Divine Mandates to Happiness

Since God possesses perfect happiness, He desires to share His perfect happiness with us, and so He mandates that we have His perfect happiness. We as members of the royal family of God therefore have the potential for realizing His perfect happiness. God will keep you alive long enough to attain that perfect happiness, provided you are faithful in the perception of doctrine. The ultimate objective of the predesigned plan of God is to provide for you perfect happiness.

Consequently, perfect happiness is attained in the three stages of spiritual adulthood, and is a part of glorifying God in the Church-age. You cannot glorify God unless you possess perfect happiness. Since the acquisition of perfect happiness is related to spiritual adulthood and the glorification of God in the pre-designed plan of God for the Church-age, such happiness is a command!

You are ordered and commanded by the Word of God to have happiness. If you do not have God's perfect happiness this is an act of disobedience on your part.Psalm 97:12 "Be happy in the Lord, O righteous ones, and give thanks for the memory of His holiness." A believer who has the happiness of God developing within will be able to give thanks in all circumstances of life. As you begin to have perfect happiness, thanksgiving becomes a moment-by-moment attitude of your soul. 1Thess 5:16-18 "Rejoice or be happy always;"pray without ceasing or continually; in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.Do not quench the Spirit [rely on your own human power];" Until you can give thanks for everything, both the blessings and adversities of your life, you have not yet come close to having perfect happiness.

Phil 3:1 "Finally, my brethren, keep on having happiness in the Lord. To be writing this same mandate to you, on the one hand, is not tedious, while on the other hand, it is a safeguard to you." Some of the recipients of this letter may have been annoyed because Paul had commanded them to be happy before. Paul had the audacity, even in writing Scripture, to repeat. However, inculcation and repetition is the only way to learn doctrine. Repetition is the only way to learn to do something automatically. The more things you can do automatically, the greater your life will be.

The greatest experience of security in this life is to attain perfect happiness. Once you have God's happiness in your soul, it is the ultimate of security, the basis for spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity. This is security for you because, when you get under pressure, you will think the right thing, do the right thing, and apply the right doctrine because you have repeatedly learned to do the right thing under normal circumstances.

Phil 4:4 "Keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times; once more I repeat the command, keep on having happiness." This is a command in the present tense because perfect happiness is the only happiness in the world you can have at all times, wherever you are, no matter what your circumstances.

Perfect happiness which you attain in time you carry with you into the eternal state. Perfect happiness is not something you attain in the eternal state, although there is happiness and blessing for all believers there. Perfect happiness must be developed here in time.

It is designed for living and dying now! But in order to fulfill the command for happiness, you can't be hypocritical and fake it. To obey the command to "keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times" is something we cannot do on our own any more than we can do anything on our own for salvation. All we can attain on our own, independently of the plan of God and the power of Bible doctrine is the momentary happiness or establishment happiness. This divine command can only be executed through residence, function, momentum inside the protocol plan of God in the attainment of the three stages of spiritual adulthood.

Nehemiah 8:10 anticipated this, "Do not be grieved, for the happiness of the Lord is your strength." So in Phil 4:4, hearing this twice-repeated command and knowing how to execute it are two different things. There are a number of things you first must learn to execute God's plan. Yet Christians want instant solutions and miracles, implying that God is disorganized. We must first learn His plan and His solutions to have His perfect happiness. If we refuse, we will be miserable in spite of what we possess or what environment we have. For example, the woman in the Garden had everything in perfect environment including a perfect, wonderful husband. Yet she wanted more than a perfect husband, more than a genius, more than perfect sex, more than perfect environment. You can never get enough of the things you don't need, because the things you don't need can never satisfy. She was bored with perfect every thing...but what more could she want? She had everything in life that would make a normal woman happy; she had a beauty that never changed and perfect health as she came from the hand of God. Yet her conversations indicated that she was not satisfied with what she had. This immediately indicates that she didn't have perfect happiness, because contentment is a synonym for perfect happiness.

Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. In fact, unhappiness is in not knowing what we want, and then killing ourselves to get it. The key phrase of the woman's unhappiness in the Garden is "I want more!" She was bored with perfect everything including a perfect intellect. What more could she want? She had everything in life that would make a normal woman happy, yet her conversations with the serpent indicated that she was not content with what she had. Whoever does not regard what he has as most sufficient wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

This principle was taught in the Garden of Eden to us and it was taught in the gospels by our Lord. Mark 8:36 "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?" In fact, to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. We know the woman wanted more because her conversations with the serpent indicated this. That's why in Gen 3:1 the serpent "said to the woman, 'Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?'"

You see, he's trying to make her focus in on something she doesn't have and she is not to possess, because the serpent knew that she was discontent and frustrated. Gen 3:2 "And the woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;" Gen 3:3 "but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.'" The serpent said in effect, "You don't seem to be happy; is there anything you can't have?" She said, "Yes, God has said we cannot eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." Then she added something God had not said, "You cannot eat from it or touch it lest you die." In other words, the woman lacked something in her capacity to hear clearly and objectively what the divine prohibition involved. She developed a fear; she was afraid that even if she touched the tree she would die. You cannot have fear without having arrogance, and she was developing arrogance. Her combination of arrogance and fear caused her to want something more.

