Happiness & The Essence Of God.
We are now ready for our next principle concerning PSD #9, the Happiness of God, which deals with the fact that God’s +H is related to the essence of God.
God’s happiness (+H) is actually a form of energy.
God's perfect happiness (+H) is an energy that is available to all of us under the principle of equal privilege and equal opportunity.
If you're going to enjoy that happiness, you need to understand a certain aspect of the essence of God, and that is the attribute of omniscience.
Essence refers to that which makes up God as a being of perfect substance that belongs to God Himself who has all the qualities or attributes of deity.
┌─────────────────┐
│Love │
│Veracity │
│Omniscience │
│Omnipotence └────────────
│Omnipresence Justice
│Immutability ┌────────────
│Righteousness │
│Eternal life │
│Sovereignty │
└─────────────────┘
His omniscience knows every sin and evil, every cruel and vicious thing in angelic and human history.
He has always known all the thoughts, decisions, motivations, and actions of every person in history.
None of this ever caused God to lose His happiness for a moment.
Neither the failure of angels nor members of the human race, has ever given God even a second of unhappiness.
If you are ever going to have the happiness of God, you must deal with the issue of guilt and condemnation from your own failures.
Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be happy and content with what you have accomplished.
You can't go through life having the happiness of God thinking that at the end of the tunnel, there's a God waiting to condemn you.
How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental God?
The road to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what's there: all of it and then to apply the divine solutions.
We are commanded to be joyful and happy because He has borne our sorrows.
He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief so that we need not be.
He had no sins and limitations; He was not sad for His sake, but for ours.
He was a man of sorrows so that we could be men and women filled with happiness.
He was acquainted with grief so that we could be filled with joy.
He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows so that we could bare His happiness and rejoice within ourselves.
He was pierced through for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities so that we would not be condemned for any personal sins.
If we remain gloomy and condemned after understanding what He did for us, it is because we do not accept what He did for us.
God's happiness is related to His personal, perfect, and complete sense of destiny.
If you have a sense of destiny and know where your life is going, you will be relaxed and able to stay on the road to happiness.
Happiness is essentially a state of going in the proper direction with all of your heart, without regret or reservation.
"You will make known to me the path of life" means that the first principle in gaining perfect happiness is cognition of Bible doctrine (reception, retention, and recall).
You will never have God's perfect happiness in this life unless you learn.
Thought energy is the key and basis for all of God's perfect happiness.
Although God's perfect happiness is available to all believers, if you reject Bible doctrine you'll never sort things out, let alone enjoy +H.
"In Your presence is the fullness of happiness" is the thrust of this point. In the presence of God is perfect happiness or the fullness of happiness.
God is perfect, eternal, infinite, immutable, just, righteous, omnipotent, love, omniscient, and sovereign, and God's perfect happiness is characterized by all these divine attributes.
For the Church Age believer, there is the potential while alive on earth to experience this fullness of happiness.
"At Your right hand there are pleasures forever" means that pleasure is the monopoly of God and follows the possession of God's perfect happiness; it does not precede it.
True pleasure is the monopoly of God which follows the possession of God's perfect happiness; it does not precede it.
God's happiness cannot be disappointed or frustrated by the failure of any believer to fulfill His plan.
This same happiness and virtue‑love will give you fantastic capacity for life, and no set of circumstances can ever get you down.
The dynamics of spiritual adulthood is that the happiness of the Lord is the strength of spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity.
Our first mistake is trying to erase everything in our lives that is uncomfortable, unpleasant or painful, and that's impossible.
Opposition is the highest decoration for the supergrace believer.
Wearing this decoration of maximum pressure is the greatest of all blessings, and as NEH 8:10 says "The happiness of the Lord is your strength."
In fact, the most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond our control.
Since God possesses perfect happiness, He desires to share His perfect happiness with us, and so He mandates that we have His perfect happiness.
God will keep you alive long enough to attain that perfect happiness, provided you are faithful in the perception of doctrine.
Consequently, perfect happiness is attained in the three stages of spiritual adulthood, and is a part of glorifying God in the Church Age.
Since the acquisition of perfect happiness is related to spiritual adulthood and the glorification of God we are commanded by the Word of God to have that happiness.
PSA 97:12 "Be happy in the Lord, O righteous ones, and give thanks for the memory of His holiness."
As you begin to have perfect happiness, thanksgiving becomes a moment‑by- moment attitude of your soul.
Until you can give thanks for everything, both the blessings and adversities of your life, you have not yet come close to having perfect happiness.
