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.