God doesn't want you happy, He wants you good!

Tony Campolo taught me this years ago at a Youth Specialties Conference:  “God doesn’t want us to be ‘happy,’ He wants us to be ‘good’”

This is why failure is so important.  God uses failure in the world’s eyes and usually in our eyes to bring great success.  We have images of the “good life” that swirl in our heads.  It is a happy, comfortable, high esteem life for most of us which we inherited from TV or our families or friends or teachers.  The problem is that none of these images of success are God’s images.  They are man made images.  God doesn’t want us to shoot that low.  He wants us aiming high…as high as the heavens.

Let me talk about what I have learned in marriage and perhaps it will help.

What I learned about marriage from the world around me was that a good marriage was comfortable, loving, caring, and romantic.  It was a place where my/our needs were met.  This was maintained by a unique scoring system.  Each person keeps score, accumulates points and sometimes loses those points but the goal is to keep the score even. Every couple has a different way to keep score and different ways to score points but the result is the same: A marriage scoreboard.  When the score gets lopsided, then someone is angry and hurts.  The reason for the hurt is that someone is getting their needs met more than the other.

If the purpose of the marriage is mutual happiness, then there is good reason for the hurt and the scoring system.  However, God doesn’t want you “happy” but “good.”  God wants to use the marriage to shape and form you into the image of Christ.  Remember what Christ did?  He suffered, sacrificed, bled and died and it was all one sided; He did all the hard work.  Through his suffering and self sacrifice he forgave, showed mercy and tenderness and all this from a human perspective looked like failure.  There was a good reason he was mocked on the cross.  Those mocking saw an epic fail.  We know, however, that it was the most successful life in human history from God’s perspective.

This logic applies to just about everything.  What is the purpose of your body?  Is it there for your happiness?  If so then physical suffering can only be tragic.  How about your career?  if it is only there for your happiness then advancement is the only possible good.  Loosing a job could  not possibly help.  However, if everything is for God’s use toward forming us into Christ’s image then the job failures, body failures and happy-marriage failures are quite possibly God’s tool to shape you and your opportunity to suffer like Christ.

For years I have repeated this verse:  “All things work together for good for those who love God.” (Romans 8:28)  In those years I thought “good” meant “happy” and it confounded me as I declared my love of God and discovered continued failures in every area of life.  I get it just a little better now.  God works it all together to “make me more like Christ;” to make me “really good.”

I hope you join me in praying:  “God, please make me good.”  It is a simple prayer but it definitely strikes at the heart of my addiction to being “happy.”