Happy in God, All of the Time

1. Delighting is finding your happiness in something.

Psalm 34:3

2. Constantly delighting in God is required of every Christian.

Philippians 4:4

Habakkuk 3:17–18

3. Delighting in God must be maintained by each Christian.

Psalm 37:4

4. Delighting in God will help you conquer your idols.

“To rejoice is to treasure a thing, to assess its value to you, to reflect on its beauty and importance until your heart rests in it and tastes the sweetness of it. Rejoicing is a way of praising God until the heart is sweetened and rested, and until it relaxes its grip on anything else it thinks that it needs.” (Counterfeit Gods, Keller, 173)

Philippians 4:11–13

“…above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord's work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life. …the secret of all true effectual service is joy in God, having experimental acquaintance and fellowship with God Himself.” (George Mueller, Autobiography)

5. Four examples of real people who delighted in God.

“…the practice of fixing our thoughts on God till our hearts are ‘strangely warmed’ is the best bliss we can ever experience on this side of eternity.” (Maurice Roberts, Great God of Wonders, 112)

“They who thus delight in God have always something…to delight in; a fountain of joy that can never be either exhausted or stopped up, and to which they may always have access.” (Matthew Henry, The Pleasantness of a Religious Life, 64)

“Early in the morning, at noonday, evening and midnight, nay, all the day long, did the blessed Jesus visit and refresh my heart. Could the trees of a certain wood near Stonehouse speak, they would tell what sweet communion I and some others enjoyed with the ever-blessed God there. Sometimes, as I was walking, my soul would make such sallies as though it would go out of the body. At other times I would be so overpowered with a sense of God's Infinite Majesty that I would be constrained to throw myself on the ground and offer my soul as a blank in His hands, to write on it what He pleased.… I and another, a poor but pious countryman, were in the fields, exulting in our God and longing for the time when Jesus should be revealed from Heaven in a flame of fire.” (Arnold Dallimore, Whitefield Volume I, 110)

“Every man, whatsoever his condition, desires to be happy. There is no man who does not desire this, and each one desires it with such earnestness and that he prefers it to all other things; whoever, in fact, desires other things, desires them for this end alone. And this desire, this delight, this longing for happiness, governs the will.”

”Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” (Augustine of Hippo)

Jeremiah 2:12–13

“Christians might avoid much trouble if they would only believe what they profess, viz., that God is able to make them happy without anything but Himself. …God has been depriving me of one blessing after another, but as every one was removed He has come in and filled up its place, and now, when I am [disabled] and unable to move, I am happier than ever I was in my life before, or expected to be, and if I had believed this twenty years ago I might have been spared much anxiety.” (Edward Payson (July 25, 1783 – October 22, 1827) as he lay dying from tuberculosis. Elizabeth Prentiss: More Love to Thee, Sharon James, 9)