Intro
Everyone wants to be happy, and maybe are you’re reading this because you aren’t. However, I know that it could be much more serious than that. Perhaps you’ve truly given up on life and have contemplated and/or even tried suicide before and you’re reading this up out of desperation. I’m going to try to keep this short in order to help you read through to the end; but I’m asking that you please try hard to finish it and really think about it.
Hold Up!
The place I’d like to start is by noting that sometimes the way up starts with backing up. I live in South Carolina now, but I love California. And the last place I lived is a town called Laytonville which never really boomed, but it was a nice town and the economy ran pretty well due to the marijuana industry. But now that pot is down, so is the town. In order for Laytonville to get on its feet again, it has to truly stop relying on dope money and rebuild on something more wholesome. I think that’s a pretty good illustration for what I’m trying to say. You aren’t happy. Maybe you’ve tried almost everything and it’s not working because you need to get back to the very start. You need to answer the question of why you exist. In high school and in college, no teacher ever told you the answer. They said you and everything around you just happened by accident; you’ll live a few short years and then in the ground you go—it’s pointlessness. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that God made you and everything you see, and that He made you for a purpose. To a church in the ancient town of Colosse He said, “For by Him [Jesus Christ] all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16). And again to the church in the ancient city of Rome God said, “For of Him and through Him and to Him [are] all things, to whom [be] glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36). What God is saying here is that He created the universe and (as a part of it) you for His purposes and He didn’t consult anybody as to what those purposes should be.
What this means then, is that you have been put here not simply to try to make yourself happy at all costs, but because God created you for His purposes: to know Him and to worship Him as your Maker. You owe Him that.
Have You Been Lost?
What I’m saying is that you need to stop calling the shots in your life and recognize that there is a God in heaven with whom you need to get right. Some people are simply too proud to admit that they have done anything to God worthy of judgment, but the fact is, what He says of me, he says of you, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and “the wages [payment] of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23a). Just think of the world’s most famous Bible verse for a second. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Most people think they love this verse but I’m pretty sure they don’t know what it means. You see that phrase, “should not perish”? Have you ever asked yourself why people are perishing and why they need saving from it? It’s for the same reason written above: people die because they are not right with God.
Christ Finds the Lost Only
So what do you think? Still too proud to admit you’re lost? Just know this, Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). If you’re not lost (i.e. if you don’t admit it) then He didn’t come to save you. But if you are lost, if you know that you’re not worthy of anything less than God’s full justice, then Jesus Christ came to seek and to save people like you!
What Christ Did and What You Ought to Believe
He came from heaven to live the perfect life on this earth; one that you and I could not live and He is willing to credit that as yours if you would receive it (2 Corinthians 5:21). He’s a substitute. Only instead of teaching you how to work your way to heaven, He substitutes His own perfection in exchange of your lack of it so that you might have eternal life. He died on the cross for people like you because the wages of sins must still be paid (1 Peter 2:24). And He rose up alive again to prove the verity of His work (1 Corinthians 15:16–19). There is no baptism you could offer, no amount of good works or of money you could pay in exchange for that gift. It’s called accepting it by faith. It’s believing that the Son of God shed His own precious blood for the guilty and believing that He did it for you. “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). So to bring it full circle: you need to re-prioritize.
Who Are Your Real Friends?
Now here’s where a lie needs to be combated. Some people think that if they do this, all of their problems will go away: they’ll have a great family-life, they’ll be free from addiction, they’ll never be beaten again, they’ll have the motivation to hold down a job, their life will be happy. But you need to understand something. Just like you can tell when people are your friends because of what they get from you — a ride, a smoke, sex — God also knows when people are coming to Him like that. We need to come to God for Him and not just for what He might give to us.
The Meaning in the Miracle
In John’s Gospel, in the sixth chapter, Jesus Christ had just accomplished an incredible miracle by feeding thousands with just five loaves of bread and two fish. Everyone knows that story. But what they don’t know is that those people came back the next day and wanted more food and so the Bible says they were “seeking for Jesus” (John 6:24). That sounds like so many religious experiences today doesn’t it? They see something they like and so they “seek Jesus.”
The Lord Jesus, however, called them out instantly and said this, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life…” (John 6:27). He told them stop working so hard for food which does not actually satisfy: wealth, love, a good family, health, good looks, etc. And then He said this, “I Am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). This is really important: Jesus Christ was claiming that He Himself was what they needed, that He Himself would completely satisfy them, not what He would give them, but what He is for them. Jesus Christ is the bread of life, He doesn’t just give it.
The Meaning in the Promise
He said the same thing again in another setting when He spoke with a cultural outcast in John 4:10. Jesus Christ was sitting by a well and asked a lady for a drink of water. She was shocked that He was willing to talk to her (John 4:9) and then He said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water….Whoever drinks of this water [from this well we’re sitting at] will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:10, 13–14).
Do you see what He’s saying? He’s saying stop looking for the next best thing to make you happy. Your soul is thirsty and you keep trying to treat other things — people’s acceptance, the thought of having a whole family again, of being freed from your substances — as the water that will satisfy. But what you are now learning is that you keep getting thirsty because those things can’t satisfy you. What you were built to drink was Christ. God says it another way in Jeremiah 2:13, “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, [And] hewn themselves cisterns [holes dug in the ground meant to store water]—broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Is that you? Have you committed great evil in turning from your God and digging your own cisterns to drink your own water? Have you yet found out those cisterns are broken?
A Plea
So there it is, friend. Why aren’t you happy? Well, perhaps you haven’t stopped living for yourself, nor have you yet turned to Christ as the Bread of Life and Fountain of Living Waters. Perhaps you have yet to really repent and believe in Christ and what He accomplished on the cross. There is free forgiveness and new life in the blood of Jesus Christ who came to seek and to save the lost. Your life’s troubles won’t all vanish, but you will have found Him whom your soul was built to love, and I tell you that if you’ll do it, you’ll find out that knowing your God will be the meaning of life you are looking for.
