For those of us who are drawn to the supernatural manifestations of the kingdom such as healing, prophecy, and deliverance, it is easy to get so focused on the power of the kingdom that we tend to neglect foundational principles. But foundational principles support everything else and if those foundations become weak, sooner or later everything else will tumble.

A few weeks ago, a group of us were in Israel overlooking the Sea of Galilee and the hillside where it is believed that Jesus delivered his message that is now called the Sermon on the Mount. It occurred to me that many of us memorized the “blessed are’s…” years ago but have since tucked those away as elementary teachings of Jesus.  And yet, it is likely that Jesus taught the things in Matthew 5,6, and 7 over and over again so that the teachings should no be seen as elementary but rather as essential.

I also suspect that many of us have tucked away the Beatitudes because they are hard and countercultural even for Christians in America who tend to still be heavily invested in the world while we sing of heaven. In those short verses from Matthew 5:2-12, Jesus declared a state of blessedness over the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted.

Think about it.  Do we really believe that contentment and happiness can come to us in this world as a result of being desperate or grieving?  Will our needs really be met if we refuse to make demands on others and don’t aggressively press for our rights? How many of us truly believe that if we do hunger and thirst for righteousness we will actually become joyless Pharisees who miss out on even the permitted pleasures of this life? How about being merciful and not counting the failings of others against them or demanding that those who have wronged us get what is coming to them?  How many of us even believe that it is possible to have a pure heart this side of heaven?  In a world full of violence and demanding people won’t the peacemakers be taken advantage of and run over? And what about persecution?  Can’t we pray for the destruction of our enemies so that persecution will cease? Shouldn’t we ask God to eradicate ISIS so that believers in the Middle East will no longer be put to the sword?

These are hard questions and sometimes it is easier just not to think about them.  But if these are essential teachings we cannot ignore them…even if we are healing the sick and raising the dead. Remember, in this same sermon, Jesus warned that many will recite their resume of miracles on the day of judgment and Jesus will dismiss them as people he never knew because their hearts were far from his.

But the question still remains as to whether these promises of blessedness can operate in this world or are they only promises for comfort and blessing in the world to come after being kicked around and abused in this life? As Americans, it is hard for us to willingly submit to these teachings because they go against nearly everything we have valued in our culture. Philip Yancey spoke to this when he wrote, “The owner of the Chicago Bulls gave a compact summary of the rules governing the visible world on the occasion of Michael Jordan’s (temporary) retirement. ‘He’s living the American Dream,’ said Jerry Reinsdorf. ‘The American Dream is to reach a point in your life when you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do and can do everything that you want to do.’ That may be the American Dream but it decidedly is not Jesus’ dream as revealed in the Beatitudes (Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew,p.114).

Because many of us share the American Dream, it is hard to take the Beatitudes seriously for life here and now. However, Jesus lived that life and changed the world.  The values and attitudes of the Beatitudes and the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount or foundational for everything else we do.  If we build great ministries without these proper foundations, the weight of those ministries will cause everything to crumble.  Because of that and because I need a refresher, I want to spend the next few blogs exploring the Beatitudes as well as other parts of the Sermon on the Mount.  I hope you will join me for this refresher course in essentials.

Everyday, I’m encounter  believers making decisions based on the idea that what God wants most for us is to be happy.  Not just content but happy, happy, happy.  In principle that is true. After all, David wrote, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps.37:4).  The problem, however,  rests on our notion of what makes us happy.

Some read the verse above and assume that if we serve God in some capacity and sing songs to him on Sunday, he will give us whatever we want as long as we believe that object, person, or circumstance will make us happy.  Unfortunately, that desire often comes from of the flesh rather than the Spirit.  We want a car so we think God should pony up with our dream vehicle.  We want a big salary so we think God should give us favor for the promotion.  We want the girl or the guy and may even think that God is okay with us leaving a spouse that no longer excites us for one that promises passion and romance because…that will make us happy.  All of that is a huge lie from the enemy, but it is a very powerful lie because we live in a culture that reinforces that belief at every level.  How many ads on television push a product that will change your life and assure you that you “deserve” what that product promises.  Honestly, the only thing any of us deserve is hell…and the rest is God’s grace.

A retake on Psalm 37:4 may be in order. First of all, the promise is based on the premise that you delight in the Lord.  You cannot delight in the Lord unless you also delight in his ways, his values, and his priorities.  If you delight in those, then the desires of your heart will line up with his and he will be glad to honor those desires.  Secondly, the verse may be best understood not as God giving you whatever desire springs from you, but God actually planting his desires in your heart so that they become your desires.  He will give you the desires….

Satan is an expert at convincing us that God will give us things that are contrary to his will simply because that is what will make us happy.  As many others have said, God wants us to be holy much more than happy.  The truth is that holiness is what produces long-term happiness. Paul is very clear in Galatians that if we sow to the flesh, we will reap destruction, but if we sow to the Spirit we will reap life.  Those things that we purse based on desires and reasoning from the flesh will eventually produce pain, loss, shame, and destruction. That is God’s promise.  To think differently is to mock God.  Happiness does not lie in that direction, although the devil will assure us that bliss is at the end of the road.

Even more diabolical, is the reality that a person’s decision to chase the desires of the flesh will bring pain, loss, and destruction on others who are innocent bystanders in the event.  Satan always convinces us that our decisions in pursuit of the appetites of the flesh affect only us but they will also affect all those with whom we have connections.  When a spouse leaves his or her mate for another, the spouse who is left behind as well as the children will suffer emotionally, economically, spiritually, relationally and in every other way.  When that person is a believer, the kingdom suffers loss, because once again, Jesus and his ways are discredited in the eyes of the world. Society suffers loss because one more decision has consigned marriage to the bin of disposable relationships. In addition, the sins of the fathers are passed down to the children and so forth.

