God is interested in Your Holiness not Your Happiness

Or can you have both?

Photo by Alex Block on Unsplash

I’ve heard many Pastors say:

“It’s about holiness not happiness!”

I get it. The call to holiness is replete in the Bible. God calls the Israelites to holiness numerous times:

You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.(Leviticus 20:26, ESV)

Similarly, the church is reminded by the apostle Peter, who we are:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.(1 Peter 2:9, ESV, emphasis mine)

Now, the Bible doesn’t tell us to be happy. However, it does describe happy people.

One of the ‘unfortunate’ events of Bible translation was the use of the word ‘blessed’ for ‘happy’. This is not because it was used wrongly. Blessed used to mean happy or incredibly fortunate. Now we use it to mean something good bestowed on us by God.

Let’s look at Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.(Psalm…