vengeance-filled movie or TV series with their co-workers and friends. They consider it sacrifice to attend and deserving of extra credit to devote time to prayer and reading – scriptures, not best sellers.
It is a measure of the weakness of the faith of the many that I explained what to read. “No,” one replies, “It is a measure of your attitude.” It is not my attitude that most churches are declining, teachers cannot be found, members get ruffled at the slightest reproof and no one presses the “or perish” that goes with “Repent.”
We sing “The Servant Song” wherein we offer God a blank check to use our lives as He will. Then we sissy out when we run into unhappiness.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies; who is he that condemns? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? … we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that nothing … shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The part our mind refuses to see:
(1) shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Even as it is written, For your sake we are killed all the day long; We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things...
(2) neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature...
Keith Ward