From His Heart

Larry Nobles: This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. Thank you for joining us today as we discover how to find real happiness, the genuine kind that will make life so fulfilling and frankly, worry-free. Is that possible? It sure is.

Jeff Schreve: The idea of blessing in the Scripture is very closely tied into the word happiness. And God wants to pour out His happiness, His blessing upon you and me. But first, we have to be calibrated to understand what really should make us happy.

Larry Nobles: In today's lesson called The Pursuit of Happiness Part 2, Pastor Jeff explores two avenues that a lot of people travel far and wide—in vain, of course—to find that there is only one way that leads to true blessing for now and for eternity.

If you missed Part 1 from last time of this message, you will want to go to FromHisHeart.org and click the listen link. But now, let’s continue the lesson. Open your copy of God’s Word to Psalm 33 and let Pastor Jeff take us on a journey of pursuing real, lasting, genuine happiness.

Jeff Schreve: No one does things that they think will make them unhappy. Nobody is on a pursuit of unhappiness. But we make decisions all the time thinking they're going to make us happy, and they make us so unhappy. Why is that?

Why do people who are given life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness pursue things that make us so unhappy? I think it's because we forget that happiness is linked with God. You cannot be happy if you divorce yourself from God.

How are you doing in your pursuit of happiness? I want to share with you two ways that people go about trying to pursue happiness. Way number one: many people are pursuing happiness in another god. Blessed is the nation, blessed are the people whose God is the Lord. You could easily say and cursed are the people whose God is not the Lord.

What are the other gods that people so often leave the true God for? Well, there's the god of money. And people think that money will make them happy. King Solomon had so much wealth, and he said this: those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness. Wealth doesn't bring happiness.

How about the god of success and achievement? So many people follow that god, thinking that's going to make them happy. The god of success can't make you happy. If you climb the corporate ladder, if you get that job, if you somehow become famous and everybody knows your name, is that going to make you happy? You go after the god of success and what do you find? Nothing. It's empty.

So many people barter for another god: the god of money, the god of success, or the god of pleasure. The Bible talks about the passing pleasures of sin. So many people sell their soul for pleasure. They get involved in drugs. They get involved in alcohol. They get involved in illicit sex thinking that somehow is going to satisfy and fill their heart. It won't. That stuff just leaves you ashamed because that cannot satisfy.

So many people are pursuing happiness in another god. But there's a second way. There's an opportunity here. You and I can pursue happiness in the true God. I want you to see what Psalm 33 says about the true God, the Lord God.

Verse six: by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth, all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast.

The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.

If you want to pursue happiness, then pursue the true God. And the true God is the creator God. That's what the Scripture says in verse six. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. They were created. And by the breath of His mouth, all their host. God is creator.

And how did God create? He didn't do it through billions of years of evolution, as the scientists will tell us. He did it just as He says: by the word of His mouth, by the breath of His mouth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And how did He do it? He said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He just spoke it into existence.

God is a God of incredible, unbelievable, mind-blowing, unfathomable power because He can just create. As one preacher said, God stepped on a platform of nothing behind a curtain of nowhere and spoke worlds into existence. God has such incredible power.

That says to you and to me, it's an encouragement from the Lord to get in this book because this book is the word of God. And the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It's living. It's active. It's quick. It's powerful.

There's power in the word of God. And in your situation, whatever it might be today, however you might be hurting today, whatever problems you're facing today, God can speak a word to your situation and turn it around.

The disciples in Mark chapter four were in a terrible, horrible storm. They thought they were going to die. They finally woke up Jesus and said, "Don't you care that we're perishing here?" And the Bible says Jesus, being aroused, He went from the back of the boat to the front of the boat in this huge, terrible storm, and He said these words: "Hush, be still." And it became perfectly calm. He just spoke a word to that storm and it was over.

Are you in a storm today? Is everything raging around you today? You don't know what you're going to do? You trust the God who can speak a word to your storm and shut it down like that. He has unbelievable creative power.

