Happiness Explained
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 544 aired on January 24, 2016
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes I’d like to ask you to stay with me. It’s always a time of motivation, inspiration,
education, and we do it without manipulation. That’s what this show is given for, to give you
accurate information so that hopefully you will be able to verify and identify God’s plan for your
life. Thank you to our Heavenly Father for meeting all of our needs and thank you that you’re
listening to us today. I’m reviewing the 10 problem-solving devices that are the basis for this
radio show, the FLOT Line, F.L.O.T, forward line of troops. We’re using this military analogy
we’ve always used to describe how the Christian can establish a forward line of troops in his life.
This forward line of troops is a metaphor for 10 unique problem-solving devices. If you learn
them and use them, you can stop the outside sources of adversity before they ever become the
inside sources of stress. That’s why we always say adversity is inevitable and stress is optional
because adversity is what circumstances do to you, however stress, well that’s what you do to
yourself. You do not, I repeat, you do not have to live a life of worry. You do not have to live a
life of fear. You do not have to live a life of bitterness and hatred and antagonism. This is not the
Christian life. The Christian life is a supernatural life, a different life. The Bible says the fruit of
the Spirit is love and joy and peace and long suffering and gentleness and goodness and
meekness, and many other things. If you find yourself worried or afraid or feeling full of guilt or
agitated or implacable, you are out of fellowship with God, you’re allowing your sin nature to
take control. Maybe you’re having a little operation pity party or something, who knows? Maybe
you’re going into some sort of vindictive revenge motivation over something that happened to
you, I don’t know. This is not the Christian life.
The Christian life is the most unique life in the
world and one of the most unique assets is happiness.
Sharing the happiness of God is a
problem-solving device for us.
We have been reviewing happiness as a problem-solving
device, starting last week talking about plus H, sharing the happiness of God. There is also minus
H or neutral H we call it and that’s the happiness that is associated with the details of life. You
know, some people believe happiness is associated with circumstances, happiness is associated
with people, and that’s not true, no more true than happiness is associated with marriage. You
know, marriage compounds problems, it doesn’t solve problems and so when we get married, we
are not necessarily guaranteed any happiness. We’re not guaranteed happiness if we come into a
fortune like winning the lottery or something like this. Recently a huge lottery was offered across
the country and millions of people were lining up to buy, trying to purchase their ticket to
happiness. “If I could just win the lottery, I’ll be happy.” Unfortunately, unhappy people take
their unhappiness with them wherever they go. Having a lot of money just gives you the ability
to be unhappy in a different part of town, that’s all. Did you hear me? Having a lot of money
gives you the ability to be unhappy in a different part of town. Unhappiness is not the Christian
life.
Capacity for happiness is what God has designed for you. It can be enjoyed in living
544-Happiness-Explained-transcript.pdf
and in dying.
You know the Bible says in Proverbs 29:18,
“Where there is no revelation
[in
other words the establishment concepts of God’s Word]
the people are unrestrained. But happy
[that’s neutral H]
is the person who keeps the laws of establishment.”
A person that’s not a
Christian can be happy. He can have temporal happiness if he follows the laws of establishment:
if he honors volition and this means he gives everybody the right to choose; if he follows God’s
prescribed concept in marriage, right man-right woman; if he establishes a family and raises
children and teaches them proper norms and standards; and if he observes the concepts of
nationalism within his nation, proud of serving his nation, giving his all for his nation. There’s a
life of happiness. God designed you to be happy and you can be happy apart from God if you just
observe these things, just these things alone, but there’s much more happiness. There is happiness
that can be enjoyed in living and happiness that can be enjoyed in dying. Because if you have
perfect happiness in living, I can guarantee you, you will have perfect happiness in dying
whether you die quickly or whether it’s a prolonged and painful death. It doesn’t make any
difference, short and sweet or prolonged and painful, you can be happy. The only difference is
this, that in living we use our volition to decide, it’s to the full extent we can decide. Now when
we die, well that’s God’s sovereignty. He selects the time, the manner, and the place of our
departure. We don’t have anything to do with this one. While you’re here, while you’re alive, God
has made you to be happy. If you live poorly, you’re going to die miserably I promise you. If you
put all your hopes in living in people and circumstances to make you happy, then you’re going to
die unhappy, you’ll die miserably. You’ll have mental attitude panic when it all comes to an end
and your problems will be intensified. Can you imagine dying guilty and full of self-pity and
bitter in fear and doubt? That’s the way some people will die, especially if they don’t know if
they are saved, if they don’t have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I cannot imagine
someone coming to death’s doorstep and not knowing what the next step is. I know for any
believer to be absent from the body is to be face-to-face with the Lord where there’s no more
pain, no more sorrow, no more tears, it’s all passed away. You’ll see things you’ve never seen,
you will hear sounds you’ve never heard, you’ll be reunited with loved ones in eternity. These are
God’s promises to you. So, for the believer, the mature believer, dying is a wonderful thing but
for a person that’s not a Christian, dying is a miserable thing. Or person that is a Christian but has
never advanced in his Christian life, he’s never grown spiritually, he’s been out of fellowship
with God for years, he’s going to die full of guilt and self-pity. It is possible to live a wonderful
life and it is possible to die a wonderful death, but only and I repeat, only if you use God’s plan.
