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We glorify the Lord by choosing to accept and endure the suffering in His name. In imitating Jesus, we offer up our pain and humility in suffering as He has done on the cross. But we also glorify the Lord by enjoying and thriving in the happiness that He gives. Just as pain is something to be accepted first in order to be endured and offered, one must accept happiness. One must choose to be happy. Happiness is not something one must strive for. It cannot be a goal to achieve. Happiness is already here. Happiness exists in everyone’s heart.

In being happy, we feel the thriving sensation, wellness of the soul, and experience the state of union with God. True happiness is only possible through true love one has for God. As a member of His family, we are naturally happy sons and daughters in the kingdom of Christ. Happiness of Jesus is felt in every soul of His people just as the suffering of Jesus is felt in every heart.

For some, it is easier to accept pain than happiness and love. Those who have lived their lives in the near-absence of happiness and love are habitually drawn back to the darkness of pain, anxiety, trauma, depression, fear, and anger. But it is important to note that we are entitled to enjoy life for it is a gift God gives to all his beloved children. When suffering is endured and unshakable joy is born out of the womb of our loving God, life lived in that state of happiness makes a great offering to God. One glorifies God by acknowledging that the source of his happiness is God, and by humbly receiving the gift.

Below is a great excerpt from the book “Talking with God” by François Fénelon. His simple yet beautiful writing puts happiness in the right perspective. Happiness is easy to be mistaken. Love is easy to be deceived. Pain is easy to be manipulated. One shall constantly seek for the spirit of discernment that the devil may not steal the gift that God has given us. God is giving us abundantly even now. Every morning is a blessing. Every person carries the goodness and the mercy of God. Every breath is a gift, and every life is eternal. Peace is deeply planted, happiness is pouring down, and love is blooming.

Have faith and be at peace. Only love at any cost.

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The Lord has made all things for himself, says the Scripture. Everything belongs to him, and he will never release his right to anything. Free and intelligent creatures are as much his as are those which are otherwise. He directs every unintelligent thing totally and absolutely to himself, and he desires that his intelligent creatures should voluntarily make the same disposition of themselves. It is true that he desires our happiness, but there is neither the chief end of his work, nor an end to be compared with that of his glory. It is subordinate consideration which he assigns to the final and essential end of his glory.

In order that we may align ourselves with his purpose in this respect, we must prefer God before ourselves, and we must seek to will our own happiness for his glory. In any other case, we invert the order of things. We must not desire his glory on account of our own salvation, but on the other hand, we should see that out own happiness is a thing which he has been pleased to make a part of his glory. It is true that all holy souls are not capable of exercising this explicit preference for God over themselves, but there must be at least an implicit preference.

We human beings have a great distaste for this truth, and consider it to be a very hard saying, because we are lovers of self. We understand, in a general and superficial way, that we must love God more than all his creatures, but we have no conception of loving God more than ourselves, and loving ourselves only for him. We can utter these great words without difficulty, because we do not fully comprehend their meaning, but we shudder when it is explained to us that God and his glory are to be preferred before ourselves and everything else to such a degree that we must love his glory more than our own happiness, and must refer our happiness to his glory as merely a means to an end.

– Taken from the book Talking with God by François Fénelon