Permanent Happiness
Yesterday, I was
speaking to a couple of friends. Mental health issues. Psychiatric
labels, doctors say, are designed to describe our condition – “clinically
depressed,” “schizophrenic,” “obsessive-compulsive,” etc. I told my friends that, no matter what the psychiatric label is, just one simple word
gives an accurate diagnosis of each mental health patient: “unhappy.”
Happiness. I’d like
to be happy. I’m sure you do too. Everyone does. In our quest for happiness, we
search in various places. Marriage. Family. Money. Fame. Beauty and health.
Enlightenment. Sex. Travel. Sports. Career success. Academic achievement. The
world offers a gigantic “store” of happiness items for people to consume.
Yet, the reality
is, there is no lasting earthly satisfaction. Any sense of happiness we gain in
events along the way fades quickly. High moments become vague memories, if they
can be remembered at all. Oh, of course, we can experience pure delight in our
gains or victories. But always, the delight is so fleeting, and no one can
never go back in time to relive and recapture the sensation.
So we all do
remain thirsty, no matter what. Where then do we find happiness or satisfaction that lasts? How
do we stop being restless or disillusioned, and be healed from the impermanence
and brokenness of our human existence? Whether we realize it or not, every
inner desire or longing of our nature to be happy and fulfilled is nothing less
than a yearning for God. We were all born and designed for His love and we cannot truly be
permanently and deeply happy without Him.
Think about this in
your journey to healing and wholeness. Everything that you desire to be
permanently happy is found in Him – and infinitely more. He said, “If anyone
thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture
has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7: 37, 38).
Go to Him, drink freely, and experience lasting, unbroken joy. That's total healing and wholeness.
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