Satan always convinces the one pursuing desires of the flesh that whatever pain is produced will be short lived and then later everyone will be fine.  That is never true.  The ripples from these decisions go out for decades because one day we decide that God wants us to be happy… on our terms.

Our prayer must be that God places his desires in our hearts rather than insisting that he make good the desires we ourselves have conjured up in our hearts or that Satan has planted there.  Godly desires produce life.  Fleshly desires breed death.  Period.  This “happiness thinking” among believers can be a very subtle thing until it takes root and then flourishes.  It invites in a lying spirit and a spirit of entitlement that both continue to insist that the believer has every right to be happy on his or her terms. Once it flourishes, it seems to undermine all spiritual reason and perception.  Beware of it in your own life and if you see it developing in others, point it out as a matter of concern rather than as a matter for condemnation.  It is a cancer in the church, much better prevented than treated.  If t takes root, it is certainly much better treated early than after it has spread to both the heart and brain.  At that point, life is truly in the balance.

A number of years ago a young single woman named Cheree (not her real name) came to my office wanting to talk about some spiritual issues in her life. She was not a member of our congregation but had attended several events at our church and I had gotten to know her by name. She was a schoolteacher, very bright, and very faithful in her church.

I asked her what she wanted to talk about and she told me immediately that God didn’t seem to be answering her prayers anymore. She was frustrated and confused. Cheree told me that she had always had a powerful prayer life and was used to God answering her prayers in amazing ways but over the past few months she felt as if her prayers were just hitting the ceiling and falling to the floor. She was concerned about the shift in her spiritual life and hoped I had some insights that might help her get back on track.

I asked Cheree what she had been praying for lately that was seemingly not getting through to God. I was prepared to talk about God’s timing and his working behind the scenes and not to be discouraged but to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. But then Cheree told be what her prayer focus had been lately. Without hesitating she told me that she had been involved with a married man for several years. Her prayer had been that he would leave his wife and children and marry her so they could live happily ever after. Okay… for a moment I was grasping for a pastorally professional response. Cheree was bewildered with God and frustrated because he was not answering her heart-felt pleas.

After a moment, I asked Cherie why she thought God should answer that particular prayer. She then stated a theological position that I suspect many of us subscribe to from time to time. She said, “God should answer my prayer because he wants me to be happy and that would make me happy.” We talked about her theology and went on to explore the meaning of adultery and God’s unwillingness to participate in our sin while leaving a wife and three small children abandoned. It was interesting to watch the lights come on when we talked about her sin. It was as if Cheree had never considered the implications of her desires. For her it felt good so it must be good.

Cheree was also operating on an unstated premise that God’s sole commitment to us is to make us happy. In the kingdom of God, however, holy must come before happy and sanctified must come before satisfied. Paul tells us, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom.8:29). God’s primary commitment to us is not to make us happy, as we understand it in our immaturity, but to make us into the image of Jesus. Being “conformed” usually requires some bending, shaping, stretching, and sometimes hammering. Like diamonds it involves time, pressure, heat and often a Father’s discipline. Ultimately, the work of God in our lives will bring happiness but it rarely comes in the form we first imagined.

The idea that if God loves me he will give me everything I want is very childlike – not in the good sense of innocent and trusting, but in the self-centered sense of a two-year old demanding his way and being angry at his parent if he doesn’t get it. If we are honest, we all have a bit of a two-year old inside of us. God works on us with an eternal perspective while we tend to operate in the here and now and seek immediate gratification even in spiritual things. Sometimes we do get that immediate answer and an amazing miracle where God manifests his goodness for us in a singular event. But more often God manifests in a process that takes time and even effort on our part.

That is because process is usually more formative than an event or even an impartation because process develops character. I remember Renee, the wife of a former senior pastor at Mid-Cities, saying with a laugh, “ I don’t want to have to work for it, I just want an impartation.” We all laughed, but secretly I’m with her – I just want an impartation. But God is wiser than that. Too often, if God were to give us the desire of our heart as soon as we asked for it, we would not have the character to manage the gift or the blessing. We would mess it up or misuse it.

So, does God want us to be happy? Yes, God wants us to be happy but not just for a brief season until “the new” wears off of our latest toy. He wants us to possess joy and possess happiness but that comes after the shaping and the molding of our hearts. I’m not saying you shouldn’t ask for what you desire but first of all examine that desire of your heart to see if it lines up with God’s values and purposes. Ask him to reveal the areas of growth he wants to work on next in your life and invite him to do the work and cooperate when he does it.

God is a great coach. When I ran track in high school, what I wanted and what would make me happy on a daily basis was an easy workout, finishing early, and a pat on the back for a job not done. That would make me happy in the short run but that happiness would quickly fade. The coach had something else in mind – the joy that would come from winning the race at the next meet and the race after that and the race after that. The joy and satisfaction that would come from a career of winning with medals in the display case would far out weight the happiness of an easy workout. So…we didn’t get easy workouts. We went home late not early and there was always one more lap.

There is a cost to lasting happiness. So when God says no or not yet don’t despise him. When you face hardships that are not quickly settled but that you must endure, know that God is making you into a champion who will one day possess joy and happiness rather than always seeking it in the “next new thing” you desire. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Heb.12:1).