I've given as the title of my talk the search for happiness I imagine we're going to be covering some things that you might not think come under that heading.

Aristotle said that all men seek happiness.

There are no exceptions. I would agree, but of course we look in different ways, different places for the source of our happiness.

And as Christians, we know that happiness is a byproduct of obedience.

It's not something that we seek as an end in itself. If you love God and you're determined to do what God wants you to do,

you're going to find out that the result of your obedience will be happiness among other things. In Psalm 119, just the first couple of

verses in that longest Psalm Bible it says happy are they whose walk whose ways are blameless who walk according to the law of the Lord

Happy are they who keep his statutes

and seek him with all their heart.

Again and again in that psalm and in many other Psalms this same principle is repeated that happiness is the result of obedience.

Any parent can see that in a child when the child is disobedient then both the child and the parents are miserable and as soon as the child capitulates and conforms to what parents are asking him to do.

Then the child himself finds freedom.

My mother used to say that my brother Dave would tune up for us thanking.

There was something about my brother Dave that was just particularly

mischievous out of all six of us kids.

And she said that days would go by and he hadn't done anything quite bad enough to get

a spanking for, but he would sort of be tuning up.

And so finally, as he was getting more and more uncontrollable and miserable,

the time would finally come when the spanking had to be administered.

And she said it was just wonderful how that completely cleared the air,

just like the rain,

and then the sunshine came out.

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