Psalm 121 tells us, "I shall lift up my eyes to the mountains, from whence cometh my help. Where does my help come from? Does it come from the mountains?" Because the people thought that the gods lived on the mountains. He said, "My help is not from the mountain. My help is from the God who made the mountains, the creator, the maker of heaven and earth." And God can do anything.

He is creator God. He is sovereign God. Look at what it says in verses 10 and 11. The Lord frustrates the plans of the nations and thwarts all their schemes. But the Lord's plans stand firm forever. His intentions can never be shaken.

God is sovereign. That means He's in charge. He's the King. God doesn't have to confer with anybody to do what He wants to do. Nobody can thwart God's purposes because God is in charge. He is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Joseph, who found himself in prison in the book of Genesis, had bad things happen to him. His brothers sold him into slavery. That's pretty bad when your own brothers sell you as a slave. And then secondly, he had Potiphar's wife lie about him, said that he tried to rape her when he did nothing of the sort. He was trying to run away from her. But then he ends up in prison.

It would have been really easy for Joseph to have gotten bitter at the things that happened to him because he spent 13 years of his life, from the time he was 17 until he was 30 years old, part of that time he was a slave in Egypt and a part of that time he was a prisoner in Egypt. It was horrible, but he never allowed himself to get bitter.

He always saw that God was in control. He saw God, the true God, as the sovereign God. Things don't happen unless God allows them to happen. That's one of the things about being sovereign. You're in charge of everything. Things don't slip up on God. God's never on the throne saying, "Man, I didn't know that was going to happen. Who let that happen?"

The Bible says a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground unless God says, "Okay, sparrow, you can do that." He's in control. And so when Joseph was finally elevated and became Prime Minister, he told his brothers, "Don't be angry with yourselves." He said, "You didn't send me here to Egypt. God did. God did."

God had a plan and God had a purpose. Joseph became the number two man in all of Egypt. Because of the wisdom God put in him, Joseph helped during the famine to preserve thousands and thousands and thousands of people from starving to death. And then Joseph realized that God is in charge. In your situation in life, remember God is ultimately in charge. And so you trust Him. And He really does work all things together for good to those who love Him, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Larry Nobles: Did you know that whether you've surrendered your life to Jesus Christ or you haven't, you were created by God for a purpose—not your purpose, but His purpose for you? We'll continue to explore this truth when Pastor Jeff returns in just a moment.

Today you're listening to part two of the lesson The Pursuit of Happiness. If you'd like a copy of the entire message, you can go to FromHisHeart.org and get it on CDs, DVDs, or an MP3 download. It's from the series "Do You Want to Be Blessed? How to Experience the Goodness of God." Find out details about that online.

Also, a reminder that when you're online, we hope that you'll take the time to go to our prayer link where you can leave a prayer request for people around the world to see. And if you allow, you'll receive an anonymous email alert that they have joined you in prayer. What an encouragement that is.

You can pray for hundreds of people who've left requests before you, waiting for you to join them. Remember, this is completely anonymous but fulfilling to participate in joining others in prayer. Because as we all know, what happens when two or more are gathered in His name. Now let's conclude the message, The Pursuit of Happiness, from Pastor Jeff Schreve on From His Heart.

Jeff Schreve: The true God is the creator God. He is the sovereign God. He is the awesome God. Verse eight, let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him, for He spoke and it was done, He commanded and it stood fast. We're to fear God.

Some people say, "Well, you know, you're not supposed to be afraid of God." I don't think you're supposed to be afraid of God. I don't think God wants us to be shaking in our boots every time we come around Him. See, some people have this idea because they grew up with a dad who was kind of bipolar. Maybe he was an alcoholic or just one of those guys where one day he was really nice and the other day he was really mean.

Kids that grow up with a dad like that, they just kind of nervous around dad. What kind of mood is dad in today? Because if dad's in a bad mood, he's going to get you. You say the wrong thing. And some people think that's what it means to fear God. You're just kind of walking on eggshells because God might whack me if He's having a bad day.

God doesn't ever have a bad day. When it says let all the earth fear the Lord, then it explains what that is: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. God says I don't want you to be afraid of me like you can't come before me, but I want you to come before me with reverence. I want you to stand in awe of who I am.