So plus H, sharing the happiness of God is a state of your soul.
It’s not something somebody
can do for you. It’s not something somebody can give you. It is your insulation against fear and
arrogance in your life. Having this kind of happiness is a phenomenal asset. Listen to Job 5:17,
“Therefore,
[plus H, the happiness of God, our problem-solving device]
happiness belongs to the
man whom God corrects, so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.”
First of all,
“God
disciplines those that He loves,”
Hebrews 12:6 tells us this. When God puts discipline into our
life and He will, it’s always designed to correct our course. It’s always designed to keep us from
544-Happiness-Explained-transcript.pdf
self-destructing. It’s not designed because He’s angry at you and He’s trying to hurt you. If God
allows disaster to come into your life there may be a lot of reasons and discipline could be one of
them. Never hate the discipline of God. The Bible clearly says in Proverbs 15:10,
“He that hates
the reproach of God’s shall die.”
Hey listen, when God has to lower the hammer as in Hebrews
12:6-12, suck it up and listen to what He’s trying to tell you or else you’re going to wind up
shortening your life. You see, the Bible says He wounds us but He also bandages us. He strikes
us but His hands also heal us.
“He can deliver us,”
the Bible says in Job 5:19,
“from six different
calamities. Wait a minute, even seven and in these no evil shall touch you.”
Listen to what is
written in Job 5:20-26,
“In time of famine He will redeem you from death. In time of war from
the power of the sword. You will be protected from malicious gossip and you will not be afraid of
the destruction when it comes and you will laugh at destruction and famine and need not be
afraid of the beast of the earth. You will come to your grave in a full age as stacks of grain are
harvested in their season.”
This is a wonderful promise from God.
As a mature believer, that’s
a believer who number one stays filled with the Holy Spirit, number two continues to take
in God’s Word consistently and makes application to his life and number three begins to
replicate the life of Christ by renovating his thinking,
when you come to your end it will not
be a moment too soon. God will not take you too soon. He will leave you until His plan is
complete so there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Plus H, sharing the happiness of God, is the
monopoly of any believer who is spiritually mature.
Unfortunately there are only a few
believers who reach this. You know, spiritual autonomy, spiritual self-esteem, spiritual maturity,
that’s the road. It is all in phase 2 of God’s plan. Phase 1, salvation,
“Believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ and you will be saved.”
Phase 2, spirituality, now that I’m a Christian, what am I suppose
to do? And phase 3, the believer in eternity. Once you enter into eternity, what’s it going to be
like, what’s there, what can you expect? It’s all in the Bible. In phase 2 of the Christian life, this
happiness that I’m talking about is a phenomenal happiness and you’re going to be surprised
when I show you where it comes from.
Very few believers have this sort of happiness and
basically it’s because they cannot be consistent in their post-salvation spiritual lives.
They
cannot be consistent, consistent in rebounding and staying filled with the Spirit and taking in
God’s Word on a daily basis. These sort of people cannot concentrate on the Word of God long
enough to learn anything because they are easily distracted and easily discouraged. You know the
world is out there to distract you, the world will do this. The flesh, your sin nature, will destroy
you. And Satan will deceive you. Most people can’t get past the lure of the world. But if you can,
then perfect happiness is found in 1 John 1:4 where it says this.
“We write these things that our
joy may be brought to completion.”