The point is that the greatest experience of security in this life is to attain perfect happiness.
Once you have God's happiness in your soul, it is the ultimate of security, the basis for spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity.
This is security is for you because, when you get under pressure, you will think the right thing, do the right thing, and apply the right doctrine.
Because you have repeatedly learned to do the right thing under normal circumstances so many times that you automatically do the right thing under abnormal circumstances.
PHI 3:1 "Finally, my brethren, keep on having happiness in the Lord. To be writing this same mandate to you, on the one hand, is not tedious, while on the other hand, it is a safeguard to you."
PHI 4:4 "Keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times; once more I repeat the command, keep on having happiness."
The reason why this in the present tense and it is a command is because perfect happiness is the only happiness in the world you can have at all times, wherever you are, no matter what your circumstances.
Perfect happiness is not something you attain in the eternal state, although there is happiness and blessing for all believers there.
Perfect happiness must be developed here in time.
To obey the command to "keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times" is something we cannot do any more than we can do anything for our salvation.
This divine command can only be executed through residence, function, momentum inside the PPOG in the attainment of the three stages of spiritual adulthood.
There are a number of things you must first learn if you’re going to execute the plan of God for your life.
Christians want instant solutions and miracles, implying that God is disorganized.
We must get with His plan and His system to have His perfect happiness.
The woman in the Garden had everything in perfect environment including a perfect, wonderful husband.
Yet she wanted more than a perfect husband, more than perfect sex, more than a genius, more than perfect environment.
You can never get enough of the things you don't need, because the things you don't need, will never satisfy you.
She had a beauty that never changed and perfect health as she came from the hand of God.
This immediately indicates that she didn't have perfect happiness, because contentment is a synonym for perfect happiness.
She was bored with perfect everything including a perfect intellect.
"God why did you make women so beautiful. And God said, So that they would be attractive to you"!
"Well, why did you make them so dumb?" And God said "So that you would be attractive to them!"
Yet her conversations with the serpent indicated that she was not satisfied with what she had.
Whoever does not regard what they have as blessings from God to be grateful and thankful for is unhappy, though they be master of the world.
Satan is trying to make her focus in on something she doesn't have and does not possess because the serpent knew that she was discontent and frustrated.
The woman lacked something in her capacity to hear clearly and objectively what the divine prohibition involved.
She was afraid that even if she touched the tree she would die.
You cannot have fear without having arrogance.
The combination of arrogance and fear caused her to want something more.
One of the secrets of happiness is to admire without desiring.
You can discover happiness by limiting your desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
What Satan said merely reflected his own fall when as Lucifer, Son of the Morning, the most beautiful creature that ever came from the hand of God was not satisfied with what God gave him.
He was the ruler of all the angels, sat at the right hand of the throne of God as Lucifer, and was the anointed cherub, the highest class of angels.
One day he decided that he wouldn't be happy until he replaced God!
When people are not happy and do not have spiritual self-esteem or self‑esteem, they feel threatened.
Within them is a combination of two things, arrogance and fear, which always go together.
In fear, you feel challenged by this or that, and in your arrogance, you want to overcome that fear by seizing the thing that threatens you.
It was called the Tree of Knowledge but the woman had perfect intellect; she had knowledge of all things around her because her husband was the ruler of the world.
But this was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a knowledge she did not possess.
For this reason, theologians have made the mistake of calling this state of perfection "the Age of Innocence."
And this brings another interesting principle before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it.
Arrogance plus fear leads to great instability no matter what you have.
In fear and arrogance you always feel threatened by something in life, even if you're in perfect environment.
The story of our original parents shows why love and happiness have eluded the human race in general down to this very moment.
- As an unbeliever who is establishment‑oriented to the point of human self‑esteem and humility.
- Or as a believer. The only hope for love and happiness in your life that is real and meaningful is to attain virtue-love and perfect happiness as problem solving devices.
With perfect happiness, no matter what your circumstances, your perfect happiness continues to exist, and you equate living with dying (PHI 1:21), and adversity with prosperity.
We all say at certain times that we are happy or in love, but we are really talking about being in circumstances that please us, or about something that has come into our possession that we enjoy at the moment.
Marriage is not a state of happiness or unhappiness, nor is wealth, the possession of things, friends, social life, there's always something more you will want.
You have to find happiness in yourself before you can find it with someone or something else.
Accumulating more and more doesn't make you happy.
In drug addiction some experience some high the first time they tried it and then they spend years trying to reproduce that same first high.