What's the problem we have in America today? We've lost the fear of God. We've lost the awe of God. We've lost the reverence of God. And because we don't respect God and we don't honor God and we don't stand in awe of God, we don't respect authority. Because God is the ultimate authority, and if you don't respect God's authority, you're not going to respect anybody else's authority.

The fear of the Lord, the reverence of God, the awe of God, it's the beginning of wisdom. It's the beginning of knowledge. And if you lose that, you lose everything. It's like buttoning your shirt and you get the first button off. I don't care how you button the other ones, your shirt's not going to look right. The fear of the Lord is the foundation stone. And we've lost it.

They lost it in the Old Testament in the 800s B.C. when Ahab was king and he married the wicked woman Jezebel. They were turning the hearts of the people of Israel to worship and serve the Baals, the false gods of their day. Finally, it had gotten so bad that God sent Elijah the prophet. He had a showdown on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal.

Do you remember he told the people? He said, "How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him. But if Baal is God, then follow him." See, what they wanted to do is what we so often want to do in America. They wanted to just ride the fence. They wanted to have one foot in the Lord's camp and one foot in Baal's camp and just say, "Well, I'm just going to ride the fence. I'm going to hedge my bets here."

They didn't really know who God is, but they wanted to make sure they were okay with the Lord God. But then with Baal, they didn't want to tick him off either. And so they tried to ride the fence. How long will you hesitate between two opinions? Pick a horse and ride it. If the Lord is God, serve Him, follow Him. But if Baal is God, follow him.

He says let's have a contest. We're going to find out who the real God is. The God who answers by fire, He will show Himself, He'll prove Himself to be the real God. And the people said, "Hey, that's a good idea. Let's do that." And so they did. He got the 450 prophets of Baal and he said, "Take an ox and cut it up, put it on the altar, call out to God, see if your god answers by fire."

They took the ox, they cut it up, they put it on the altar that they made. And they cried out to their false god Baal for six hours, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. But there was no answer. Elijah began to have a little fun with them. Said, "Maybe your god can't hear you. Maybe he's on vacation. Maybe he's in the bathroom."

Elijah could be kind of crude. I like that about the Old Testament prophets. They just lay it out there. And so what did they do? They didn't realize that he was mocking them so they're like, "Maybe he is in the bathroom. Let's cry out louder." They cut themselves with lances and let the blood flow and yelled and screamed with the blood flowing, thinking that would cause their god to answer by fire.

But their god didn't answer by fire. Why? Because he's not God. But then Elijah says, "It's my turn." And he took an ox and he cut it up, he put it on the altar made with stones. And then he told the guys, "You take four pitchers of water and you pour it over the sacrifice." And they did.

He said, "Get four more pitchers, pour it over the sacrifice," and they did. "Get four more pitchers, pour it over the sacrifice," and they did. And he had dug a trench around that altar that held five gallons of water. And the trench was filled with water. And then he called upon the Lord God.

And he said, "God, answer me, oh Lord, that this people may know that you are God." Bam! The fire of God fell and it consumed the offering, and it licked up the dust, and it consumed the stones, and it licked up all the water in the trench. And the people fell on their face before God. And there was awe in the presence of God. And they cried out and they said, "The Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God."

How desperately we need in America for us to see again that the Lord, He is God. Money's not god, success is not god, pleasure's not god. Jesus is God. The true God is the awesome God. He is Yahweh God.

Do you know when it says in verse 12, actually in this whole psalm, it uses the word Lord? Lord is in all caps. Anytime you run across the name, the four letters, YHWH, the Hebrew Y-H-W-H, called the Tetragrammaton, four letters. It's the special covenant name of God.

What they do in many Bibles is they take Lord and they put it in all caps to let you know that's the special name of God. The Hebrews would never pronounce the name YHWH. They'd say that's the holy name of God. "If you take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, God will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain." Be careful with the name. Just don't even say the name.

When you run across the name, just say Adonai because it's too risky if you mess up the name YHWH. Now, we're not exactly sure of YHWH. Most people think it's Yahweh. The German theologians came up with YHWH and they added vowels from Adonai and they came up with Jehovah out of YHWH.

