Happiness and joy are key components of a relationship with God. But people don’t always associate a faith journey with being happy. Read on for insights about teaching kids that God desires happiness and joy for his followers!
Recently I talked with a young woman who viewed the Christian life as one of utter dullness. She knew that following Christ was the right thing to do. But she was certain it would mean sacrificing her happiness.
Where did this young woman, who grew up in a fine Christian family and church, acquire such an unbiblical notion? What are we doing that leaves many of our children and churches laboring under such false impressions? What are we missing?
Why do we think it would be unspiritual for the Christian life to center on what God calls the good news of happiness (Isaiah 52:7)?
Throughout history, celebration and gladness of heart have characterized the church, including the suffering church. Scripturally, the culture of God’s people is one of joy and happiness. Christians express gratitude, eat together, sing and dance, and make music. It’s not the people who know God who have reason to be miserable. It’s those who don’t.
Unfortunately, children who grow up seeing church as a morose, hypercritical place will turn their backs on it in their quest for happiness. Those who find happiness in the church, and ultimately in Christ, will usually stay or return.
If we want our children and grandchildren and future generations to seek God as the answer to their deepest longings? Then we must teach them the foundational truth that He is by nature happy. They need to see that the God who brings them the Good News really can (and longs to) “change their sadness into happiness” (Jeremiah 31:13, NCV).
Happiness & Joy as Christians
When we understand that the God of the Bible is both happy and powerful enough to overcome our greatest grief and suffering and to give us cause for eternal happiness? Then Satan’s arguments against trusting God will lose their power.
Sadly, few churches teach that God is happy—or wants us to be happy. We are unintentionally silencing the biblical revelation of one part of God’s nature, at great loss to the church, families, and individuals.
It’s vital that we not leave our children and future generations of Christians to figure out for themselves that God is happy. Most never will. How can they, unless their families and churches teach them and demonstrate God-centered happiness?
We need to tell students that sin, suffering, shame and unhappiness are temporary conditions for God’s people. We’ll once and for all be righteous, healthy, shame-free, and happy. After we’re in His presence, we’ll never again experience the anger, judgment and discipline of God we see in Scripture. (All those aspects are appropriate and important, but even now do not nullify His happiness or love.)
How To Teach About God
What if kids learned from childhood that to know God is to know happiness? And to not know Him is misery that propels us to search for happiness where it can’t be found?
What if, without having to explore the world’s sin, as Augustine did, they could understand his prayer after his conversion. “There is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. You, yourself, are their joy”?[i] What if they understood Augustine’s words, “They who think there is another, pursue some other and not the true joy”?[ii]
Children need to see in our families and churches a breadth of Christ-centered, ultimately optimistic happiness. And they need to hear that this happiness originates in God, not the world? That would fulfilled these words… “That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God” (Psalm 78:6-7, NASB)?
