Well, does God want me to be happy or does God want me to be holy, which is the priority?

Such a question is really, really important to address.

This time it comes in the form of an email from a listener named Megan.

Megan writes, hello, Pastor John, I'm with you when you say that Christian hedonism says

my happiness is not at odds with God's will for me. But what about the dark seasons of trials? In those

seasons, it seems my happiness is not as significant as God's intent to grow my holiness. How would

you describe the pains of trials in light of Christian hedonism and God's desire for my joy.

If human life, apart from Christ and salvation, consisted in zero happiness,

and God's goal were to bring us from the condition of zero happiness to great happiness in God, I suspect

God would not need to introduce any hardship into our lives, any discipline, in order to bring

us to the experience of supreme happiness in him. But that's not the real world.

Human life apart from Christ and salvation does not consist in zero happiness. It consists

in a thousand experiences of Godless happiness. When Peter describes the pre-Christian life among the Gentiles in his

day, he says it consists in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties,

and lawless idolatry. In other words, the world outside Christ abounds with what Hebrews 1125 calls the fleeting pleasures

of sin.

So when God saves us and brings us into relationship with Christ and declares us righteous, justifies us in union with him through

faith. He's not working with people who have zero happiness and need to be given some.

He's working with a person, with people who have a thousand experiences of pleasure and happiness

that are not rooted in God, do not flow from a sight of God's glory, are not abounding with

thanksgiving to God for His goodness, do not reflect the character of God and His holiness,

which means, this is amazing, I never thought of it quite this way before,

...