Declare yourself happy
Introduction
When Charles de Gaulle, newly elected president of France, flew into England for a state visit in 1960, he brought his wife Yvonne. The politics of the day made the visit tense. The president was disgruntled that the Duchess of Kent was the only member of the royal family fluent enough in French to meet them at the airport. The attendant journalists did not help, but Madame de Gaulle was eager to please.
When they asked her, ‘What are your hopes for the people of Britain?’ the president’s wife did her best with her limited English. She replied, ‘I vont for every person in zis country to ave a penis.’ As the journalists stepped back with a gasp, Charles de Gaulle leaned forward and explained to his wife, ‘My dear, in England zey pronounce it happiness.’
I have started the book with this story because I want, for every person in this country, precisely what Yvonne de Gaulle wanted. (Let me clarify that! I want the thing she meant; not the thing she said!) And because of that, I have not only put my faith in following Jesus Christ, I have put my energy into sharing his Good News with as many people as I can. It is my belief that going through life accompanied by the living God can make you glad to be alive. Man, woman, child … you!
Not so long ago I asked someone from my church, ‘Are you happy?’
She replied, ‘No. But as a Christian you’re not meant to be happy, are you? Instead, I try my hardest to be joyful.’
‘What’s the difference?’ I asked.
As she floundered around and failed to think of an answer, I sensed her becoming tearful. And then I realized something important. When it comes to practical issues concerning the quality of your life, there is no real difference. A lack of happiness and a lack of joy are just as miserable as each other in a Christian life. But sometimes Christians feel confused or guilty that they do not have the happiness they believe God should be bringing them, and so they invent ‘joy’ as an alternative, gritting their teeth as they declare how hard they strive to achieve it.
That won’t do!
I want you to be happy. I want the company of Jesus to make you glad to be alive.
That is why I am pleased that you are coming with me on this forty-day journey to seek happiness. Each chapter contains some thoughts about how changes in your attitudes and habits could make a significant difference to how happy you are. I don’t promise that it will be easy, because it will affect every part of you – physical, emotional and spiritual. But I do promise that there will be plenty to enjoy along the way. All the stories are true, although occasionally I have changed people’s names because I don’t want to embarrass them. We will be accompanied on the route by the writers of the Bible and by inspiring Christians from history, who will be sharing their wisdom with us. And there will be practical suggestions and prayers as well.
One of my suggestions is that you talk about happiness with everyone you know. Ask people, ‘What makes you happy?’ Make it the most cheerful and talked-about subject for the next forty days. Write about it on your blog and on Facebook and Twitter. And if you want to tell me what you are discovering, contact me at [email protected] and I will do my best to reply.
My first prayer is that in forty days’ time you will be a happier person. If you are, it won’t be because this is a great book; it will be because we have a great God.
A happy mind
Be Happy! Day 1
Be content
| There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. ‘For whom am I toiling,’ he asked, ‘and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?’ This too is meaningless – a miserable business! Ecclesiastes 4.8 |
Over the last couple of years I have been watching the salvation of someone. And a wonderful thing it has been! It hasn’t happened in a rush. For someone with no Christian background at all to come to faith takes a long time, because it involves painstakingly turning every part of a life around. The Ark Royal doesn’t spin on a saucer.
So while I’ve been watching my friend become the person God has always planned him to be, I have had time to think about what it means to be saved by Jesus. I am embarrassed to confess that I used to talk about being saved without ever really thinking about what it is that Jesus actually saves us from. The Bible describes it in several ways – saved from oppression, from meaninglessness, from death, from sin. But the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to the conclusion that what this generation most needs to be saved from is discontent.
I don’t mean greed. We all know that the love of money is the root of all evil. It is one of those verses from the New Testament that is so well known that even people who don’t realize it comes from the Bible quote it. Rather, I mean discontent – the feeling that somehow the hand we have been dealt is not good enough. That restlessness for something better than what we’ve got – which is fine until it gets to the stage at which you can’t enjoy what you have got because of it. And sadly I see that in churches almost as much as I see it in shopping malls.
| Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. 1 Timothy 6.6–10 |
The state of feeling ill at ease, and hankering after more, cannot possibly be how God intends his children to live. I’ve come to the conclusion that the most significant thing that God can do for this itchy, acquisitive generation is to make them glad to be alive. That is why I believe with all my heart in the salvation that Jesus can bring.
I’m not talking about being glad that we will be alive one day in heaven. I don’t tell my friends that the point of being saved is to get to heaven and say to yourself, ‘Ooh, I’m glad I’m dead!’ The transforming thing about the Good News is that, no matter what your circumstances are – in your finances, relationships, achievements – Jesus can bring you to a point at which you say, ‘Goodness, I’m glad to be alive!’ As St Paul put it twenty centuries ago, ‘As long as we have food and clothing, we can be content with that.’
Victorian preachers insisted that the secret of content was to accept the place that God had put you in the pecking order of society, and not fight against it. If you were poor, the best response was to get on with being poor without grumbling, and be as happy as you could. One of their favourite hymns included the words: ‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate, God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate.’ Although children still sing ‘All things bright and beautiful’, no one sings that verse any more.
And of course, we don’t think like that about God any more. We have learnt a lot about God during the last 200 years. One of the things we have learnt is that God doesn’t want us to be content to leave some people in poverty while others get rich. The very opposite in fact! We should absolutely not be content to live in a comfortable country if that has come about at the cost of others being trapped in poverty. And surely God does not intend us to be apathetic, or content to let life drift by without attempting to improve ourselves.
So how do we know when to be content and when to agitate for something better?
| True contentment is a real, active virtue. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it. G. K. Chesterton, novelist, 1874–1936 |
Well … my friend Gary came round for coffee and we were