Adam didn't understand this; he was his magnificent self: attractive, wonderful, kind, intelligent, successful, and a great lover. And we know this because of what Paul says to us in 1 Tim 2:14 "And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression." So, no matter what the woman had, it wasn't enough; she wanted more. One of the secrets of happiness is to admire without desiring. You can admire something or someone without having to have it! You can discover happiness by limiting your desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. She lived in perfect environment, yet she didn't have perfect happiness as a problem-solving device, so she began looking around. So Satan began to use this prohibition. "Do you know why God has forbidden that tree?" He said to the woman in Gen 3:4 "You surely shall not die!" Gen 3:5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

What Satan said merely reflected his own fall. He was Lucifer, Son of the Morning, the most beautiful creature that ever came from the hand of God. He was beautiful and magnificent, and had a perfect personality and genius. He was the ruler of all the angels; he sat at the right hand of the throne of God as Lucifer; he was the anointed cherub, the highest class of angels. But he also wanted something more! There was nothing more he could have that he didn't already have, but he was not happy. Therefore, one day he decided that he wouldn't be happy until he replaced God! He considered God to be a challenge!

When people are not happy and have no spiritual self-esteem or self-esteem, they feel threatened. Within them is a combination of two things, arrogance and fear, which always go together. In fear, you feel challenged by this or that, and in your arrogance, overcome that fear by seizing the thing that threatens you. So Satan made it clear that the woman was threatened by the tree, called the Tree of Knowledge. This woman had perfect intellect; she had knowledge of all things around her because her husband was the ruler of the world. But this was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a knowledge she did not possess. For this reason, theologians have made the mistake of calling this state of perfection "The Age of Innocence."

Adam and the woman were not innocent, but there were some things they did not have to know because they were in perfection. So Satan made his point, "There is something you're lacking. There is more to be had; of course you're not satisfied. That's because God has been unfair to you. God has withheld something from you; He has withheld the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do you know why? God is afraid." It was Satan who was afraid. Satan also possessed the knowledge of good and evil and he was miserable. Another interesting principle here is that before we set our hearts too much on anything, we should examine how happy are those who already possess it. Arrogance plus fear leads to great instability no matter what you have. In fear and arrogance you will always feel threatened by something in life, even if you're in perfect environment. So Satan ascribed to God his very own fear, although God is perfect and has never been afraid. And we see this in the human race; people ascribe to others their own weaknesses and flaws; even though in reality, the accused ones don't share their flaws. Some people cannot identify with others unless the others are as weak as they are. Therefore, they accuse others of being arrogant when those people are actually humble, or they accuse others of fear, when they themselves are afraid. So, the story of Adam and the woman show why love and happiness have eluded the human race in general down to this very moment. You only have two chances at love and happiness:

• As an unbeliever, you can have establishment happiness including human self-esteem and humility.
• As a believer, the only hope for love and happiness in your life that is real and meaningful is to attain virtue-love and perfect happiness as problem-solving devices. With perfect happiness, no matter what your circumstances, your happiness continues to exist, and you equate living with dying (Phi 1:21), and adversity with prosperity.

Happiness and love are meaningless as a state of happiness. We all say at certain times that we are happy or in love, but we are really talking about being in pleasant or enjoyable circumstances. But without perfect happiness, there is always the same problem: no matter what you have, you will want more! As long as there's something more that you must have, you aren't happy. You have to find happiness in yourself before you can find it with someone or something. Accumulating more and more of anything can't make you happy; these things are just temporary stimulation. This explains drug addiction; a person who experiences some high the first time he tries a drug will spend years trying to reproduce that same first high. Happiness is derived from tranquility, not by taking drugs and tranquilizers but by developing a proper, disciplined, efficient life with regular habits.

Marriage is a divine institution ordained by God. However, He didn't ordain it as a system of happiness, but as a system of relationship. Whether you are happy in any relationship or not, whether it is marriage, business, social life, or friendship, you will never have happiness or love by simply being in some state that you now associate with happiness. Yet most people think, "If I could just....I would be happy." We associate so many things with happiness that is really not happiness at all. We mix up stimulation, sex, and animated conversation with happiness. Happiness is actually a problem-solving device. It is a status quo, but one that never looks over the horizon and wants more. And due to the Fall of Adam and the woman, God in His matchless grace designed something that can overcome the best or worst of environments, that can handle prosperity and adversity, which can cause you to live or die with great capacity and that can give you the capacity to handle being alone or in a crowd. There is no problem in life too great for what God has given to you as a part of your portfolio of invisible assets, the problem-solving device of perfect happiness!

Unhappy people take their unhappiness with them wherever they go, even if they cross over to the other side of the fence, whether it's poor or rich, single or married. Those believers who reject Bible doctrine cultivate unhappiness, and always take it with them.

In reality, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, only Bible doctrine in your soul can make you happy; i.e., reception, retention, recall of Bible doctrine. Only the provision of God's grace policy can really make you happy, and that demands the three "R’s:

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