The Joy of the Lord

God intends for us to be happy, successful and fulfilled through Jesus Christ and God’s Word. But, ask yourself: "Are you happy?" I mean truly, absolutely, at all times, never ending, fully and completely, deliriously happy?
It’s been my experience that the response by most of us would be: Well, of course not. I’ve had my moments and hope to have more in the future, but each experience I’ve had like that has to end and I have to return to reality. Not only is the world not structured to make me permanently happy, but to even desire that my personal joy should be pursued and obtained would be selfish.
But guess what? Never ending, pure exhilarated joy for every human being is precisely what God desires for us and makes available to us when we understand how it’s connected to our relationship with Him, growing closer to Him and uncompromising worship of Him! Consider the following from John Piper:

All men seek happiness…it is a simple given in human nature. It is a law of the human heart.
This persistent and undeniable yearning is not to be suppressed, but to be glutted – on God! [In fact,] it is what our Creator commands: Delight yourself in the Lord – Psalm 37:4.

This command, both directly and indirectly, is found repeatedly in the Bible, but is consistently misconstrued and twisted by the nature and ruling forces of this world as well as our sinful nature. As the result, we tend to set our attainment of joy and happiness as the primary objective. We also believe we can attain our happiness on our own through the pursuit of worldly pleasures – much as King Solomon expressed in the book of Ecclesiastics, meaning, money, sex, alcohol, drugs and power. Such are the false idols or goals by which we are tempted and drawn off course by Satan.
The great business of life is to put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks. There is no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of superior satisfaction in God. Feast on God – to find your joy and happiness, not on the things of this world.
However, it is not a bad thing to desire our own good. The great problem, though, of human beings is that they are too easily pleased. And so, they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.
Before I continue with these thoughts, let me back-up for a moment and make something clear about the teachings of the Bible on this subject. First, the full text of Psalm 37:4 is: Delight yourself in the Lord, AND He will give you the desires of our heart. The goodness of God, the very foundation of worship, is not a thing you pay your respects to out of some kind of disinterested reverence. No, it is something to be enjoyed: “Oh, taste and see the LORD is good.” (Psalm 34:8) “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103) His point is that the pleasure or joy we receive from seeking God is the by product rather than the catalyst for the action.

The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God. Thus, only one thing ultimately matters: glorifying God the way He has appointed.
What could God give to us to enjoy that would prove Him most loving? – Himself. What do we do when we are given something beautiful or excellent? We praise it. All enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. So, if God loves us enough to make our joy full, He must not only give us Himself; He must also win from us the praise of our hearts – because the fullness of our joy can only be found in knowing and praising Him. God’s pursuit of praise from us and our pursuit of pleasure in Him are the same pursuit.

Think of it this way: if there has ever been an occasion when you were engulfed with spontaneous, everlasting (at least for the moment) delirious joy, did anything else matter or even pull on your senses while that all-consuming joy was in play? Of course, not. Also, when that state of joy struck, was it, in and of itself, the focus of your pursuit, or was that explosion of feeling caused by something else? Exactly! Something else produced the joy that was so intense nothing else mattered as long as it lasted.
If you could identify a treasure like that – something that provides absolute joy, contentment and fulfillment forever, what would it be worth? How much would you be willing to pay for it? Everything you’ve ever had or could ever acquire, right – because there would be no need for anything else. Well, that source, that treasure is God.

Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendship and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel…but not God. He was an idea – even a good one – and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure or delight.
Then something miraculous happened. It was like the opening of the eyes of the blind during the golden dawn. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness. Then the shock and terror that we had actually loved darkness. Then the settling stillness of joy that is the soul’s end. The quest is over. We would give anything if we might be granted to live in the presence of this glory forever and ever.
Happiness in God is the end of all our seeking. Nothing beyond it can be sought as a higher goal.