Sinclair Ferguson

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.

And so there is a real happiness for the Christian to experience.

But the Christian is brought to experience it in many different ways, and some of them actually are very sore to us because we're still seeking our happiness in something in which happiness can never be found, rather than seeking it in the Lord.

I wonder if you know the great hymn by the English hymn writer who rejoiced in the name Augustus Montague Toplady.

That's a name to conjure with.

He wrote a great hymn entitled A Debtor to Mercy Alone.

And there's a verse in it that has always moved me.

He says, my name from the palms of his hands, eternity will not erase.

Impressed on his heart, it remains in marks of indelible grace.

Yes, I to the end shall endure, as sure as the earnest is given.

And then this, more happy, but not more secure, the glorified spirits in heaven.