Why Are We Not Happy?

In his book, The Attributes of God, A.W Tozer describes a lady known as ‘Lady Julian’ who thought about why we are not happy and she said, “If this is all true, then why should we not all be at great ease of heart and soul? Why aren’t Christians the happiest, the most easeful people in all the wide world?’’ Then she answered her own question: “Because we seek to have our pleasure and rest in things that are so little.”

What is it that makes you happy? What cheers you up and gives your morale a lift? Is it your job? Is it the fact that you have good clothes? Is it that you’ve married well or have a fine position? Just what is it that brings you joy? That’s our trouble. We know that God is so vast that in comparison everything is just the size of a hazelnut. And yet we’re not a happy people because we’ve got our minds set on things. We multiply things, and we increase things and we perfect things. We beautify things and put our confidence in things and God.

We have our good job and God; we have our husband/wife and God; we have our strong body and God; we have our home and God. We have our ambition for the future and God, and so we put God as a plus sign after something else.

All the great souls of the world from David, Paul and Augustine and all the rest down through this present hour—every responsible writer who has ever been illuminated from the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit has said the same thing. And whether he came from one school of Christian thought or another, as long as he was orthodox and spiritual he said the same thing: Our problem is that we are putting our confidence in things and not in God.

And Julian said, God showed me that all things are only the size of the hazelnut. Why therefore should I put my confidence in things so little that God has to hold it together? Why should I trust things? We multiply, we increase, and still we are anxious and unsatisfied. Why? Because all that is beneath God will not satisfy us.

Augustine says he looked for God everywhere except his own heart:

If you find physical pleasure in earthly experiences, use the occasion to praise God for these gifts. Turn your love not on the pleasures but toward their Maker. Otherwise, the things that please you will cause to displease. Love those souls that please you but love them in God. For people will change and will pass by and pass away unless they are firmly established forever. Love them in Him, and carry to Him your own soul and whatever souls will come with you. Tell the souls, “Let us love Him! Let us love Him! He made us, we did not make ourselves and He is near.”

He did not make things and then walk away. He remains intimately involved, and all things have their being in Him. See Him. There He is, where truth is loved. He can be found within the very heart, even if the heart strays from Him. Go back into your heart and find Him sinners. Stand with Him, and you will be able to keep your footing. Rest in Him, and you will find genuine rest.

For some of us, God in His sovereign grace and mercy was patient with us and His grace was precisely the means by which He began to open our eyes to the true depth of our need of Him.

The reason riches become such a snare is because we end up evaluating life in mercenary terms and being seen by others in search terms, and life is just not so.

In the parable of the rich fool, The Lord Jesus said that the good life has nothing to do with being wealthy, and a man’s life does not consist in and is not derived from possessing overflowing abundance or that which is over and above his needs. The man thought he would pull down his storehouses and build larger ones, and there he would store or hoard all his grain, produce, and his goods. Jesus told the parable, saying,

The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided? “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:13-21 NKJV).

Jesus knew that money and possessions would be a stumbling block for everyone. He didn’t say money was evil, He meant money could make you serve other gods rather than the One who offers the greatest gift of all-a rich relationship with God. As Ravi Zacharias tells us:

Riches are a form of cosmetic. They have the power to buy the trappings, but they do not have the power to enrich the soul. A rich person can do many things that the poor person cannot do but the poor person can be what God intends for one to be sometimes more easily than the rich one can. Riches are to life what the IQ is to the student. It provides access to a higher degree but it is not the means to being better person.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that great wealth is actually a great risk in life because great buying power lulls one into investing in everything that one wants materially, only to discover that material wealth is not all that is cracked up to be. How does one live on the inside when everything one wants on the outside is within reach but has left one emptier on the inside than before?

Earthly Comforts are Loaned

We easily forget that “earthly comforts are loaned,” writes Charles Spurgeon. He goes on to say:

They are not gifts, for all that we possess is God’s property. He has only let them, and what He lends He has a right to take. We hold possessions and friends on a lease that can be terminated at the Supreme Owner’s option. Therefore, do not complain when God takes His own. In a world where thorns and briars grow, it is natural that sharp points will pierce you. The world swarms with thieves, deceivers, and slanderers, with losses in business, crosses in our expectations, false or fickle friends, and with sickness and death. Little wonder our joys are stolen.

