I just read a survey that in the last 20 years, the number of people who answered the survey,

I am experiencing the lowest happiness on your choices has increased by 50%.

So unhappiness, according to this survey in America, has skyrocketed in the last 20 years.

Now that's perhaps good news. Because that survey did not mean 20 years ago, millions of people found deep, sweet, soul-satisfying happiness in God, and now they don't. That's not what the survey meant.

This survey was not inquiring about happiness in God. What the survey meant was, 20 years ago, millions of people found

some happiness in this world, in things of the world, and today they find less. And that may be

good. Because if you find less happiness, which you desperately want more of,

in the world, you just might turn to God. So for the last 50 seven years, I have devoted most of my time to ransacking the Bible and human experience in order to understand the relationship between human happiness

and the glory of God.

And the upshot of that, the teachings of the Bible and human experience,

we now call Christian hedonism.

So we're going to look at definitions and foundations

of Christian hedonism, vertical, and horizontal.

That's where we're going.

So Father, I ask for your help now,

so that I'm clear and helpful,

and that understanding would be granted,

especially when we turn to your word, and that you would be granted, especially when we turn to your word,

and that you would reveal the greatness of your glory and how it reveals or relates to our happiness.

I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Hedonism.

In my Webster's 1963 high school dictionary, definition number two,

...