All,
Please remember that we will resume the Men’s Bible Study Thursday night at 6:30pm. Also, we will be going to Camp Bethel the following Thursday at 5:30pm. We will have dinner and then Tim will lead us for our final study on Happiness and Heaven.
I found his week’s study very encouraging and thought provoking. Here are some excerpts that I like:
Holiness and Happiness
Octavius Winslow was a prominent evangelical preacher in the 1800s. He said of the Holy Spirit, “It is his aim . . . to increase our happiness by making us more holy.” Winslow’s profound words capture the essence of this chapter. Let them sink into your heart: “God would make us happy, but He can only make us happy by making us holy. Happiness and holiness are cognate truths. . . . They are twin sisters. He must be happy who is holy. . . . Sin is the parent of all misery; holiness the root of all happiness.”
Anselm lived nearly a thousand years ago, in the Dark Ages, and saw truths that can shine light on our darkness today: “Man . . . was made holy for this end, that he might be happy in enjoying God”.
Holiness doesn’t mean abstaining from pleasure; holiness means recognizing Jesus as the source of life’s greatest pleasure. Spurgeon said, “Holiness is the royal road to happiness. The death of sin is the life of joy.”
C.S. Lewis wrote to an American friend, “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing . . . it is irresistible. If even 10% of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?”[
John Piper writes, “We have implied in a thousand ways that the virtue of an act diminishes to the degree you enjoy doing it and that doing something because it yields happiness is bad. The notion hangs like a gas in the Christian atmosphere.”
Matthew Henry commented, “When the psalmist undertakes to describe a blessed man, he describes a good man; for, after all, those only are happy, truly happy, that are holy, truly holy; . . . goodness and holiness are not only the way to happiness (Rev. 22: 14), but happiness itself.”
As we grow in knowledge, we can increasingly join Paul in saying, “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2: 16) on the things he has revealed. The more we discover God’s ways and experience the goodness of his holiness, the less we try to find happiness apart from him.
Consider Leviticus 9: 24, Rev. 22: 14, Psalm 1: 1, 2 Corinthians 9: 7, Matthew 23: 2-4 false holiness)
Alcorn, Randy. Happiness (p. 342). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
See you Thursday
Wayne
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