There are no promises of comfort, or health, or wealth on this side of heaven. You can do everything right — work hard and get a good education, but that is no guarantee that you will be successful or happy all the time. However, a lack of guaranteed success, much less happiness, does not spell certain and permanent destitution. Rather, there simultaneously exists a significantly higher chance of success and happiness — especially in America.
Our founding fathers got it right when they wrote that we all have the right to ‘the pursuit of happiness’. They chose the word ‘pursuit’ intentionally because there are no guarantees when it comes to success and happiness. Some people create a false dichotomy by assuming if there are no certainties when it comes to comfort, health, and wealth that it is impossible to be happy. Almost all successful people will tell you that the pursuit of something is more fulfilling than achieving the end goal. We always need to be in pursuit, to be working.
Jesus gave all of us, gentiles and Israelites the same equal opportunity — but with Jesus it’s not just an ideal we aspire to, it’s truth, it’s a promise. While we do aspire to be more Christ-like, the opportunity to be a Christian and be forgiven of your sin is an opportunity equally afforded to us all — we just have to take it, it is not given to us automatically. The Bible spells it out simply, hear the Word (Romans 10:17), believe (John 3:16), repent (Luke 13:3), confess Jesus is Lord (Matthew 16:16), be baptized (1 Peter 3:21), live a faithful life serving Jesus (2 Timothy 2:15).
I stated earlier that there is no guarantee of worldly success, much less happiness — even if you do everything right. Jesus is the perfect example, He actually did live a perfect, sinless life — and He was crucified in the end! What worldly hope can there possibly be for us? Jesus spelled it out in John 15:18, ‘ If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ‘ If you believe that happiness comes from material things, like comfort and wealth, it seems that Jesus should’ve been unhappy, yet he wasn’t. In an article on the web site Desiring God, Randy Alcorn put it like this (paraphrasing): Instead of being miserable about the state of the world and condemning it, He was happy to show grace and mercy to those who don’t deserve it (end paraphrase). He took pleasure in a job well done, in doing His Father’s will. While we are on this side of Heaven, or ‘under the sun’ as Ecclesiastes phrases it, we are to eat and drink and find enjoyment in our toil:
There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25
To sum it all up — if you are living to serve yourself, to make yourself happy, you won’t succeed. A lot of people who are rich are miserable. People who put their trust in their health, wealth and comfort live in fear of losing them. I see it now with the pandemic — people who have no hope outside of this world are scared. As Christians this is an excellent time to witness to those same people about the hope we DO have and using our faith to set an example by taking preventative measures while also striving to live a normal life and serving others (1 Corinthians 9:19 says to serve all). To put it another way, the ‘rain’ of this pandemic is another opportunity for us as Christians to win the lost and ‘produce a crop’ of righteous believers, otherwise we are in danger of being cursed. Hebrews 6:7-8 describes this situation perfectly and others like it:
Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.
Hebrews 6:7-8
Work should be its own reward, even if it’s just toil in the pursuit of happiness. It’s the journey that matters. It’s the relationships we form that matters. For apart from God, how can we even enjoy these things? If we work to serve God, then happiness and contentment will be a by-product. Paul repeatedly talked about this while being shipwrecked, imprisoned and tortured (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). We must not work for happiness out of selfish ambition, as Philippians 2:3 says. We must work for a purpose greater than ourselves, for God, and for His Son who forgave us and provided us all with a new opportunity, for eternal life by serving Him. We just have to take it.