Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
The danger of falling into the trap of pseudo happiness, the devil’s counterfeit.
Friday, June 1, 2001
Pseudo-happiness = Satan’s attempt to counterfeit the happiness, the contentment, the blessing that God has provided for every Church-age believer.
It does not sustain, motivate, or encourage the believer in time of adversity, pressure, suffering, or testing, when he needs the resources of doctrine.
You must have capacity for happiness to really be happy, and then you can be happy in whatever life has to offer you at any given moment.
In living, we have the full use of our volition toward doctrine. In dying, our volition is no longer an issue because God’s sovereignty selects the time, place, and manner of our death.
Another area in which you can have either pseudo-happiness or God’s perfect happiness is in your single or marital status.
The four divine institutions are for believers and unbelievers alike, (Volition, Marriage, Family, Nationalism).
Abraham’s deceitfulness and cowardly attitude toward his wife Sarah. GEN 12:12-13; GEN 20:1-18.
Moses divorced his first wife Zipporah in EXO 18:2, but he still had the happiness of God during that terrible marriage where she threw some foreskin at him.
EXO 4:25 “Then Zipporah his wife took a flint knife and cut off the foreskin of her young son’s penis, and threw it against Moses’ feet, remarking disgustedly, What a blood-smeared husband you’ve turned out to be!”
2SA 5:13 Meanwhile David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem,
A happy marriage is when two happy people enter into a state of matrimony and in that state retain their happiness.
An unhappy marriage is when two unhappy people get married and retain their unhappiness.
The unhappy person dominates and controls the marriage so that the happy person loses his happiness.
A successful marriage is when two unhappy people get married, and through the PPOG or the laws of divine establishment, attain happiness and live together in a state of contentment.
It is impossible for believers to have a happy marriage apart from spiritual growth, execution of the PPOG, and each one possessing perfect happiness.
If the carnal believer tries to have a good marriage through establishment, his carnality and arrogance cancel out the establishment principles.