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MAY: The Gospel of Jesus Christ

May 26

TRUE AND FALSE HAPPINESS

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Matthew 5:6

Man under the influence of alcohol may feel perfectly happy for the time being, but the question is, has he solved his problems? To place happiness before health and to regard it as the supreme good is to be guilty of a fundamental fallacy in the matter of standards.

Such unthinking procedure includes also the fallacy of failing to see that ultimately happiness depends upon health and is something that results from health. Any other type of happiness is negative and dependent only upon the absence of conditions that prevent happiness. However much we may strive to lessen our unhappiness, while there is disease, there can be no true happiness. Nothing is so fallacious, therefore, and so fatal to true happiness as to make ease and happiness ends in and of themselves.

When our Lord said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6), he did not say that they would be happy who hungered and thirsted after happiness. The blessedness, the happiness, the joy is something that will result from our seeking righteousness and from our becoming righteous. It is a by-product, an end-result. We are not to place blessedness or happiness in the supreme position. We are to seek righteousness, and, having found it, we shall then find ourselves to be happy and filled with blessedness.

What ultimately accounts for the failure of the false prophet to think clearly is the fact that he is deliberately determined to defend himself and to think well of himself. Pride is the root cause of the trouble. The view of the false prophet starts with the postulate that whatever else may be the cause of the troubles in life, it is not man himself.

A Thought to Ponder
The blessedness, the happiness, the joy is something that will result from our seeking righteousness and from our becoming righteous.

From Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, pp. 48-50.




Today’s devo is taken from Walking with God Day by Day © 2003 by Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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