happy?

Jesus is happy. Infinitely happy. Unwaveringly happy. His happiness knows no end. That might sound a little funny, maybe even trite but the reality is God is happy. He is deeply and unshakably happy. To quote Piper, “…the glory and the grace of Jesus is that he is, and always will be, indestructibly happy.”
That carries a lot of questions doesn’t it. How can God look down at His creation and be happy with the way things are going? How can God look down at life that is so destructive and remain happy? How can God be happy with His creation that is so unhappy? Not going to answer those questions though I think there are excellent answers to those questions. What I want to do is think about the comfort we have in an always happy God.
My first comfort is this, if God is happy then He is not worried. Jesus is in control despite all of our feelings and assumptions and thoughts to the contrary. If there is one thing that the scriptures make abundantly clear it is that God is in perfect control of everything.
My second comfort is this, the God that is happy and not worried is with me. I have come to understand that God with me is the same as God for me. God is not worried about my circumstances, He is happy with them. God is not against me in my circumstances but for me. If God is not worried and He is for me then I have no need to worry either.
My third comfort is this, if God (knowing everything) is happy and not worried and for me, then everything must be going according to His plan. He is not thwart-able in His will. If His will were in jeopardy then worry would loom on the horizon, but His will is perfectly accomplished even by His enemies.
It is easy to find yourself in a mess of your own making and feel that you have blown it, but the reality is, you are in a mess of your own making and you did blow it but that this God is still for you and not worried and if you will trust Him you need not to worry or be unhappy either.
Bad marriages are from God as are disobedient children and accidental death and tsunamis and foreclosure and everything that we encounter and these things make us unhappy, but they do not trouble God or take away from His happiness and they need not take away from ours. If we would just look up into His face and into His eyes, we would see our Father reassuring us and comforting us. Saying to us, “I am not worried, I am happy, and I am for you, trust me, you need not worry and I want you to be happy.”
Do you believe that, “God wants you to be happy?” I am convinced He does, He is conforming us to the image of His Son, and His Son, Jesus, is infinitely happy. We can be happy, not falsely so, not stoically so, but genuinely so. In the face of life and death and everything in between we can be happy because we can know the One that is happy.