In the King James Bible, they put in Jehovah and so most of us know God's covenant name not as Yahweh, but as Jehovah. But whether you say the YHWH as Yahweh or whether you say it as Jehovah, it speaks of the person, the intimate relationship that God's people have with Him. His true name was Yahweh.

Do you remember when Moses went to Pharaoh? He says, "Thus says the Lord Yahweh, Jehovah, let my people go." And Pharaoh said, "I don't know the Lord. I don't know this Yahweh. I don't know this Jehovah and I'm not going to let your people go. Who is Yahweh? Who is Jehovah?" That was the name God had given them, the special name.

That was His name in the Old Testament. His name in the New Testament is Jesus. Matthew chapter one and verse 21, the angel said to Joseph concerning Mary, "And she will bear a son and you shall call His name Jesus, Yeshua, which means Jehovah saves, Yahweh saves, for it is He who will save His people from their sins."

Who is the Lord? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is God in the flesh. His name is Jehovah, Yahweh saves, and that's what He did. Some people will try and tell you, "Well, in America we all serve the same God. Maybe we're in a cult but it's the same God and it's the same Jesus." No, it's not. The cultists believe in another Jesus whom we have not preached.

You have in America this mush God, this soft and doesn't stand for anything kind of God, and people will just pray in the name of the mush God. It's just gross. And they say, "Well, that's the same God you serve." No, it's not. The God we serve is the Lord Jesus Christ. His name is Jehovah saves.

Some have said, "Listen, when you want to witness to a Muslim, start out on common ground because you know we serve the same God." Excuse me? I hope you don't think that the God that the Muslims worship, Allah, is the same as Jehovah God.

John Ashcroft put it this way, I thought he did an excellent job when he said: in Islam, their god asks you to send your son and sacrifice your son for him. But in the Christian faith, God sends His son to you and sacrifices His son for you. There's a huge difference.

Bible says God, when He would come to people, He would say, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The God of the Muslim is the God of Abraham and the God of Ishmael and the God of his descendants. It's another God.

The true God is Jehovah God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the true God is calling us to return to Him. Calling us to return to Him before it's too late. Malachi chapter three says, "From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord Yahweh of hosts."

Return to me. Maybe you're here and you say, "When you were talking about these other gods, I tried not to show it, but I was getting convicted because if I'm honest, money trumps everything in my life. Money trumps everything. Or pleasure trumps everything. Or success trumps everything."

No other gods before me, but I know deep down I don't like to admit it but I know deep down that other things are more important in my life than God. What do I do? Return to me, the Lord says, and I will return to you. We can return. We can get back on blessing ground with the Lord.

Larry Nobles: If you've been away from God, then start with genuine repentance and a return to the Lord from your heart. He's waiting for you with open arms. But how do you do that? It starts with a humble heart. Don't commit to Him, surrender to Him.

You can utter a prayer with this sentiment in your own words. Perhaps say to God: Dear Jesus, I want to confess my sins before you and give you all my life, all of it. I know you are the Lord of Lords and you were born, lived, and died and rose again to be the forgiveness of my sins and assure me that as I surrender to you, I can live with you eternally in heaven as a child.

I humbly ask you to come into my heart and save me. I trust your word that says all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Lord, thank you for saving me. Help me to be the person you created me to be. Thank you, Lord Jesus. In your name I pray, Amen.

If you prayed a simple prayer and meant it, God's Word assures us that you are a child of God and nothing, absolutely nothing can snatch you out of His arms. You'll need to find a Bible-believing church and develop Christian friends to help you grow strong in your faith.

We also invite you to visit our website, click on the "Why Jesus" icon for more materials and helps in your Christian journey. Again, that's FromHisHeart.org, click the "Why Jesus" icon.

Well, thank you for being with us today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. I'm Larry Nobles, inviting you to join us on From His Heart tomorrow as we begin to complete the month's messages on Legacy Living. It's called Love Never Fails. That's Thursday when Pastor Jeff Schreve will open the Word of God again and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart. Here on From His Heart.