CHAPTER 9: IS IT OKAY TO FIND HAPPINESS IN GOD’S GIFTS?
AS WE SAW IN THE previous chapter, we must be careful not to make idols out of God’s provisions. But God is happy when, with proper perspective, we fully enjoy his gifts to us. The key is to look to him as the ultimate source and provider and to thank and praise him for his kindness.
When we enjoy a delicious meal or a fun event, God isn’t in Heaven frowning at us, saying, “Stop it—you should find joy only in me.” This would be as foreign to our heavenly Father’s nature as it would be to mine as an earthly father if I gave my daughters or grandchildren Christmas gifts and then got angry or pouted because they enjoyed them too much.
Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11).
Yes, God wants us to find our primary joy in him. But a large part of our happiness comes when we find joy in—and praise him for—his gifts to us.
Should We Seek the Giver, Not the Gift?
The idea that we should seek the giver, not the gift, has truth behind it, but it can be misleading.
Suppose I said to my wife, “Nanci, I love you. Therefore I will not love the meals you cook, the books you gave me, the Christmas presents from you, or the vacation we went on.”
Would that make any sense? No. If I love gifts and vacation more than I love Nanci, that would obviously be wrong. But as long as she is foremost in my mind, by loving the meal Nanci prepares and the books she gives me, I honor her. So it is with God.
I can appreciate and enjoy a bike ride on a beautiful day, fully aware that the pure pleasure of it is God’s gift to me. By enjoying it, I’m enjoying him.
Many believers have overspiritualized church, preaching, and prayer, and in doing so they have distanced God from creation, pleasure, and happiness. “Seek the giver, not the gift” can be an apt warning against idolatry in certain contexts, but as a general rule, it’s misguided.
What we should say instead is, “Seek the giver through the gift” or “in the gift.” Nanci and I are right to thoroughly enjoy the wonderful meals we have with four close friends on Thursday nights. We’re aware that our friends and the food, and our capacity to enjoy both, are God’s gifts to us. By enjoying these gatherings, in which we often speak of him, we are enjoying our Lord.
French Reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) wrote, “In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver.”[1]
Scripture commands us to “earnestly desire the greater gifts” (1 Corinthians 12:31, NIV). But desiring God’s gifts does not mean we must value the gifts above him.
Dissociating God from his gifts isn’t the solution; it’s the problem. Instead of viewing God’s gifts as demonic temptations, we should view them as benevolent extensions of his love and grace. His gifts to us are not gods—but they are God’s.
As long as we see God in his gifts to us, we need not be suspicious of them. We need not feel shame because they make us happy—they are simply doing what he designed them to do.
God is the primary source of all happiness. He has filled the world with secondary sources of happiness. They are all tributaries that can be traced back to the roaring rivers and boundless oceans of God’s own happiness that he will reveal for his children throughout eternity (see Ephesians 2:7).
God himself is by far the greatest gift. As long as we see God in his gifts to us and thank him wholeheartedly for them, we need not fear we’re appreciating them too much.
God Wants Us to Enjoy His Creation
We are made in God’s image, which includes a capacity to enjoy God’s handiwork. Scripture tells us, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Another version says his creation was “supremely good” (CEB).
A. W. Tozer beautifully depicted the happiness of God as seen in his creation:
God is not only pleased with Himself, delighted with His own perfection and happy in His work of creating and redeeming, but He is also enthusiastic. There is an enthusiasm in the Godhead, and there is enthusiasm in creation. . . . This infinite God is enjoying Himself. Somebody is having a good time in heaven and earth and sea and sky. Somebody is painting the sky. Somebody is making trees to grow . . . causing the ice to melt . . . and the fish to swim and the birds to sing. . . . Somebody’s running the universe.[2]
The world around us brims with evidence of God’s desire, and hence his provision, for his creatures’ happiness.
Psalms 8, 19, and 139 are just a few of the many Scriptures that celebrate the wonders of God in his creation.
All creation is to celebrate its God: “Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad. . . . Let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them!” (1 Chronicles 16:31-32, NIV).
