Join Rick Hughes as he guides listeners on a spiritual journey toward understanding biblical joy and happiness. Reflect upon the scriptural mandate to ‘rejoice always’ and discover how this transformative command transcends our fleeting emotions. As we navigate the universal yearning for joy and contentment, this episode offers profound insights into aligning one’s mental and spiritual focus with divine purpose, creating a life characterized by unwavering joy regardless of life’s challenges.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I am your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stick around. It won’t be long, just about 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education. And no manipulation, as we always say. We’re not here to con you. We’re not here to ask you for anything. Simply to give you information that will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If you’re interested, then I hope you would orient and adjust to that plan. You know, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to come into your home every Sunday morning at this time, or maybe into your automobile as you’re driving to church. or maybe you’re listening on some podcast like Spotify or Apple iPod. Wherever you may be listening, I want to thank you for the time you give me. I pray your time is not wasted, and I know it will not be wasted because I’m going to give you the accurate scriptures of the Word of God. God’s plan for your life. It’s always interesting. People want to be happy. People are looking for happiness today in all sorts of different ways. Hobbies, money, people. You know, someone said people and circumstances can make you happy and not really. People and circumstances are here today and gone tomorrow. But we want to talk about true happiness this morning. the pursuit of happiness in your life because God designed you to be happy. God does not want you to be miserable. God does not want you to be unhappy. He wants you to have a wonderful life. However, there are limits and expectations that you place upon him. And so let’s talk about this. What is happiness? Happiness is pursued by most everybody in the entire human race. There’s probably no one in the world anywhere that does not want to be happy But what it takes to make you happy may be different from what it takes to make your neighbor happy. Your neighbor may be a Democrat and you may be a Republican and so your neighbor may not be happy because his man or his woman didn’t get elected and yours did. Do you remember what it took to make you happy when you were just a little kid? I mean, I do. When I grew up, one dollar could buy a lot of temporal happiness, that’s for sure. Maybe a burger and a soda could be purchased for much less than even a dollar. I remember going to the Crystal Hamburger place, and you could buy a crystal for 10 cents, and we’d bet 10 crystals for a dollar. Some of my happy memories as a child were summer days at the local swimming pool where we went swimming. I’d stay there all day long, not too far from my grandmother’s house. While my mother worked, I’d go stay with my grandmother and go to the local swimming pool and eventually wound up working as a lifeguard there when I got into high school. I used to love watching Saturday morning cartoons on television. Many children today are happiest when they have a cell phone, unfortunately, or playing some game or texting their friends because times have changed. So what it used to take to make you happy when you were young That would never make them happy today. I’ve tried showing some of my grandchildren some of the old cartoons that I used to watch, and they’re not interested. But the Bible talks a lot about happiness, both for us being happy in time and as well as being happy in eternity. If you remember our 10 problem-solving devices on the flat line of your soul, that’s what this show’s made about. the forward line of troops, F-L-O-T, the main line of resistance in your soul, one of those problem-solving devices is called Plus H, which is sharing the happiness of the Lord. And so God wants you to be happy. If you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, happiness is one of the weapons you use to defeat the things that Satan would throw your way. So let’s examine some verses together that detail the happiness God has available for all of us. In Psalm 118, verse 24, the Bible says, This is the day the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it. This day is the day. This very verse should be the first thought you have when you wake up in the morning. And you open your eyes and roll out of bed, scramble out of bed, jump out of bed, however you get out of bed. This is the day the Lord has made. This verse should be the first thing you think about. and I will rejoice and be glad in it. The word rejoice is the Hebrew word shama, shama. And it means to have a feeling of joy or outward expression of such gladness by rejoicing. You know, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, not Greek, not Aramaic, but Hebrew. So rejoice or sama means to feel great joy or have an outward expression of gladness. And so you wake up in the morning, you open your eyes, and you realize God gave you one more day to live on this planet, and you are to rejoice and be glad about it. Here’s some principles I’d like for you to remember. every day god gives you is another opportunity to glorify him by lifting up your savior the lord jesus christ so that’s something you can rejoice in god gives you the opportunity to lift up the lord jesus christ rejoice in that opportunity Here’s another thought for you, point two. Rejoicing is a choice. You have volition. You can say positive volition, yes, negative volition, no. This