Happiness

Today marks the end of a week long fast for many students at Judson College. Congrats to everyone who participated in this. During a fast we take something ungodly out of our day, week, or month that we lust or yearn for. I challenge everyone to stop and take a deeper look at this from a life perspective. Regardless of whether or not you participated in the week long fast, stop for a moment right now and think about everything that is driving and influencing your life apart from God.

What things are you holding on to? What is idolling your life away? What past or present experiences are you unwilling to let go of in your life. What truths do you know, but not want to admit? Who are you mad at or unwilling to forgive? What sin, what guilt is still heavy on your heart? What pain are you unwilling to cease dwelling upon?

Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales, spoke at the iMAGO film festival and I really liked what he had to say. I was really moved by what he had to say about his life in particular because it rings so true with my ideals: when you let go “your dreams will become God’s dreams”

Letting go is what it is all about. Unfortunately (though fortunately in the long run), for most of us, truly letting go first requires really loosing something big. We lead these mundane, but seemingly happy lives, all the while not noticing how distant we truly our from God.

Even a man like Phil Vischer – a man who brought Christianity into many homes through the Veggie Tales characters of Larry, Bob, and others – ended up slipping away despite his seeming success.

Happiness is when you can give up everything that you are holding on to and just praise God. Through the Holy Spirit we are filled with joy, a joy that comes through praising God and putting ourselves to work for others.

Loosing everything is ultimately what restored Phil Vischer’s life. Suddenly, a man at the forefront of a booming, popular media craze – who became wrapped up in his desires and dreams instead of the Lord’s – found himself wrongly convicted in a court trial and the head of a now bankrupt company.

You know when it seems like everything bad that could happen to you does… and all at once? Well, pay attention, because the term coincidence is often little more than an atheistic word used to brush away the works of God. How ironic that those challenging things, those things that can never be adequately explained away, when they appear… suddenly the word coincidence becomes a justified, scientific term – a rational non-explanation in a modernistic society with a hard driven purpose to explain and prove without doubt every little unimportant question in life.

For Phil Vischer, like people everywhere, going through this time of trial was a wake up call that brought him much more in line with God’s purpose and filled him with a happiness and love much greater than that which he had previously known.

Let go of your life. Allow God to take control. Desire to live for God and share his love with others. Listen to what he tells you and look for his comforting hand when you are struggling – through nature, friends, dreams however he shows it to you.

As you allow yourself to focus more and more on God and allow yourself to stop managing and randomly using up time in your life, you will find an amazingly strong, lasting love and happiness that comes only through Christ.