Job said,
Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.
It’s right to find beauty, wonder, and happiness not only in God’s natural creation but in the cultural gifts he’s lavished upon his image bearers, including language, art, music, literature, drama, sports, careers, and hobbies, which allow us to be subcreators. These things generate no light of their own. The light they bring comes from “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow” (James 1:17).
I don’t value the planets and the moon less because they don’t shine by their own light. Likewise, I don’t devalue my wife, children, grandchildren, coworkers, or dog because they’re secondary to God. On the contrary, I value them more, because the God who is primary has made them who and what they are, and he has endowed them with value that makes them far more important than if they were merely random accidents.
Consider this fatherly advice given in an ancient culture without refined sugar, in which nature’s greatest treat was honey: “My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste” (Proverbs 24:13).
The father doesn’t warn his son to stay away from honey because he might love honey more than God. If you know where honey comes from (it’s not just from bees), to be happy with honey is to be happy with God. People’s happiness with God’s abundant gifts makes God happy too.
Are Our Bodies Inferior to Our Spirits?
Scripture doesn’t view body and spirit as adversaries, since God created both and redeems both.
There are times when, as Jesus said, “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). Yet our bodies aren’t prisons. They’re an essential and God-designed aspect of our beings, meant to disclose our Creator.
We’re not just spirits who occupy bodies the way hermit crabs inhabit a seashell. We are spirit and body joined together by God. Your body does not merely house the real you—it is as much a part of who you are as your spirit is. That’s why the resurrection is essential to our glorification, which will involve the restoration of our full humanity.
God made the material world not to hinder our walk with him but to facilitate it.
Tragically, though, some Christians are wary of physical beauties and pleasures because of an unbiblical belief that the spirit realm is good while the material world is bad. I call this Christoplatonism, a term I coined in my book Heaven.[3] It’s a widespread belief, plaguing countless Christians and churches over the years, convincing people that physical pleasures are unspiritual and therefore many of the things that make people happy are suspect and even sinful.
The anti-body, anti-Earth, anti-culture assumptions of Christoplatonism naturally lend themselves to an anti-happiness viewpoint. Instead of seeing spiritual as the opposite of ungodly, many Christians see it as the opposite of physical and pleasurable. Such people oppose happiness and pleasure even in their most innocent forms.
In contrast, David rejoiced in good food and drink: “You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. . . . My cup overflows with blessings” (Psalm 23:5, NLT).
Why did God give us the ability to find joy in going for a cool swim, taking a hot shower, listening to music, reading stories, eating pistachios, planting flowers, or running through a park? Why did he give us physical senses if not to know him better and to be far happier in him than we ever could be if he had instead made us disembodied spirits?
It’s no coincidence that the apostle Paul’s detailed defense of the physical resurrection was written to the church at Corinth. Corinthian believers were immersed in the Greek philosophies of Platonism and dualism, which perceived a dichotomy between the spiritual and physical realms.
Platonists see a disembodied soul as the ideal. The Bible, meanwhile, views this division as unnatural and undesirable. We are unified beings. That’s why Paul said that if there is no resurrection, “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19).
Creation Should Delight Us
Some Christians’ anti-physical worldview causes them to envision the eternal Heaven as a place where spirits exist in a “higher plane” of disembodied angelic spirituality.
This misguided perspective that bodies, Earth, material things, and anything “secular” are automatically unspiritual negates the emphatic biblical revelation about bodily resurrection and finding joy in God’s physical creation. We are told to look forward to the New Heaven and New Earth, which will be nothing less than a remade physical universe (see 2 Peter 3:13).
Any views of the afterlife that settle for less than a full bodily resurrection—including Christoplatonism, reincarnation, and transmigration of the soul—are explicitly anti-Christian. The early church waged doctrinal wars against heresies that contradict the biblical account, where God calls all creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
The movie Babette’s Feast depicts a conservative Christian sect that scrupulously avoids “worldly” distractions. They live out the unhappy philosophy of Christoplatonism—quick to judge, slow to rejoice, and convinced that celebration, pleasure, and laughter must be sinful.