verse says exercise your volition, positive volition, and do what God tells you to do. So rejoicing is a choice. You’ll make that, even though your body might be aging and might not be rejoicing with you if you’re an older person like I am, The bones creak and the knees hurt and the elbows hurt and joints hurt, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about the physical part of your body because you’re going to have some pain. You may have to get a couple of Advil today, but rejoicing is a mental attitude. Point three, rejoicing has nothing to do with how you feel. but rather about what you think. Rejoicing has nothing to do with how you feel, but rather it’s about what you’re thinking. And point four, rejoicing for the believer, such as you and I, is us having appreciation of God’s faithfulness to us, not only now in time, but also what’s going to come in eternity. So in Philippians 4.4, the Apostle Paul wrote, “‘Rejoice in the Lord always,’ Again, I say rejoice. In this particular verse, Paul uses the word kairo, C-H-A-I-R-O, the Greek word kairo, which is to be filled with joy. Just the opposite of mourning or feeling sorry for yourself. This Cairo we’re talking about is a constant state of happiness due to our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The verb Cairo is a present active imperative verb in the morphology of the Greek New Testament. Why is that important? Because that means that this is a command. The present tense says there never is a time when you are not to be rejoicing. And the active voice says you produce the action of the verb with your positive volition. And the imperative mood in the Greek New Testament is a divine command given by God through the Apostle Paul. So buckle your seatbelt when I tell you this, but this is true. When you fail to rejoice, you are committing mental attitude sins. How is that? Because you’re demonstrating lack of appreciation for what God has done for you and lack of trust for what God has committed to you. And so you cannot fail to rejoice. Always I say rejoice, Paul said. In Psalm 40 verse 16, the Bible goes on to say in the Old Testament, let all those that seek you rejoice and be glad or be happy in thee. let such as love thy salvation say continually the lord be magnified what a wonderful thing it is to know that we’re saved and we have eternal life and we can continually say the lord be magnified for what he’s done so point one thank god every day for your salvation you only rejoice You want to rejoice? This is the day the Lord has made and thank him for your salvation. Thank him that you’re going to heaven. Thank him that you don’t have to earn it or work for it because you couldn’t do it if you had to do that. It’s a free gift. It’s a gift of God. For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works. Best anyone should brag about it. So remember that. Rejoice in that. And every day, never forget where we were headed. We were headed that way, someplace not heaven. We were headed to the lake of fire. And he revealed his grace to us in the person of his son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s the words of Jesus talking to the disciples who were enamored with the power that he gave them to cast out demons. So he had to tell them these words in Luke 10, 20. Notwithstanding in this, rejoice not. In other words, they had a wrong priority. They were happy about the wrong thing. What were they rejoicing in? That the spirits were subject unto them. And the Lord said, this is not what you rejoice over, but rather this, he said, rejoice because your names are written in heaven. If you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, your name is in the last book of life. And that’s a wonderful thing. When you die without Christ, your name is erased from the Lamb’s Book of Life, and you have died the first death. And there are two deaths, physical death and spiritual death. Physical death, you die first of all physically, and then spiritual death is you being cast into the lake of fire. And as you’ve heard me say, there are either gonna be two deaths or two births, physical birth and a spiritual birth. So the Lord Jesus Christ had to remind the disciples, the important thing is not that you have the power over spirits, but rather that your name is written in heaven. So get over the wrong priorities. In the book that my staff and I wrote called These Things, and mostly my staff, my associates had helped me with that. These Things is the name of the book. If you don’t have it, I wish you would order it and get it. It’s free. In that book, I discussed what our Lord told the disciples about happiness during his final night with them. In John 15, 11, he told them, I’ve told you this. Told them what? Everything between John 13 and John 15, 11, all in those passages. I’ve told you this so that, or in order that, my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete that my joy what was the lord jesus christ joy well he had a relaxed mental attitude he trusted his father because he knew he was in god’s plan i think we can say that the greatest happiness that you could ever experience is to know 100 absolutely that you’re in the center of the will of God doing exactly what he asked you to do. And that’s what the Lord Jesus Christ was experiencing. It wasn’t the fact that he was looking forward to going to the cross. That wasn’t what brought him joy. What brought him joy was that he was 100% sure that he was fulfilling the plan of God for his life. Our Lord used that word so that my joy, he used the word chara, C-H-A-R-A, chara. That’s the word that he used, so that my joy may be in you and your chara may be complete. This word charah is the attitude of one who fulfills the will of