Sinclair Ferguson

We've been thinking this week in our podcast about the new year, and we've talked about making a personal covenant with the Lord.

We've thought about a hymn that encourages us, and yesterday we thought about a text that will guide us.

But sometimes, as I hinted yesterday, I have a little problem at this time of the year.

What do I say to people when I meet them for the first time?

I mean, what words should I use?

Maybe you think that's a little bit dark and obsessive-compulsive, but here's the issue.

When I was a young Christian, I was taught that God was more interested in my holiness than He was in my happiness.

And I thought it would seem very strange if I started wishing people, have a holy new year.

I actually think that even Christians might have cooled off to me if I'd greeted them in that way.

But there's another thing.

You could wish someone a happy new year and then later in the year regret that you'd ever said it because their life had been so filled with unhappiness.

So with thoughts like that, you can understand how I sometimes puzzle over what adjective do I use when I greet people at the beginning of the new year.

And so I usually end up saying something like, I hope you have a blessed and happy new year.

But you know, maybe my conscience is too tender because the Bible does speak about us being happy.

Just as it's the desire of every earthly father that his children will be happy, then surely that's all the more true of our heavenly father.

You know, some of us struggle, don't we, with a picture of a God who wants us to be happy, perhaps because of our own experience of fatherhood, perhaps because of the doubts and fears of our own hearts.

And this is why the Holy Spirit has been sent to us, so that once we have been adopted into God's family, we might become persuaded that He is our loving Heavenly Father.

And although we cannot fully understand the ways in which He accomplishes this, He does want us ultimately to be happy, and to be happy with Him, and to be happy forever.

The thing is, you see, God knows better than we do how to make us truly happy.

He knows that we can be truly happy only when we fully belong to Him, only when we're growing in our knowledge of Christ and want to live for Him.