Then Babette, once a gourmet cook in France, is forced by war to become a maid for the two women who lead this small group of austere believers. Babette unexpectedly inherits a significant sum of money and, out of gratitude for their kindness to her, spends it all to prepare a fabulous dinner party for the elderly sisters and their friends.
Touched by Babette’s generosity and the great feast she prepared, the community’s false guilt dissipates, and they begin to laugh, take delight, and truly enjoy the richness of God’s provision. Over the many courses of this meal, these legalists gradually come to understand that when God and his gifts are the objects of our happiness, feasting and laughter and beauty draw us not away from God but to him.[4]
How sad when the world doesn’t see God as the source of creation’s goodness. And how much sadder still when God’s people don’t see it.
Feasting Is a Great Thing
Singing, dancing, feasts, and festivities depict not only worship but delight in God’s good gifts.
Proverbs 15:15 says, “The cheerful of heart has a continual feast.” A feast is the ultimate picture of happiness—and for the Jewish people, the Sabbath meant there was at least one feast per week. In addition, there were a number of weeklong festivals that ensured people would eat together.
Words describing eating, meals, and food appear more than a thousand times in Scripture, with the English translation “feast” occurring an additional 187 times. Feasting is profoundly relational, marked by conversation, storytelling, and laughter. Biblical feasts were spiritual gatherings that drew attention to God, his greatness, and his redemptive purposes.
Of course, God forbids drunkenness and gluttony (two sins that ultimately make us not only unholy but also unhappy). But the partying described repeatedly in Scripture reveals the happiness of the God who invented feasts and festivals and who commands and encourages singing, dancing, eating, and drinking.
The people of Israel found happiness in God’s feasts. By building multiple festivities into Israel’s calendar, God integrated joy into the lives of his people. These feast days served to link happiness with holiness. Festivals such as the Feast of Tabernacles included sacrifices for sin (see Leviticus 23:37-41). Sorrow over sin and its redemptive price was real but momentary. Once the sacrifices were complete, the festival became all about enjoying God and one another.
Feasts that recognized repentance, forgiveness, and redemption included more joy than any party pagans could host, because the participants’ delight was deep, God centered, and based in reality.
“Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Psalm 32:1, NRSV). In light of such good news, who wouldn’t want to celebrate? And why shouldn’t we, who know the grace of Jesus, do the same, since the gospel gives us even more reasons to celebrate?
The church father Chrysostom (347–407) said, “All life is a festival since the Son of God has redeemed you from death.”[5]
Jesus repeatedly mentioned to his disciples that after we’re resurrected, we’ll eat together, enjoying the company of familiar biblical figures. He said, “Many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11). This must have delighted his listeners. It should delight us, too!
What If We Viewed Church as a Party Scene?
Wouldn’t it be great if the church were known for celebrating more than the world does, rather than less? After all, don’t we have far more to celebrate?
Worship, camaraderie, and unity would be hallmarks of such celebratory events. But one of the greatest payoffs would be reestablishing followers of Jesus as people of profound happiness, quick to celebrate the greatness, goodness, love, grace, and happiness of our God.
In today’s worship settings, “fellowship” may involve moderate laughter, but rarely does it reflect the great happiness the Bible describes. Indeed, the difference between the grand feast of the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament and the symbolic wafers and grape juice offered by most modern churches at Communion is the difference between a great celebration on the one hand and a minimalist ritual on the other.
Spurgeon said this about the most sacred rituals of the church, particularly Communion: “Gospel ordinances are choice enjoyments, enjoined upon us by the loving rule of Him whom we call Master and Lord. We accept them with joy and delight. . . . The Lord’s own Supper is a joyful festival, a feast.”[6]
God’s people ought to say, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry today to celebrate the time when we’ll eat, drink, and be merry in a world without suffering and without end!”
Were we to do more of this kind of celebrating, and do it better, surely fewer of our children (and generations to come) would fall for what may be the enemy’s deadliest and most effective lie—that the gospel of Jesus doesn’t offer happiness and that people must go elsewhere to find it.