Some people suppose happiness is uniquely human, unrelated to God’s nature: as He gave us a body and hunger, which He doesn’t have, He gave us a capacity for happiness, which He also doesn’t have. I believe something radically different—that God wants us happy because He’s happy! He treasures His happiness and treasures us, and therefore He treasures our happiness! Old Testament professor Brent Strawn writes, “In the Bible, God is happy, and God’s happiness affects and infects the rest of the non-God world, humans included.” The last part of the sentence hinges on the first: if God isn’t happy, he has no happiness with which to “infect” us.

To be godly is to resemble God. If God is unhappy, we’d need to pursue unhappiness, which is as likely as developing an appetite for gravel. If following Jesus means having to turn away from happiness, and we’re wired to want happiness, then we can only fail as Christians. Looking at Scripture carefully, we find a happy God who desires us to draw happiness from Him. Yet how many Christians have ever heard a sermon, read a book, had a discussion about, or meditated on God’s happiness?

Not once at church, Bible college, or seminary did I hear about God’s happiness. I have no doubt it would have been surprising, memorable, and encouraging. What better explanation for the flood of happiness that overwhelmed my life after coming to Christ than that my God, who created, redeemed, and indwelt me, was happy?

Though I studied the Bible continuously, somehow the hundreds of Scriptures indicating God’s pleasure, delight, and joy didn’t register. They were nullified by unbiblical statements I heard from pastors and authors, such as “God calls us to holiness, not happiness.” I’ve always been a voracious reader, inhaling books, including theological works, by the hundreds. But I didn’t read anything about the happiness of God until the late 1980s, after I’d been a pastor for ten years. John Piper’s books Desiring God and The Pleasures of God introduced me to a subject I should have heard about in my first few months attending church as a teenager.

Why did it take so long for me to hear what Scripture clearly teaches? Because God’s happiness simply wasn’t on my radar, nor that of my church or school. God’s love, mercy, and grace were affirmed—not just His justice and wrath—so perhaps I should have deduced that God was happy. But the thought never occurred to me.

I believe it’s vital that we not leave our children and future generations of Christians to figure out for themselves that God is happy. Most never will. How can they, unless their families and churches teach them and demonstrate God-centered happiness in their own lives? We need to tell them that sin, suffering, shame, and unhappiness are temporary conditions for God’s people. We’ll once and for all be righteous, healthy, shame free, and happy. Once we’re in His presence, we’ll never again experience the anger, judgment, and discipline of God we see in Scripture (all of which are appropriate and important, but even now do not nullify His happiness or love).

I’m convinced that in the new universe—called in Scripture the New Heaven and the New Earth—the attribute of God’s happiness will be apparent everywhere. Upon their deaths, Christ won’t say to His followers, “Go and submit to your master’s harshness” but “Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21, NIV). Anticipating those amazing words can sustain us through every heartbreak and challenge in our present lives.

I share more in this video, answering the question, “Is God happy?”

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