God for their life. You know, this was the last night of freedom he had, and he maintained his joy. And you know, we can too, because he himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, is in fact our very own source of joy. In 1 Peter 1.8, Peter wrote, “‘Though you have not seen him, you love him.'” And even though you don’t see him now, you believe in him and listen to what’s coming next. And you are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. He is our joy. We haven’t seen him. I don’t think you’ve seen him. I haven’t seen him yet. I’ve seen pictures of what people tell me the Lord Jesus Christ looked like, but I don’t believe that. I haven’t seen him, but I love him because he first loved me And I don’t see him now, but I will see him. And I believe in him. I believe he died for me. I believe he took my place on the cross. I believe he walked out of that grave alive. And that’s why I am full of inexpressible and glorious joy. He’s my savior. He’s my king. He’s the one that sustains my life on a daily basis. And the same for you. You know, in the book of James, James wrote about hardships that we go through sometimes, and he made the statement that our hardships can be a source of joy. In James 1, verse 2, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds. Consider it joy when you go through trials. What does that mean? Well, God trusts you. And when you go through these trials, these tests that you face, this is an opportunity for you to glorify God to the maximum. However, if you get full of self-pity, you get angry, you get disappointed in God because God let something happen that you didn’t approve of, then you don’t have any joy. So whenever you have a testing or a hardship in your life, count it joy. Consider it joy because the Lord trusts you to handle it and it’s your opportunity to glorify him. People see you not frustrated. People see you not upset. People see the way you handle these things. they’re encouraged and they question you. How could you be relaxed? You just had a big wreck. And you can say, well, you know, it’s God’s plan. It’s God’s plan. Hey, I’m thankful that I’m alive. With verses like these, we discover that happiness is constantly an attitude of thinking. That’s what the Bible talks about happiness is. It’s the constant attitude of happiness, joy. In the mature believer’s life, hopefully you and me, in spite of earthly difficulties, we can maintain a relaxed mental attitude and through everything that we face, keep our focus on God’s plan and on God’s provisions. There’s another word I want to talk about. It’s an English word called joy, J-O-Y. Joy to the world, remember that song? It refers to a state of happiness or bliss or something that causes us to be happy. So we have joy, an English noun, and then we have the verb rejoice, and that’s defined as an expression of a state of happiness. I’m showing you these different words for all of this happiness. Joy, rejoice, and the English noun happiness. That’s in the Bible too, happiness. And that’s defined as a state of well-being characterized by relatively contentment in your life, hopefully permanent contentment. So you can have this joy and rejoice and be happy. There are a lot of different Greek words used for happiness to describe it so we can understand it. The noun kadra, C-H-A-R-A, is translated joy sometimes. However, the Romans and the Greeks were very cynical about happiness, and they didn’t seek the things that we do. They didn’t seek it in everything. They weren’t looking for it in people or circumstances. So these particular Koine Greek words I’m telling you, kadra, joy, you know, rejoice, the other different words that I’ve given you in this passage. This is different than what you and I are thinking about. There are different connotations from their English translations. There’s another word called makarios, and we’ll look at that in just a minute. And that’s translated blessed or happiness. But again, the words used for the translation don’t explain the biblical doctrine of true happiness that God wants you to have. The noun artarches, artarches. That’s a noun, and it comes a little bit closer because it means to be content or to be self-sufficient. And it actually is describing the happiness you have when you’re in spiritual autonomy, when you have the ability to stand alone, spiritually speaking. It’s verb, archeo, coming from archarkes, and the active voice means to be sufficient or to be self-sufficient. And this comes closer to describing what real, true, biblical happiness is. And this is what happens to us when we execute the plan of God for the church age. We’re self-sufficient. We’re spiritually independent. We’re spiritually autonomous. Some of us carry this entrenched notion that some set of circumstances or some particular thing or people can make us happy. But happiness is not something that’s made or manufactured by us, we can’t do it. That’s the pseudo happiness that Satan attempts to counterfeit the happiness of God. He tries to counterfeit our contentment. You know, if I could just get that new car, if I could just get that new boat, if I could just get that new house, if I could just find my right man or my right woman, I’d be happy. Happiness is not in people. It’s not in circumstances. It’s not in winning the lottery and you saying, oh, Lord, if you let me win the lottery, I’ll give you 10%. Oh, how kind of you. You keep 90% and you’ll give him 10%. Yeah, right. The blessing which God provides for every church-age believer as a royal family of God is unbelievable. And Satan tries to counterfeit that. He does it by this myth of arrogance that both people and pleasant circumstances can make you happy. Satan’s propaganda is that money, success, pleasure, social