Table of Contents
Topic: Examine Your Goals
Are you reaching for the right thing? We often think that something will make us happy if we can attain it, only to be
disappointed when we reach our goal and discover we are still as unhappy as we were before.
Experience teaches us that things can’t keep us happy for very long. Multitudes of people have had the experience of putting their careers ahead of everything.
They work an excessive number of hours, ignoring the development of personal and family relationships, and often end up wealthy and lonely and possibly sick. They can buy anything they want but have no one to share it with, and even if they did, they wouldn’t feel good enough to enjoy it.
Good relationships and good health are two of the things that feed happiness, and they should be at the top of our list of
goals.
As I have already said, our number one goal should be to develop a close, intimate, personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Being in continual fellowship with God and learning to obey Him in all things will make you happier than you might ever imagine.
Since God is Life, how can we hope to enjoy life apart from Him? If people are so busy trying to climb the ladder of success that they have no time for God, they may reach the top, but they will find that their ladder has been leaning against the wrong building. They have spent their lives trying to get somewhere but find that it isn’t where they want to be after all.
In my personal search for happiness, I discovered that my joy is fed by doing things for other people. If we live to make
others happy, God will bring a harvest of joy into our lives.
Loving God and people is the key to daily happiness for me.
No matter what kind of problem I have, if I focus on what I can do to put a smile on another person’s face, I find that it
makes me happy.
Psychologist Greta Palmer said, “Those only are happy who have their minds on some object other than
their own happiness… On the happiness of others… On the improvement of mankind.” Regarding serving others, Jesus
said, “If you know these things, blessed and happy and to be
envied are you if you practice them (if you act accordingly a really do them)” (John 13:17).