Happiness is derived from tranquility, not by taking drugs and tranquilizers but by developing a proper, disciplined, efficient life with regular habits.
Whether it is marriage, business, social life, or friendship, you will never have happiness or love by simply being in some state that you now associate with happiness.
Happiness is a problem-solving device that causes one to never look over the horizon and want more.
And due to the Fall of Adam and the woman, God in His matchless grace designed something that can overcome the best or worst of environment and can handle prosperity and adversity the same way.
The happiness of God +H can give you the capacity to handle being alone or in a crowd.
There is no problem in life too great for what God has given to you as a part of your portfolio of invisible assets, a part of which is the problem-solving device of God's perfect happiness!
SAM FIX THIS ONE And this brings us to another different subject concerning PSD #9 and that is The mechanics for attainment of +H.
The Holy Spirit is the source of our sharing God's perfect happiness because He is the teacher of Bible doctrine.
Perfect happiness is said to be by means of the Holy Spirit in ROM 14:17.
ROM 14:17 "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and prosperity and happiness by means of the Holy Spirit."
In that sense, we have a dual life, a natural life and a spiritual life.
COL 2:16 Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink
The Bible never teaches against the foods that we eat and the drinks that we drink but promotes health and moderation in both categories.
TLJC participated in eating certain foods and drinking alcoholic beverages in moderation and that is why he was called a drunk in LUK 7:34.
LUK 7:34 "The Son of Man has come eating [Greek says eating refers to fine food] and drinking [Greek says alcoholic beverages] ; and you say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man, and a drunkard, a friend of tax‑collectors and prostitutes!'
We have a phenomenal amount of alcoholism and so pastors should encourage those who have the pre-disposition toward alcohol to live a life of abstinence.
For example, we are told that the Lord made wine to make glad the heart of man, PSA 104:15 The Lord made wine which makes man's heart glad,
No matter how much grape juice you drink, it will not make your heart glad.
Solomon said in ECC 9:7 Go then, eat your bread in happiness, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works.
DEU 14:26 "And you may spend the money for whatever your heart desires, for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.
1TI 4:4-5, "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer."
1TI 5:23 No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.
Rom 14:17 "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and prosperity and happiness by means of the Holy Spirit."
In our spiritual life, we can have the righteousness and prosperity, and perfect happiness all by means of the Holy Spirit.
That's why all three of these principles including happiness are said to be the fruit or the production of the Holy Spirit, Gal 5:22 "The fruit of the Spirit is virtue-love, happiness, prosperity."
In spiritual self-esteem, perfect happiness begins; in spiritual autonomy, perfect happiness continues; and in spiritual maturity perfect happiness peaks out.
Part of the great power experiment of the Church-age is perfect happiness produced by God the Holy Spirit;
1TH 1:6 "You also become imitators of us and of the Lord [by fulfillment of the PPOG through divine power], having received the Word in much pressure [affliction, oppression] with happiness from the Holy Spirit."
One is the only invisible hero of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union, Jesus Christ.
The other is Paul or any other great invisible hero of the great power experiment of the Church-age.
We are to imitate them by imitating the copybook in Phi 3:17, which comes by receiving the Word consistently.
Phi 3:17 Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.
The same power that sustained Jesus Christ during those last three hours on the cross when He was being judged for our sins is now available to us in the Church-age.
(1) The omnipotence of God the Father is used to attain perfect happiness through the perception of our portfolio of invisible assets and using those assets.
(2) The omnipotence of Jesus Christ is used by knowing He gives us a day at a time and is faithful in sustaining our life so we can attain perfect happiness.
(3) The omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit is used to attain perfect happiness because God the Holy Spirit is the teacher of Bible doctrine; Joh 14; 1Co 2:9‑16, 2:24.
You must listen, learn, advance, and grow, and you will be happy for all time and for all eternity.
God's happiness belongs "naturally" to the new spiritual species; it is a happiness that only the new spiritual species can have.
It is a happiness that gives the most fantastic capacity for life, whether you have little or much, whether you are great or insignificant.
All human distinctions mean nothing now as a result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and being in union with Christ.
2CO 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new [spiritual] species. The old things have lost their power; behold, new things have come."
The adjective KAINE means new; the noun KTISIS means species.
The old things that have lost their power over us is are the Genetic, environmental, and volitional handicaps; the human dynamics, personality, talent, and works and flaws.
The "new things" that have come refer to your portfolio of invisible assets, to the ten unique characteristics of the Church Age, and the ten problem solving devices of the PPOG.