A prayer to be happy

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal writes, "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves."  Do you not find this to be true for yourself?  All that you do, if you think carefully about it, you do because you believe it will, in the long run, make you happy.  Even things you do not "want" to do, like going to work or having a hard conversation, you do because you are convinced your happiness depends upon it.  There is no question, we want to be happy.

But, does God want you to be happy?  The Bible answers that question with a resounding Yes!  However, God does not want us to be happy in any way we want but to be happy in him.  It is his will that we "delight in the Lord", Psalm 37:4.  God's will that we find our joy in him is expressed in many ways.  Today I want to consider a prayer we are taught to pray by God to be happy.  Psalm 90:14 says, "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days."

God wants us to be satisfied with his unfailing love because he tells us to ask for it in this psalm.  To be satisfied is to be content, to want nothing more.  It is to say, I have all I want and need.  For people like us who live in a consumerist culture, satisfaction is a rare experience.  We have been trained since childhood to be dissatisfied with everything so that we will buy new.  There is a way to always be content people and that is to have God himself satisfy you with his unfailing love.  This love is the love which God has for us is secured by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; that is why it is a steadfast, unfailing love.

Notice that when God answers our prayer to satisfy us with his love, then we rejoice and are glad all our days.  There is no want in our lives any longer, no lack because we have everything when we are satisfied with the love of God in Christ.  When we have all we want we cannot help but be glad, to show forth our joy in rejoicing.

Much, not all, of our sorrow is due to the fact that we do not look to God to satisfy us with his steadfast love but we look to our spouses to satisfy us with their kindness or our children to satisfy us with their respect and admiration or our jobs to satisfy us with meaningful work or our retirement accounts to satisfy us with security or our friends to satisfy us with their admiration.  However, none of these finite hings can satisfy us and thus make us glad "all our days" because they all are temporary and changeable.  However, the love of God in Christ is unfailing, steadfast, unchangeable and eternal and thus can never fail to fill us up.

So today begin asking God to satisfy you with his unfailing love so that you can be glad (happy) all your days.  Ask his forgiveness for all the ways you seek to be satisfied in other things and people and thank him that Jesus died so you can be forgiven for you treating his love with contempt as you seek happiness in other things.