This sort of happiness that I’m talking about comes through
the communication of the Word of God by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit and it’s the
process that has to be completed. God has a process that you must learn. This plus H, this sharing
the happiness of God, can be defined as the happiness of the humanity of Jesus Christ. He had it
during His time on this earth during the great power experiment of His hypostatic union, He had
this sort of happiness. He talked about it in Hebrews 12 where it says,
“Who for the joy that was
544-Happiness-Explained-transcript.pdf
set before Him endured the cross,”
the joy that was set before Him. What kind of joy? The joy of
knowing that He was exactly where God wanted Him to be, fulfilling God’s plan. First of all, you
will never be happy until you’re there.
Until you are absolutely sure that you are in the plan of
God, you will never be happy.
You will always second-guess yourself. You will always be
wondering, “What am I doing wrong? Why am I not happy?” It’s because you’re out of the will
of God, you’re out of fellowship, you’re not growing spiritually, you’re not the man or the woman
God wants you to be, but there’s always hope. There is always time because divine happiness can
be resident in your soul. Paul said it best in Philippians 1:21. He said,
“For me living is Jesus
Christ and dying, that’s profit,”
that’s promotion. You see the relationship between our Lord’s
plus H, His happiness and my or your happiness, our plus H, this relationship comes from John
15:11 where Jesus said these words, listen carefully,
“I taught you these things in order that My
happiness might be in you and that your happiness might be complete.”
Our Lord in this passage
had been teaching on the vine and the branches and the key statement He made is this,
“If you
abide in Me and My words abide in you,”
in other words, “if you keep My mandates, you will
abide in My love.” That’s all it boils down to.
“If you abide in Me
[stay in fellowship]
and if My
words abide in you,”
[grow in grace and learn God’s plan] you can have the same happiness that
He had, perfect happiness. It’s always related to the grace policy of God. You don’t believe this?
You don’t think that happiness comes from God’s grace? Listen to
Psalm 31:7,
“I will rejoice
and be happy in the provisions of Your grace,”
grace. Our faith in Jesus Christ is a grace asset.
Christianity is not a religion of works. It’s not a religion of suffering and pain. It’s a religion of
grace. It is Christ living in me. He paid for my sin. He’s already done the judging, it’s already
been done, Christ was judged on the cross. I don’t have to try to please God by trying to make up
for all of my sins. My sins were paid for. Now I do have some things to do, yes. I do need to stay
out of the flesh, I do need to stay away from the lure of the world, and I certainly don’t need to be
deceived by Satan. My sins have been paid for it. So I don’t need to go around with my head
hanging down wondering whether or not I’m going to heaven. If I have accepted Christ as my
Savior, the Bible says,
“These things are written so that you may know that you have eternal
life.” “He that has the Son has life and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
This
happiness that I’m talking about is a phenomenal thing. We all say, you know you’ve said it, “I’m
happy.” You know the thing grandma says when all the grandkids are there, “I’m so happy,” or
dad says when he gets to do what he wants to do for the weekend, nobody to bug him, “I’m
happy. I’m having a great time.” What we’re really talking about are the circumstances that make
us happy. You know, I have times that I’m supremely happy. If I’m out on the lake fishing and I’m
catching bass and I’m running down the lake in my bass boat, I’m happy. Yeah it’s great but this
is not the kind of happiness I’m talking about. If that’s the only happiness you have, the
happiness that’s related to circumstances, then no matter what you’ll have, you’ll always want
more because there always will be something more you want. Accumulating more and more and
more does not make you happy and it does not give you contentment. Happiness, that’s a
wonderful problem-solving device. It’s a status quo, one that never looks over the horizon and
544-Happiness-Explained-transcript.pdf
never, ever wants more. In Philippians 4:10 Paul said,
“I rejoice,”
I rejoice, that’s the word for
happiness,
chairo,
I’m happy,
“In the Lord greatly that now at last, your care for me has
flourished again.”
This is a contribution that came into him, a financial gift while Paul was
under house arrest delivered by Epaphroditus. He said,
“I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at
last your care for me has flourished again, though you surely did care but you lacked the
opportunity to provide.”
And then he said this amazing thing. Yes, he just got a large gift from
the church at Philippi. Epaphroditus brought it. He’s able to afford this house arrest he’s under
and then he says this.
“Not that I speak in regards to need for I have learned that whatever state
I’m in to be content. I know how to be abased
[humble]
and I know how to abound
[have more
than you need]
everywhere and in all things I have learned
[this is the key word, learned]
both to
be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need because I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me.”
Here’s your keywords,
“I have learned whatever state I’m in to be
content
[independent of external circumstances]
I know how to be made humble
[that’s abased, I
know how to be brought into a humble condition]
and I know how to abound
[this is to have
more than I need]
everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, to
abound and to suffer need because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
That’s an amazing statement. This should be our statement shouldn’t it?
