Does God Want Us To Be Happy?

This week's article is from a acquaintance of mine that I briefly knew when I worked in Rome, Ga. His name is Jonathan Huggins Huggins and he is the college chaplain at Berry College in Rome, GA. 

"Everyone wants to be happy.  At least, that seems to be the case. Even when people do things that will ultimately make them miserable, one could argue that they are still trying to make themselves happy. The problem is, we often look for happiness in all the wrong places (Isaiah 55:2, Jer. 2:13). But does God even care about our happiness? I mean, is it really that important? Is it just a nice additional quality that one might be lucky enough to experience if you have the right personality or set of circumstances? Or is happiness essential to life, and therefore essential to life with God? Is happiness a constitutive aspect of Christian faith and living?

The History Of Engel Stadium

In 1929, while the country was in the throes of the Great Depression, entrepreneur extraordinaire Joe Engel came to Chattanooga with a cash offer in his hand for Chattanooga’s minor league baseball team. Engel believed in baseball, and he believed in Chattanooga. Acting as an emissary for Clark Griffith, owner of the major league Washington Senators, he purchased the Lookouts from Sammy Strang Nicklin, a Chattanooga-born big leaguer who had helped the New York Giants win the World Series in 1905.

On that same trip, Engel also brought $150,000 for the purpose of building a gleaming new ballpark to replace Andrews Field, which had acted as the Lookouts’ home field since 1911. The new stadium was completed the next year.

Into the 1930s and beyond, Engel promoted the Lookouts tirelessly, and through his influence, a baseball game at Engel Stadium became more than balls, strikes, outs, and runs. It was a spectacle.

The Scariest Passage In The Bible

Article by Justin Dillehay (TGC | January 7th, 2020)

"Christians may disagree over what constitutes the scariest passage in the Bible. But most would agree Jesus’s concluding words in the Sermon on the Mount rank near the top.

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt. 7:21–23)

It’s frightening to think about going to hell. It’s even more frightening to find out too late that you’re going to hell when you thought you were going to heaven. And still more frightening to think that not just a few, but “many” will have this experience. Some people think they’re Christians, they call Jesus “Lord,” they even do mighty works in his name—and yet they’re not truly saved and never were." 

The Faithful Practice of Prayer

If you and I reflect the habits and beliefs of a lot of the western world's church members, then our prayer life is to put it gently, non-existent. 

We all fall short. We all, in our pride, set God aside. Yet to gloss over this failure is to relinquish the power of God in our lives. This week so many of us have been praying for our mission team in Vanuatu. And it is making a difference! But God desires that same level of passion and commitment in all the causes that He chooses to advance His Kingdom. 

So how can we pursue a more fruitful, consistent prayer life? The wrong solution is simply “to try harder.” God doesn't want us to turn prayer into another "To Do" item on our daily checklist —that approach misses the entire point of prayer itself.  

John Calvin, said that prayer is “the chief exercise of faith.” So if prayer is about faith, where does faith come from? It comes from hearing the word of God. If we desire real change in our prayer lives, then we must be consistent in our pursuit of God's wisdom and truth. The gospel of Jesus Christ and our faithfulness in prayer are tethered together, never to be torn apart on this side of eternity.