TRUE BIBLICAL HAPPINESS & PROSPERITY
In Christian theology, we identify two types of happiness in life. The first type is HUMAN HAPPINESS (HH) which is happiness derived from any of the details of life. The other type is DIVINE HAPPINESS (DH) which is the inner "joy" produced as part of the Fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22, 23) in the life of the advancing believer in the Christian Way of Life. Human happiness is temporary and dependent on the ever-changing material and environmental circumstances. It lasts only for as long as the people, material things or circumstances that provide the happiness remain with you. It depends on certain ever-changing, temporary details of life to sustain it. On the contrary, God's happiness (divine happiness or DH) is independent of everything in this world. It is possible, the Bible says, to be content in whatever state you are (Philippians 4:11); that is, to have a deep inner happiness and contentment that does not depend on other people, material possessions, or circumstances. Divine happiness; that is, the inner happiness that God gives through the Holy Spirit, is the ONLY TRUE HAPPINESS, because it perfectly fills that Jesus-shaped vacuum deep within the human heart. Humans need a relationship with God the Grand Creator through Christ more than anything else in order to feel truly happy and satisfied with their personal existence and everyday living.
One way of describing suffering is to say that suffering comes from the removal of the human happiness. You can see, then, that if a person possesses God's joy (Divine Happiness) as righteous Job did (Job 1:20-22; 2:9, 10; 13:15; 19:25-27; 27:5), the loss of human happiness is much more tolerable. In addition, Proverbs 18:14 reads "The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?" One important request that God expects his chosen people to make while praying to Him is found in Proverbs 30:7-9, which reads "Two things I request of You, Oh God, (Deprive me not before I die): Remove falsehood and lies far from me; Give me neither poverty nor riches— Feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God." A New Testament example of divine happiness in spite of physical suffering is Acts 5:40-42 where Jesus' apostles were persecuted and beaten for His name sake: "when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for [Jesus'] name. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ." The apostle Paul gave statements indicative of joy in the midst of loss and suffering in his epistle to the Philippians (Philippians 1:19-26; 3:7-11; 4:4-7, 10-13). Both the concept of human happiness and the concept of divine happiness are thoroughly explained with superb accuracy in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments.
Since the true children of God are only pilgrims or deployed soldiers passing through a foreign country (this dying world of sin), God is not expecting Christians to look for absolute guarantees of material prosperity from Him. Without a doubt, Christians WILL receive varying degrees of material prosperity in this present world, BUT this all depends on the individual Christian and the divine providence of God. An individual Christian's level of material prosperity will fluctuate only within the bounds of God's divine providence and the unique purpose for that individual Christian. Some of God's holy people have been, and will be, as materially prosperous as the patriarch Abraham, or Job, or King David or Solomon, while others will be somewhere in between poverty and riches. Still other holy people of God will have little or no material prosperity, as was the case with Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus Christ (the suffering servant/man of sorrows) and His apostles (like Paul). The higher a holy person's spiritual calling from God, the more limited their material prosperity in this sinful world will be, primarily because God wants to prevent vast amounts of material prosperity and carnal pleasures from distracting or weighing down on that individual Christian in the midst of their extremely high spiritual calling, so that they can fulfill their unique spiritual calling or purpose with maximum success instead of minimum.
One important fact that should be noted is that the majority of God's blessings to His children in Christ are SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS and the Bible uses material and earthly things as vivid analogies to describe these spiritual blessings that God's children in Christ will receive, both in this present life and in the heavenly life to come. The Prosperity Gospel taught in many church denominations today consists of lies cleverly fabricated by Satan the Devil and his false teachers.
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For additional information on this topic, please search the following external links:
Christian Suffering
http://www.realtime.net/~wdoud/topics/sufferng.htmlTrue Biblical Prosperity, Part 1
http://hissheep.org/messages/true_biblical_prosperity_part1.htmlTrue Biblical Prosperity, Part 2
http://hissheep.org/messages/true_biblical_prosperity_part2.htmlTrue Biblical Prosperity, Part 3
http://hissheep.org/messages/true_biblical_prosperity_part3.html
