We see that the world seeks happiness instead of holiness. Therefore, we assume we should do the opposite. But we're wrong.

In the mid-1600s, Puritan John Gibbon said, "God alone is enough, but without him, nothing [is enough] for thy happiness."[218] Whether or not we're conscious of it, since God is the fountainhead of happiness, the search for happiness is always the search for God.

Though I live in a world that sells false happiness at newsstands, websites, and big-box stores, I thank God for authentic happiness in Jesus.

John Wesley said, "A sour religion is the devil's religion."[284] The sure way to have a sour religion is to believe in a sour God. We play right into the devil's hands when we fail to recognize and teach the happiness of God.

All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

Augustine was right: "It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains that all men desire to be happy. . . . The happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God.

The human race is homesick for Eden, which only two humans have ever known. We spend our lives chasing peaceful delight, following dead ends or cul-de-sacs in pursuit of home. We know intuitively that we've wandered. What we don't know is how to return. Our lives are largely the story of the often wrong and occasionally right turns we take in our attempts to get home to Happiness with a capital H—God himself.

Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6, emphasis added). Call that payoff contentment, satisfaction, peace, or excitement—it all adds up to one word: happiness

Our desires correspond precisely to God's plans. It's not that we want something, so we engage in wishful thinking that what we want exists. It's the opposite—the reason we want it is precisely because God has planned for it to exist. As we'll see, resurrected people living in a resurrected universe isn't our idea—it's God's.

Do we seek happiness because we're sinners or because we're human? Should faith in God be dragged forward by duty or propelled by delight? Must we choose between holiness and happiness? Much

God cannot give us happiness apart from Himself, because there is no such thing." —C. S. Lewis

In the end, we have two choices: both God and happiness neither God nor happiness