If Only . . .

What would it take to make you happy?  Do you ever think about that?  Most people do.  Most people have a mental list of things they'd need to be happy.  It's a mental wish list.  I call it the "if only" list . . .

If only I could get more time to myself I'd be happy.

If only I had a promotion at work with a nice raise and an office with a window--then I'd be happy!

If only I had a bigger house in a nice neighborhood, then I'd be happy.

Or maybe it's just one big thing.  One big achievement that you believe is the key to everything.  

But the truth of the matter is, there isn't one thing on this earth that will make you happy.  There is not one thing or a hundred things on this earth that will make you content.  There is nothing on this planet that will give you the peace you're looking for.  Because that's not where peace and happiness come from.  I could give you a hundred examples of very wealthy, and very successful people that have everything you could ever dream of . . . and they don't have peace.  And they don't have happiness.  And they are still not content.  

We're always looking for the meaning of life in the world around us.  We look for our purpose and our place in the horizontal earth.  But if you want to find that purpose, that peace, you have to look upward.  You have to look for the meaning of life vertically.  Because it comes from God.

God asks in Isaiah Chapter 55 "Why spend money on what's not bread and labor for what doesn't satisfy?"  

It was a good question then, and it's still a good question now.  And we still do that.  We spend money on stuff we don't need that doesn't bring us satisfaction, and work hard and get good at our vocations thinking that this is our purpose and is the key to unlocking a perfect life--and it doesn't.  

Because our purpose.  Our place.  Our role.  What it is we are made for is with God.  You won't find it in the world.  You'll have to go to God to understand it.  

~Pastor Todd Creason