Welcome to Living Happy, a short weekly encouragement sharing insights and action steps for living a happy life.

Every week I'm going to be sharing a passage from my book, The Year of Living Happy.

Now, it's not available yet, but I wanted to give you a sneak peek.

So let's dive in for today.

Happiness is a worthy goal.

Growing up, I remember being told that Joy was spelled J-O-Y, Jesus, Others, You.

It was supposed to be a reminder that joy comes from having the right priorities, and that's certainly true.

But it seemed as if joy was always pitted against happiness.

While joy was godly and spiritual, happiness was shallow and selfish.

But as I kept walking with Jesus, I came to understand that seeking to follow God and seeking

to be happy weren't mutually exclusive.

Our happiness and our joy are tied to what we desire most.

Our problem with seeking happiness is that we try to

find it in things that can't sustain our happiness. But when we desire to find our happiness in God,

we access a well of happiness that's not going to run dry. Scripture tells us in Psalm 374,

take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Now, I used to think that that meant God would give me whatever I wanted if I seemed happy enough to him.

But now I've come to realize that when my happiness is placed securely in God, he will be the desire of my heart.

And when he's the desire of my heart,

my happiness isn't going anywhere. God designed us to seek happiness in him and to want to have

the source of our happiness be in him. As John Piper said, God is most glorified in you when you are

most satisfied in him. Happiness really is a worthy goal.

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