Twenty-five years ago, I was a freshman at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. I had grown up in the church. I made a profession of faith at age eight and was baptized. God had blessed me with a home church that loved the gospel and taught me that I could trust the Bible. However, looking back now, I can see that something was missing in my Christianity.

There was a deep struggle in my soul: I wanted to be happy, and I felt guilty for wanting it. My ache to be happy, I suspected, was more a liability than an asset. Living the Christian life, I assumed, was about my ability to put aside what I really wanted to do.

You too want to be happy. And you can’t escape it. All your life you’ve been trying to satisfy your deep-down longing for real joy by finding that perfect possession or perfect spouse, enjoying good food, knowing influential people, collecting reliable friends, traveling to scenic places, winning at sports (whether as a player or a fan), achieving success at school or work, and getting your hands on the latest gadgets. Our unsatisfied longings gnaw at us late at night as we scroll through social media and flip from channel to channel and let another episode autoplay.

Now, most of us aren’t endlessly miserable. Not yet. Not at nineteen or twenty. We find measures of satisfaction in the moment, but we don’t stay satisfied, not deep down. Did God make us this way? And if so, why did God hardwire us to ache for joy? Why this universal search for satisfaction?

Surprised by Joy

I remember as a college freshman, with my very duty-oriented faith, beginning to feel a kind of fascination with joy. As a kid, I had sung, “I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.” Joy, when mentioned in church, often came off so light and flippant. And yet that one fruit of the Spirit’s nine (Galatians 5:22–23) connected most with the deep longings for happiness I was just beginning to realize as a college freshman.

As I read more of the Bible, I was amazed by what I found about joy and delight. It was the Psalms in particular that awakened me to the possibility and promise of real joy — joy that is not icing on the cake of Christianity, but an essential ingredient in the batter. Three psalms specifically captured my attention.

Soul-Thirsts for God

First, Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord.” And not just this command, but then this promise: “and he will give you the desires of your heart.” You mean at root God isn’t suspicious or frustrated by my desires? He made my heart to desire, and means to satisfy, not squash, my deepest longings? And where will that happen?

Second, Psalm 16:11: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Real joy comes not only from God as a gift from his hand, but in seeking his face. God himself — knowing him, enjoying him — that’s what he made your desires for. He made your restless human heart for real satisfaction — in him. He made your soul to thirst, and he meant for you not to deny your thirst but to satisfy it, in him.

Third, Psalm 63:1: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” This resonated deeply with me. I wanted this, and wanted to be more like this.

The Psalms had my attention. Again and again, they tapped into my soul, discouraged my sense of mere duty, and highlighted the central place of the heart — both in honesty about the many sorrows in this life, and in hopefully commanding me to “rejoice in the Lord” (Psalm 40:16; 64:10; 97:12; 104:34; 105:3; 118:24).

It was almost too good to be true to discover that my undeniable longing to be happy wasn’t just okay, but good, and that the God who made me actually wanted me to be as happy as humanly possible in him. For me to learn, and then begin to experience for myself, that God wasn’t the cosmic killjoy I had once assumed, but that he was committed, with all his sovereign energy and power, to do me good (Jeremiah 32:40–41) — it took weeks, even months, for such good news to land. I’m still not over it today.

And more good news was still to come.

All to the Glory of God

I knew from growing up that “the glory of God,” which often seemed like a throwaway Christianese phrase, was important. Turning pages in my Bible, I found it everywhere, like 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

God made the world, and made us, that he might be glorified. The Bible is very clear, and our own sense of justice resonates with the rightness of it, that God made us to glorify him. But that creates a crisis for many of us. Does God mean for me to pursue his glory or my joy? I want so badly to be happy, and the Bible commands, not condemns, my rejoicing in God. And I know I’m supposed to want him to be glorified in my life. Are his honor and my happiness two tandem pursuits in the Christian life? If so, how do we pursue both?

Then came the most remarkable discovery: our happiness in God glorifies God. My pursuit of the deepest and most durable joy, and God’s pursuit of his glory, are not two pursuits but one. Because, as John Piper champions in his book Desiring God, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” God’s design to be glorified and my desires to be happy come together in one amazing pursuit: the pursuit of joy in God.

Do You Enjoy Him?

God is not honored when we pay tribute to our own iron will by saying to him in prayer or church, “I don’t even want to be here, but I’m here.” What honors him, what glorifies him, what makes him look good, is joy and satisfaction in him. God is most glorified when we say with the psalmist, “You are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you,” and “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” We say, “Nothing makes me happier than to know you, Father, through your Son, Jesus, and to be here with you over your word, or in prayer, or in corporate worship. Jesus, you are my joy. You are my treasure. You are my delight. You satisfy my soul.” In those words, and in the heart behind them, God is glorified.

“Not only does God invite us to believe him, trust him, fear him, obey him, and worship him, but to enjoy him.”

