If You Want to Get Warm, You Must Stand by the Fire!

Good morning,

I picked up a new book for our upcoming trip to celebrate my husband, Steve’s 60^th birthday. The book quotes a wonderful Christian author, C.S.Lewis: “If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire. If you want joy… peace, eternal life, you must get close to …the thing that has them.”

God is the source of happiness, peace, joy, salvation. I know I am preaching to the choir to most people about God being the source. The thing a lot of us don’t know how to do is draw from the source.

I think one thing that prohibits some from getting close to God is the plain truth that God wants you to be happy! God is happy, and he wants us to be happy, too. Why else would Scripture call him “the happy God”? Why else would he call the gospel the “good news of great joy” and go to extraordinary lengths to ensure our eternal happiness?

Unfortunately, many believers are taught that God wants us to be holy but not happy and that joy and happiness are fundamentally different. We’ve even been left with the impression that God himself isn’t happy. Yet nothing could be further from the truth!

Christians shouldn’t deny or ignore suffering. We should be so energized by contagious joy and radiate such inner happiness, peace, and contentment that others are attracted to what we have in Christ. Yet Christians are often perceived as angry, judgmental, and duty-driven.

Let me list a few truths about God. Read these to yourself and speak them out loud and,  just like getting warm at a fire when you stand close, read and draw near to our loving, fun, happy-for-you-in-life God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Why a triune God, who is love, wants you loved, has prepared an eternity for you to be close to Him, want you healed and well, He gives us some of our greatest gifts in our worst trials–why? Because He uses everything and continually wants us to find joy, love, and peace in every circumstance.

When God grants happiness to us, He reveals His own happiness

Nehemiah 8:10: The joy that the Lord gives you will make you strong.

Jeremiah 32:41: I will rejoice in doing them good and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

I read once, “God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego, but an act of infinite giving. The reason God seeks our praise is not because he won’t be fully God until he gets it, but that we won’t be happy until we give it. This is not arrogance. This is grace.”

God wants us happy! God is happy! Now give God a smile and go have a great day!!

Love you, Teri