Ahhhhhh… Having preached on this very subject yesterday, I found this in my inbox. I’m going to share this today because I need to work on this very thing.
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/in-love-with-the-life-you-dont-have?utm_campaign=Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=201564473&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_M1rLxbKc9ENVEZ2vaCXIW1Sbt3pfk7aujm0Z5KZ1kjuKY0QkbevasmJ_4EqaMffowLLCnNN0lrahUYjXul_mseGBwvw&utm_content=201564473&utm_source=hs_email
JANUARY
30, 2022
In Love with the Life You
Don’t Have
The secret to happiness, some have wisely said, is to
want what you already have.
How many of us can truly say with C.S.
Lewis’s character in Shadowlands, “You know, I don’t want to be somewhere
else anymore. I’m not waiting for anything new to happen . . . not looking
around the next corner and over the next hill. I’m here now. That’s enough.”
Instead, unhappiness finds us wanting a
life we don’t have. If this, this, and this happens, then I’ll be content. The easiest
loves are the ones we don’t have. Our neighbor’s grass grows greener as we keep
staring at it. If our desires could remain on our own property, we would be happier.
We would better love the life we have.
This secret to happiness is not a new one.
Centuries ago, puritan Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646) wrote in The Rare Jewel of Christian
Contentment that “A Christian comes to contentment, not so
much by way of addition, as by way of subtraction” (45). He meant that the Christian
achieves happiness not by adding more to life to satisfy his gaping desires,
but instead by subtracting from his desires, bringing them down to the
situation God has placed him.
Paul practiced this when he sought to curb
young Timothy’s desires for money, reasoning that we come into the world and
leave it with nothing and that many have apostatized by this love. The apostle
gives us a window into his own happiness, saying, “If we have food and
clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:8).
With just the basics of what we need for an adequate human existence, Paul will
find what many kings with lavish palaces could not: contentment.
You Shall Not
Covet
Long before Burroughs, the great Architect
of man’s happiness wove this happiness principle into creation itself. He
etched instructions for his creatures’ gladness in stone, saying, “You shall
not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or
his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything
that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17). In other words, keep your desires at
home, want what you have, not what your neighbor has.
And he reiterates this word to the Church, yet adds
something we cannot afford to miss. The writer of Hebrews begins with the
command,
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you
have.” (Hebrews 13:5–6)
Here again, want what you already have. Don’t slave to
make your bank account rise to match your desires, but bring your desires down
to match what God has put in your bank account. He reminds us that the answer
to happiness is not bigger and better, but simpler and more grateful. “Keep
your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.”
Be Content with
Who You Have
But the verse continues:
Keep your life free from love of money, and
be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
You might need to read the verse again. Did you see the
shift?
God changes the focus for the Christian
from what he has,
to who he has.
God tells us to do more than match our desires to our circumstances; we
reconsider our circumstances based on the promise of enduring relationship with
our God: I
will never leave you nor forsake you.
Dissatisfaction has a voice. You should have that car. . . .
You would be happy with his job or her husband. . . . If only you made double
what you make now. . . . To this internal proposal, God means
to add his own voice: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
When discontent suggests, Your current job is okay, but
you would be happier to have one that grants more recognition. . . .
God says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Your car does fine, but imagine how you would
look if you had that one. . . .
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
This church is technically faithful, but the
pastor could be more entertaining — and the children’s program . . . .
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Why don’t I have a husband or children like
she has?
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
When we hear temptations to desire more and better, which
voice do we listen to?
Shallow Wells
Now, getting a new job, a new car, or even a new church —
or longing to be married and have children — these are not the issue. The issue
is the internal restlessness and misguided search that leads us to climb from
hill to hill expecting happiness just atop the next one. As we ascend the hill
called “prestigious career,” or “beautiful wife,” or “bigger house,” we keep
climbing, keep mumbling, keep searching for what we haven’t found.
“God gives
himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more.”
And while the world, the flesh, and the
devil tempt us to chase and chase, God offers himself as the end of our satisfaction. He gives
himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more. Wonder of wonders,
God does not merely say to his child, “The secret to happiness is to want what
you already have.” He says, “The secret to happiness is to want what you
already have in me.”
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be
thirsty again,” Jesus promises, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will
give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:13–14).
The only search that remains is to go deeper in communion with him.
All We Could
Want
As sons and daughters of Adam, we ache under the dim
memory of a forgotten past. A time when man walked with God, communing with him
in perfect fellowship. Of gardens full of fruit, of a mission bestowing
purpose, of pleasure and delight and satisfaction — none more than in the King
of that realm.
“God says, ‘The
secret to happiness is to want what you already have in me.’”
And though we have exchanged such knowledge and such
glory for mere trifles of earth, for a life elsewhere, it has not worked. We
look this way and that in vain for the kind of happiness our sin and Satan
promised. In such condition it is not enough to scale back our desires to our
circumstances. The darkness, the thirst, the sense of something else, the lost
stare out the window will not subside on their own.
Jesus himself must be the Vine to withering branches,
Living Water to parched places, Bread of Life to starving souls, Resurrection
to lifeless bodies, the Way to lost wanderers, the Truth to deceived minds, the
Shepherd for missing sheep, our Light in this present darkness. The secret to
happiness is to be in union with this Christ, forgiven by this Christ, welcomed
and forever belonging to God in this Christ. A Christ who promises that he will
never leave us nor forsake us nor ever tire of being all we could ever want.
Greg Morse is a staff writer for desiringGod.org
and graduate of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He and his wife,
Abigail, live in St. Paul with their son and daughter.