What is the most important truth you’ve learned in college? I posed this question to myself in thinking about what I wanted to say to you this morning. Of the countless new facts and liberating discoveries I made in those all-important, trajectory-shaping college years, what has proved most life-changing? Here’s one way I would put it: For me, the single most important breakthrough in all my college learning was finding that God is not just the appropriate object of the verbs believe, trust, fear, obey, and worship, but also he is the most fitting, most satisfying, most worthy object of the verb enjoy.

Believe God, trust God, fear God, obey God, worship God, yes! But do you enjoy him? Not with the small enjoyment of chuckling at a clever commercial, but the large enjoyment of basking before an ocean. Not the thin enjoyment of humming along with a pop song, but the thick enjoyment of coming to the long-anticipated pinnacle of a symphony or a great novel. Not the shallow enjoyment of acquiring some new gadget, but the deep enjoyment of reconnecting and catching up with a longtime friend.

Not only does God invite us to believe him, trust him, fear him, obey him, and worship him, but to enjoy him. Psalm 34:8 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”

Learning to Fly

So, in light of that single greatest discovery in my college years, let me ask just briefly this morning what it means for the daily and weekly rhythms of the Christian life.

In other words, how do we get involved? What steps, humble as they may be, can we take? How do we position ourselves to receive the grace of God, to receive his joy? In his mercy, he has not kept it a secret how he provides ongoing grace and joy for the Christian life. I like to summarize it in three parts — three previews of what our focus will be tomorrow night.

1. Hear His Voice

Each new day introduces a fresh occasion to hear his voice in the Scriptures, not mainly as marching orders, but as a meal to feed our souls. Not just for soul nutrition, but for enjoyment. God wants our regular sitting down with his Book to be more like coming to dinner than going to the grocery store. Don’t try to store up truth for tomorrow or next week. Come to enjoy him today. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, when God gave them manna, simply gather a day’s portion and enjoy.

2. Have His Ear

Some call it prayer. When we enjoy God, prayer begins to be a way not just to ask God for things we would enjoy, but to enjoy God himself. In prayer, we respond to what God says to us in his word, and in doing so, we commune with him, both asking for more of him and experiencing him in prayer, in the moment, as our greatest enjoyment. The heart of prayer is not getting things from God, but getting God.

3. Belong to His Body

Finally, then, is belonging to his body. One vital manifestation of life in the church is corporate worship. When we pursue our joy in God, corporate worship becomes the stunning opportunity to gather together, not just with fellow believers, but with fellow enjoyers of God.

How might it change corporate worship for you — not just in church on Sunday morning, but also here in chapel — to look around and think, “These students and professors not only believe in the truth of Christianity but they enjoy the God of Christianity.” As we sing, we are enjoying Jesus together. As we pray, we are enjoying him together. As we hear his word read and his message preached, we are uniting our hearts together in the God who himself, in the person of his Son, became one of us, lived among us, suffered with us, died for us, rose triumphantly from the grave, and now sits in power — with all authority in heaven and on earth — at his Father’s right hand, and is bringing to pass, in his perfect patience and perfect timing, all his purposes in our world. For our everlasting joy. Together.

One Great Possession

Coming to enjoy God — not just believe him, trust him, worship him, and obey him, but enjoy him — has changed everything for me. It’s changed how I approach the Bible, how I approach prayer, and how I approach corporate worship and fellowship. But there’s still one last piece missing: What about love for others, especially when it’s costly? Will enjoying God move me toward others, or away from them? Will joy in God move me toward hard, painful, costly needs in this fallen, sin-sick world, or away from them?

My answer, which I can testify to in experience now for 25 years, is that finding joy in God liberates us to truly love others. I leave you with one amazing testimony: Hebrews 10:32–34. The situation is that some in this early church were put in prison for their faith, and others, instead of going into hiding, went public to visit them in prison. In doing so, they exposed themselves to the same persecution their brothers were receiving:

Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

So, these early Christians put themselves in harm’s way by coming forward to provide food and basic needs for their friends in prison, and they too were persecuted. Their possessions were plundered, whether by official decree or mob violence. And how did they receive it? Hebrews 10:34: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property. . .” What? How? Can you see yourself joyfully accepting the plundering of your possessions? Where did this come from?

The answer is in the last part of Hebrews 10:34: “. . . since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” The word for “property” is the same word, in the plural, as the word for “possession.” Literally, “you joyfully accepted the plundering of your possessions [plural] because you knew you had a better and abiding possession [singular].” Because you had God as your heavenly treasure, you were able to accept the loss of your earthly treasures in the calling of love — and not just accept, but accept with joy. You joyfully accepted the loss of your finite, earthly, limited possessions because you had the infinite, heavenly, all-satisfying singular Possession, whose name is Jesus Christ.

So, do you enjoy God? When you enjoy God, you are finally free to surrender your small, private enjoyments (called sacrifice) for the greater enjoyment of meeting the needs of others (called love).