Quotes about Happiness

John Wesley said, "A sour religion is the devil's religion."[284] The sure way to have a sour religion is to believe in a sour God. We play right into the devil's hands when we fail to recognize and teach the happiness of God.

Sin is the biggest enemy of happiness because it results in a broken relationship with God. Forgiveness is its greatest friend, because it reunites us with the happy God.

Even if materialism brought happiness in this life (which it certainly does not), it would leave us woefully unprepared for the next.   Materialism blinds us to our spiritual poverty. It's a fruitless attempt to find meaning outside of God, the Source of all life and the Giver of all good gifts.

Anyone who has tasted rotten fruit is right to object to rottenness. But they're wrong to object to fruit itself! There's good fruit and bad fruit. There's righteous happiness and sinful happiness.

Being happy in God and living righteously tastes far better for far longer than sin does. When my hunger and thirst for joy is satisfied by Christ, sin becomes unattractive. I say no to immorality not because I hate pleasure but because I want the enduring pleasure found in Christ.

Countless people in worse situations are happier than those in better situations. This demonstrates that happiness is dependent not on circumstances but on perspective, which is determined by our focus.

Both psychological research and Scripture demonstrate that those who give generously and serve others are happy people.

Augustine was right: "It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains that all men desire to be happy. . . . The happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God.

Why aren't you happy?" they tend to focus on their current circumstances. Happy people look to Someone so big that by his grace, even great difficulties provide opportunities for a deeper kind of happiness.

Yes, Satan rebelled. Yes, Adam and Eve freely chose sin, and with it death and suffering. And yes, the all-powerful, happy God could have intervened to prevent those choices. If that intervention would have brought him more glory and us more good, no doubt he would have done it. But God, in his wisdom, determined that not even rebellion and sin could thwart his plan to further his happiness and that of his people.

The human race is homesick for Eden, which only two humans have ever known. We spend our lives chasing peaceful delight, following dead ends or cul-de-sacs in pursuit of home. We know intuitively that we've wandered. What we don't know is how to return. Our lives are largely the story of the often wrong and occasionally right turns we take in our attempts to get home to Happiness with a capital H—God himself.

Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6, emphasis added). Call that payoff contentment, satisfaction, peace, or excitement—it all adds up to one word: happiness