What is our Happy Place? We all have one. It’s that place where we feel protected and secure, where we get warm fuzzies, and our stress melts away.
Maybe our Happy Place is a beach with throbbing breakers just offshore. Or, instead, we are with a relative that is long gone except in our memories. It could even be a mountain cabin huddled under snow-covered eaves, where the silence pervades everything.
Our Happy Place isn’t necessarily a physical location. Rather, it can be a place of mind, a mental state that allows us to disconnect from the madness of the world around us and find a sense of calm in the cacophony that continually collides with our consciousness.
What takes God to his Happy Place? Here are three examples from the Scriptures:
Example #1 – Matthew 22:37-39 tells us that if we love God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves, we will elevate God to his Happy Place.
Example #2 – Psalm 18 gives us the same steps, only in different words. We must love God, and praise him among the nations, for his victories are ours.
Example #3 – John 13:35 drives this process home, for the Word tells us that we are known as God’s children by our love for one another.
When we love God totally, place our neighbor’s welfare above our own, give all glory to God, and love our Christian brothers unequivocally, then God finds his Happy Place in us.
Then we come to the fly in the ointment. What if we don’t do these things? What happens to God’s Happy Place?
It evaporates like the morning mist in the rays of the rising sun.
Romans 8:7-8 tells us that if we try to live for God in any other manner than those listed in Matthew, Psalm, and John, we puncture God’s Happy Place like a pin in a child’s balloon, for the mind of man is not subject to the law of God. The carnal man does not do that which puts God in his Happy Place.
Rather more pointedly, this passage states that if we live in the flesh, we have stumbled, and we cannot please God.
Here are three ways we can stumble in our steps and displease God, even when we claim to be walking after him:
Stumble Step #1 – If we look at our checkbooks and decide we cannot help fund summer camp scholarships, we have placed material things above that which is eternal.
Stumble Step #2 – If we refuse to help our elderly neighbor shovel snow from his walk because it will make us late to church, we have traded a spiritual victory for personal pride.
Stumble Step #3 – If we pay our tithes to our local body and leave a hungry child as someone else’s responsibility, we have failed to understand God’s message to us.
If we do these things to one another, it is as if we have done these things unto him. We have placed our blinders on, and we will watch God tumble from his Happy Place.
All God wants from us is our love. It’s that simple. He knows that when he has our love, all the other things we are required to do will fall in place. We won’t even question why. We will simply do them. Why? Because we love him.
And in that moment, God will be elevated to his Happy Place in us.
If we want God to be happy with us, we can forget all the things we do. It’s how we feel that counts to him. He wants us to offer him our love and praise. In our worship, we will lift him up to his Happy Place, and when we do, we will find our Happy Place in him.
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