life, sexual life, public approbation, fame, material things, travel, health, all pleasant circumstances in life can make you happy. And that’s not true. Because I want to tell you this, if you’re dependent on any person, if you’re dependent on any set of circumstances to make you happy, then you don’t have the biblical happiness that I’m talking about. Because happiness is a state of your mentality of your soul. It is not something someone can do for you. It is something that you think. I told you that earlier. Because people with unhappy souls wait for other people to make them happy. That’s actually the gimmick of the, quote, friendly church, friendly society. Come to my church and we’ll make you happy. We’ll sing some songs and clap and everybody will greet you and give you a cup of coffee and a donut. We’re a real friendly church. The last thing you need is a friendly church. You need a church that will teach you God’s word. You need a pastor teacher that will crank it out so you can study and learn and grow as a believer. Now, you can be happy when you’re learning God’s Word, and you can meet other individuals that are positive to the Word of God, and they can be friends with you. But just the gimmick of being a friendly church is not what it’s about. Here’s a principle that I want you to remember and never forget. I hope you’ll keep this with you wherever you go. Unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. Did you hear that? Unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go. So if you’re unhappy in California, then you’ll be unhappy in New York. If you’re unhappy in a Ford, you’ll be unhappy in a Chevrolet. I mean, it’s not about what you have or where you are, it’s what you think, as I’ve told you. It’s not something someone can do for you. Here’s an illustration, and this is found in the scriptures. This is the illustration that someone came up with an idea that motherhood can make you happy. Motherhood can make you happy. Do you think that’s true? In Luke 11, 27 and 28, as Jesus was speaking, a woman interrupted him. Here’s the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me set this stage for you. And he’s got a crowd of people and he’s talking to them. and they’re all paying undivided attention to every word that he said, and a woman interrupted him. She called out to him, the Bible says. You can hear it, Jesus, Jesus. Look over here at me, probably like some kind of White House meeting and the news people trying to, call on me, call on me, let me ask you a question. And she just interrupted him, Jesus. And I’m sure the Lord looked at her and said, what? Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and who nursed you, she said. And she used the word blessed. It’s our word for happiness, makarios. M-A-K-A-R-I-O-S, makarios. It’s happiness belongs to the mother who gave you birth and on whose breast you nursed. And then the Lord Jesus Christ very calmly replied, I’m sure he did it calmly, blessed rather and i see he’s saying no you’re wrong you’re absolutely wrong blessed rather happiness rather belongs to those who hear the word of god and who obey it the word who hear a co you a co Akoou, get that word in a minute, I can’t get it out. A-K-O-U-O. Who here, that means to understand or to learn or just trust. Listen, listening to a sermon was not going to make you happy until you do what the Bible says. Blessed are those who hear the word of God and then obey it. The Greek word phulaso, phulaso, P-H-U-L-A-S-S-O, phulaso, obey. That means to guard it or keep it safe or to preserve it. So if you’re looking for the kind of happiness you want, it’s not in motherhood, it’s in hearing, understanding the word of God and obeying it, guarding it, keeping it in your life. That’s where the happiness comes from. That’s the greatest happiness you’ll ever have in your life is to learn the word of God and keep it in your soul. This particular woman was a rude person. She evidently had no manners because she demanded attention, stood up and said, Jesus, blessed be the womb that bore you and the breast that you nursed on. She interrupted her Lord. I don’t know if she meant to draw attention to herself or what she meant, but she expressed a very false doctrine about motherhood. She implied that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was only happy because she carried a baby in her womb. And Jesus made it clear by stating that happiness does not come from motherhood. It comes from hearing the Word of God and keeping the Word of God. Proverbs 3.13 says these words, Happiness belongs to the person who finds wisdom, even to the person who gains understanding. So in closing, let me run a few things by you. Number one, a personal great happiness is a combination of four things. A personal sense of destiny, occupation with the Lord Jesus Christ, sharing the happiness of God, and maximum glorification of God. This means you’re an ambassador for Christ and you must have this great happiness to be an ambassador for Christ. You can’t be an ambassador, not be happy. Maximum glorification of God brings the greatest happiness you can have. In Psalm 119, verse 2, how happy are those who observe his testimonies and those who seek him with all their heart. So if you want to be happy, the flat line is where it starts. Having a personal sense of destiny in your life. Because the moment we die, we will enter into greater happiness being face-to-face with the Lord in our interim body and being with the loved ones who preceded us into heaven. So let me ask you in closing, are you happy? What do you base your happiness on? I hope you’ve learned something today, and I hope you’ll come back next week. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