God’s matchless grace
has designed a spiritual life for us, a life that we can live that can overcome the best or the
worst of our environment whether it’s prosperity or adversity.
You know some people think
prosperity is not a test. It’s a bigger test than adversity. When you get under prosperity, you forget
about God. You focus on the gift and forget about the Giver but when you’re under adversity,
you’re focusing on the Giver, wanting the gift. Actually prosperity can destroy more people than
adversity. God gives you the ability through His Word and by means of the filling of the Holy
Spirit to live or die with great capacity for life. You know, having the ability to be alone or
having the ability to be in a crowd, and having perfect happiness and perfect contentment is an
amazing thing. It’s sort of a self-contained happiness. We can become slaves to a system or a
dependency. We spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need. We’re looking for
some narcotic to deaden the pain of our empty life and stability in American society is
disappearing because there’s a lack of self-contained happiness. People need something to make
them happy. They can’t handle being alone. They can’t handle being content. You must remember
we are responsible for our own happiness. Nothing outside of us is responsible to make us happy.
Our neighbors are not responsible to make us happy. We are responsible for our own happiness
and this happiness that I’m talking about, this plus H, this self-contained happiness is an inner
happiness and it goes with you as a constant companion. Therefore, you will be above any
circumstances in your life. This happiness, self-contained happiness is a Biblical promise and it’s
part of God’s plan for you. Romans 14:17,
“For the kingdom of God is not eating and it is not
drinking. Instead, it is righteousness, prosperity, and happiness by means of the Holy Spirit.”
1
Thessalonians 1:6,
“You also have become imitators of us and of our Lord, receiving the Word
with much pressure, with happiness from the Holy Spirit.”
Romans 14:22
, “The doctrine which
544-Happiness-Explained-transcript.pdf
you have, you have it on the basis of your own norms and standards which you have before God.
Happiness belongs to the person who does not condemn himself in what he does.”
This sort of
happiness as a problem-solving device, this plus H, is mandated for us. We must have it,
Philippians 3:1,
“Keep on having happiness in the Lord,”
there’s our source.
A prepositional
phrase,
“In the Lord,”
that’s where it comes from. Contentment is the profile of the believer who
has self-contained happiness.
If you have self-contained happiness you will have
contentment. 1 Timothy 6:6,
“Godliness is a means of great profit when accompanied by
contentment.”
Contentment, this means you’ve learned to have a lot or have a little, it doesn’t
make any difference. This sort of happiness that I’m talking about is characterized by tranquility
of soul, no stress in the soul, contentment, capacity for life and love and appreciation and
gratitude and thanksgiving. You will never feel threatened by any circumstances, this sort of life
is invigorating, it’s stimulating. It comes from having the right priorities. Having the happiness
of God is you having a true sense of security like eternal security. No fear in time. No worry in
time. It’s a stability produced by the honor and virtue of God from the source of His Word living
inside of you. Remember,
“The Word of God is alive and powerful,”
living inside of you. What a
great thing, this happiness that God offers for you, what a great thing. My job is to communicate
the truth, I’ve done it, communicated God’s Word. I’m not a comedian, I’m a communicator and I
communicate with accurate content. The Holy Spirit’s job is to capture what I communicated to
you if you are filled with the Holy Spirit. Then you comprehend it, understand what I said. If you
stuck with me this entire show, you comprehended what I said, but now the challenge. Will you
convert it? Will you transfer what you heard into wisdom in your soul? Will you make the
application of this into your life, will you? See, it’s one thing to hear it, it’s another thing to apply
it and you probably need to hear it again don’t you. It’s on our website, you can go to the website
and listen to it again. It’s up there, rickhughesministries.org, you can always contact me. Don’t
forget plus H, sharing the happiness of God. It is a wonderful, wonderful problem-solving device
and it starts with you believing in Jesus Christ and receiving Him as your Savior.
There’s no
greater joy than knowing you have eternal life and knowing for sure that when you die, you
will in fact go to heaven.
This gives you a peace in your life that is beyond understanding and
then as you grow in grace, as you take in God’s Word and learn it and apply it in your life, you
will begin to replicate the life of Christ. You will be a magnet to other people. They will not
understand why you’re always so happy and it’s because of your relationship with Christ. I hope
you’re listening, I hope you’re learning, I hope you’ll be back next week. Until then, this is your
host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to the FLOT Line.