The Real Secret to A Happy Life

In 1875 Hannah Whitall Smith wrote her best selling book, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, a book that over-promised Christian experiences. It became wildly popular in the Christian community (despite it’s roots in mysticism, universalism, and her doubt of a literal hell), as it still is today.

One little known fact about Hannah was that her life was anything but happy. In the book 25 Surprising Marriages: How Great Christians Struggled to Make Their Marriages Work the story is told of her rocky marriage, aggravated by her fierce independence, her husband’s mental breakdowns and manic depression, and her own frustration due to a lack of emotional/physical “feelings” of the Holy Spirit, which she expected to come over her whole body like electrical charges of lightning and thrills.

Worse, at the height of her husband’s career as a itinerant revivalist, he fell morally into adultery. He was unrepentant, continued in his immorality, and eventually became an agnostic. Hannah, too, eventually apostatized, embracing universalism and joining the Quaker movement.

So what went so wrong? How could the author of the “The Christians Secret of A Happy Life” get it so wrong?

It’s the same reason we get it so wrong.

Why is it that we struggle with contentment? Why is our peace elusive? How come our joy is up one minute, then down the next? Why does our spouse make us crazy some days? Why do problems with people devastate us?

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I think that one reason is that we put our trust in the wrong things.

Instead of putting our confidence and trust in the Lord, we put it everywhere else.

If you’re married, we assume that our husband will meet our needs. When he doesn’t, we’re devastated. It’s because we’ve put our trust in our husband.

We put our trust in things because we assume they will bring us true happiness: friendship, having kids, having a doting husband, having a successful career, being loved and appreciated by our church community and neighbors. When one of these things is out of our reach, we feel as though the rug has been pulled out from underneath us.

That’s because our “hope” and what we’ve built our lives seeking has been pulled out from underneath us.

Our trust, our hope, our everything has to be found in Christ.

We desperately need the mindset: “You are my God, in You I will trust.”

I’m not going to expect my husband to meet my needs emotionally, spiritually or even physically. To do so is to put him under a weight he was never meant to bear.

But God, on the other hand, is big enough, strong enough, resourceful enough to handle my emotional, spiritual, and physical needs. The God who is a refuge, a shepherd, a provider, a sustainer is 100% capable.

“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord.”

When you are lonely, do you expect your husband to be more attentive? More loving? More communicative?

When you are feeling unappreciated, do you wish your friends would take more notice of you and give you the approval you desire? Do you bemoan the fact that your friends are never there for you? They never do enough?

When you are discouraged, do you expect your church to be more supportive, affirming, and encouraging to you?

To expect that others will meet these needs it to place your hope for happiness and deliverance in their hands.

The people around us are human. They have limits. They’ll die some day just like you and me.

Our trust can’t be put in horses, or chariots, in kings or in princes…

or in modern language,

our trust can’t be put in possession or prosperity, people or positions, or in understanding community, or in thoughtful, kind, people…

but our trust has to rest solely and entirely with God.

Let’s face it, our unmet expectations bring us unhappiness.

Expectations kill, friends. So don’t do that to your relationships.

Put your hope in God. It’s the only sane place to put it. God is God. He has the power to deliver you. He’ll meet your needs and promised to love you like you’ve never been loved before.

I went to visit my grandmother yesterday in the nursing home. She has late stage Alzheimer’s. She spoke a little, and responded a little, but she physically can’t do much. It would be foolish for me to get upset because my grandmother doesn’t show me the love that she once did. It would be wrong of me to be aggravated that she doesn’t appreciate me, or affirm me, because she’s physically unable to do it.

We can’t expect our husband, our friends, our President, to be our “confidence” or savior. They can’t meet our needs, because they weren’t made to. Looking to them for needs that God alone can meet will mean disappointment every time.

It’s like fishing in a pond that says “No fishing.” The reason the sign’s up is that all the pond holds is snapping turtles and weeds and muck. There are no fish in that hole.

We decide to fish anyway, and then get angry when we pull up our pole yet again to find that there are still no fish there. Unless we’re pursing God alone, we’re fishing in a pond that can never deliver, friends.

We cast our lines into ponds that never fulfill.

And we expect people to produce fish in ponds that have no fish.

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.

The real secret to a happy life is to place our confidence in the right place. Our hope is in the Lord.

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Ps. 42:11

“But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.” Ps. 52:8

“That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, That they may arise and tell them to their children, That they should put their confidence in God And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments…” Ps. 76:6,7