Our Master warns that our habitation is not theft-proof…. Beloved, because these calamities may be expected, let us be prepared. Hold all things loosely. Hold them as though you did not have them. Look at them as fleeting; never expect them to remain. Never make mortal things your gods. If you do, your heart will be broken when they are taken, and you will cry with Micah: “You have taken away my gods which I made” (Judges 18: 24).

Each of us could relate stories of those who have much in the area of material goods but have lived sad lives. We hear time and time again of people who end their lives as paupers when they began with abundance.

Wealth and what it brings are at best fleeting. For example, in 1923, a small group of the world’s wealthiest men met at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. They were “Who’s Who” of wealth and power. At that time, they controlled more money than the total amount contained in the United States Treasury.

John Maxwell gives a list of who was there and what eventually happened to them:

• CHARLES SCHWAB-president of the largest independent steel company-died broke.
• ARTHUR CUTTEN-greatest of the wheat speculators died abroad, insolvent.
• RICHARD WITNEY-president of the New York Stock Exchange-died just after release from Sing Sing prison.
• ALBERT FALL-member of a U.S. president’s cabinet was pardoned from prison so that he could die at home.
• JES LIVERMORE-greatest “bear” on Wall Street committed suicide.
• LEON FRASER-president of the Bank of International Settlements–committed suicide.
• IVAR KREUGER-Head of the world’s greatest monopoly-committed suicide.

Greek millionaire Aristotle Onassis, who retained his wealth and died at a ripe old age, recognized that after you reach a certain point, money becomes unimportant.

As we are given glimpses into the lives of the rich and famous we find out that not only may one squander the abundance with which one has been blessed, but also that the presence of wealth is no protection against the ravages of the soul. Emptiness still stalks the rich, loneliness still haunts the icon, and disappointment still casts its shadow amidst the cheers under the spotlight.

The late industrialist John D. Rockefeller Sr. was a man so rich that he gave way more than $350 million in his lifetime. He was once asked how much money it would take to satisfy him. His reply:”Just a little bit more.”

At a news conference after the death of John D. Rockefeller Jr., his attorney was asked how much money the wealthy industrialist had left. His response was, “He left it all.” When someone’s daughter won a lottery of £7 million, she said, “The thing about money is you worry if you don’t have it and if you do have it, you wonder if it is going to last.”

Some years after he had won the lottery in New York, a man was asked during an interview by the media, “What has been the biggest difference in your life since your sudden acquisition of such wealth?” He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I eat out more often.”

Those Who Love Money Will Never Have Enough

King Solomon of ancient Israel, said to be not only the wisest but also the richest man who ever lived, asserted:

The one who loves money is never satisfied with money, nor the one who loves wealth with big profits…Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness! The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers!” (Ecclesiastes 5: 10–11 NLT).

The Amplified version puts it this way:

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with gain. This also is vanity (emptiness, falsity, and futility)! When goods increase, they who eat them increase also. And what gain is there to their owner except to see them with his eyes?As the man came forth from his mother’s womb, so he will go again, naked as he came; and he will take away nothing for all his labor which he can carry in his hand. And this also is a serious and severe evil—that in all points as he came, so shall he go; and what gain has he who labors for the wind? (Ecclesiastes 5:10-16).

It proves again that no matter how much you give a man, if he misses God his soul cries within him. If you give him everything and then add God to it, you have wronged him, and he has wronged his own soul. For God wants to be first and wants to be all. Money won’t do it.

If you take the kingdom of God and His righteousness, God may send it all to you and let you have it. But it is always with the understanding that He can take it away again and you won’t grumble. You will still have God, and God is all.

Which takes me back to our first question: Why are we not happy? We are made to depend on God; we are made for union with God and nothing about us works right without Him. As C. S. Lewis wrote:

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about a relationship with Him. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.