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Have You Checked Your PH Balance?

There is a whole science around getting and staying in shape by regulating your PH.  That’s not what we are talking about today.  The PH balance we’re going to test is pleasure vs happiness.  You can go to the happiest place on earth and see some very unhappy people.  As a matter of fact, you and Debbie have passes to the happiest place on earth, don’t you? (Podcast only)  The world continues to try and corner the market on happiness but seems to always fall short.  Even Facebook thought they had found the secret in giving people greater connectivity, but phycologists everywhere are growing more concerned over the quick dopamine fix that the social media platform provides.  There is nothing wrong with many of the pleasures in life.  It’s the over use of pleasures to ease the fear of unhappiness that unbalances us from the life God intends.  Paul even warn us in Romans 6:16 that you can even enslave yourself to a pleasure.

¹⁶ Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

So here’s what were going to unearth.

1. What’s the difference
2. Happiness is never the what
3. Ring to retirement
4. Fear vs Faith

What’s the Difference?

Dr. Lustig, author of “The Hacking of the American Mind: The science behind the corporate takeover of our bodies and brains” states, “If you’ve been told your entire life that pleasure is happiness, then you’re in [big trouble]”.

Dr. Robert Lustig, pediatric endocrinologist, would define it this way: “Pleasure is short-lived, visceral, usually experienced by oneself, achievable with substances. Happiness, by contrast, is often the opposite—long-lived, ethereal (purposeful, transcendent), often experienced in meaningful social groups and cannot be achieved through substances. Pleasure is taking, while happiness is giving.”

Happiness Is Never A What

We all know this to be true.  Our greatest joys and our greatest frustrations are always wrapped up in a who and not a what.  If we know that, then why do we often pursue the what’s more consistently that the who’s.  First, who’s are more challenging.  If it was easy everyone would do it.  Second, what’s will always be the thing satan uses to sabotage our who’s.  Think about it, you will never be temped with a who.  You will never be tempted to spend more time with your children or to be more romantically affectionate with your spouse.  You may say, what about an affair?  It’s still not the who it’s the sex.  We read over and over the sentiments of an unfaithful husband, “I never wanted to hurt her.  It didn’t mean anything relationally.”

When you apply God’s instructions to your relationships then all the pleasures in life are so much better and they fall under your control.  I can remember so many simples but wonderful pleasures that Karla and I have experienced over the years.  Stage Deli cheesecake, Bubble Bread, standing on top of the snow-covered mountain in Breckinridge, or watching the sunset on Indian Rocks beach.  God created the what’s to enjoy with the who’s.

Ring to retirement

Many Christians have this idea that we must slog our way through life as believers and that the real happiness is when we get to heaven.  That would be like putting a ring on your wife’s finger and telling her that when you retire the real marriage begins.  Jesus said in John 10:10 (NLV) The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.  Jesus not only wants us to experience happiness, but He wants us to be happy all the time.

Fear robs happiness

Fear may be the enemies greatest weapon against us, and the enemy that pursues us all is death.  It can only be through a rock-solid faith in God and a daily walk with Christ where we will have that rich satisfying life.  When you are alive in Christ all of life’s sights, sounds, tastes and relationships will be rich and in balance.

Here is the secret.  Fear and faith are two sides of the same coin, but life is not a coin flip.  You get to decide every day in every moment which you will exercise, faith or fear.  God always gives you just enough margin to make the right choice.