How to be truly happy
There are 7 billion ways to be happy.
In the world, there are thousands of paths on which people may travel to find happiness. If we were to categorize them, we could say that there are seven billion ways to be happy. Why seven billion? Because there are seven billion people living on the earth, and everyone has their unique characteristics, constitutions, and individualities that enable them to perceive happiness differently.
How do people perceive happiness?
People are beings of feeling. They act and live according to how they feel. If they feel that eating is good, they will think about eating and make that the joy of their lives. If they feel that material wealth is good, they will think about material wealth and live their lives with that joy. If they feel that sexual love is good, they will think about sexual love and take action in that way to find joy. In this way, both brain nerves and body nerves tend to be stimulated by the things that make them feel good, so people take action with those things as their source of joy.
However, there are limits to such joy.
In the world, we often see that people who find joy in such things are not truly happy. There was a man at the top of society, someone who had it all—riches, fame, power, success—but he said that he wasn’t truly happy. Some people like this have even committed suicide, taken drugs to forget their “emptiness”, or have gone hopping from relationship to relationship just to fill that “empty” feeling.
One good example is King Solomon, the most powerful man during his time. He had everything, but still he said, “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:14
The truth is that even if physical things make you happy and joyful for an instant, they cannot give you eternal joy and pleasure. Pastor Jeong has lived a life of following God closely, so he has deeply realized the limitations of the physical world.
How can you be truly happy?
If you look throughout history, and also if you look into the future, the greatest happiness is to follow God.
“You are not happy when you are rich or when you have a boyfriend/girlfriend or when you wear expensive clothes. You are truly happy only when you love God and serve God.” -Pastor Jeong
The joy that God gives.
When you learn about God, you learn everything about life. When you live a life of conversing with God all the time, your life will be full of love and joy. When you live with someone who is like a king, then you also start to feel like a king. Likewise, it is only when you live with the Lord that you can feel the Lord’s authority and power. Then you’ll be able to experience the joy, authority, love, and the ideal world of living with the king.
1 Chronicles 16:27
“Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and joy are in his dwelling place.”
We need to converse with the Holy Spirit to feel the true joy of life.
There was a time when Pastor Jeong was running around, working the whole day, and he felt so tired and exhausted. He had a plate in his hands, and when it broke, he realized how meaningless life can be. When he reflected on that day, he realized that although he had worked so hard, he hadn’t conversed and done things together with the Holy Spirit. Our lives, too, will feel empty and meaningless if we don’t do things while conversing with God, sharing our joy, love, and affection with Him.
We need the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment to feel true joy.
The Holy Spirit must enlighten us; only then can we realize what is truly valuable. When the Holy Spirit doesn’t help us realize, it’s easy to fall back on our human nature, human limitations, and human thoughts and fall to a low level. When our thoughts are at a low level, we perceive things that are actually of low level to be so great that we follow those things not realizing how meaningless they are.
A lot of people claim to be joyful, saying that they have achieved the ideal world. However, this is just the ideal world in the physical world, at the physical level. Even though they may have everything, if their spirits are not saved, then their joy will eventually end as an empty, meaningless life. Ultimately, following the laws of nature, they will pass on when the time comes.
Only when we live our lives with the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment can we transcend the human level and experience heavenly joy that is beyond our imagination. If you live with the happiness and excitement that is found within the Lord, belonging to God’s Will, then that joy will exist while your body is alive, and your spirit will continue to live with joy eternally.
God who is eternal excites and makes your brain, thoughts, and heart happy, and makes you take action on eternal things. Those who take action on eternal things will be able to gain what is eternal and thus will have that as the hope and joy of their lifetime.
Do you want to experience this joy from God?
People’s bodies operate according to how their nerves feel. Therefore, to feel this heavenly joy, you need to let your nerves feel the heavens.
How can you do that?
Ask. Seek. Talk to God. Converse and plead with Him, and love Him to the extreme. Take action like this every day. Then, all your body, heart, and thoughts will take action in Heaven’s direction.
“Happiness is happiness only when it lasts eternally.
You can receive this kind of joy only through the Lord. Try praying. As I have prayed, I can see how this joy was given to me, and I realized. You need to have faith like the Lord and receive this joy from the Lord,” -Pastor Jeong Myeong Seok
Know about your life. If you do not know, it is like having a great machine but not being able to use it fully for dozens of years.
About Author
Shinki is that IT Gig, that go to person for computer related issues.
In his spare time he runs, cycles, and exercise with the trinity in mind.