Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Am I Allowed to be Happy? | The Writings | Proverbs 30

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

What is the key to happiness? Is it wrong to enjoy my life? Should we pray for a happy life? In today's episode, Tanya shares how Proverbs 30 encourages us to enjoy the gifts in our lives by knowing that the Giver is greater than them all. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Proverbs 30

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. How do you find happiness? So we're about to wrap up our Proverbs Sigma, and today we're in Proverbs 30, and the question we're going to address, or one of the questions we ask ourselves all the time, how do I find happiness? Maybe you've read the book, a young adult novel by John Green. It's titled The Fault in Our Stars, or maybe you've seen the movie. It's a beautiful love story of two teenagers who's circumstantialial. are ill-fated by cancer. Something outside their control. The disease is the fault in their stars, or the barrier to their faded happiness, if you will. Think of Romeo and Juliet as star-crossed lovers and bring it into the 21st century but replace family feud with cancer and you have the premise of the fault in our stars. Cancer is the fault. It's easy for all of us to read this novel or watch the movie and cast our blame on cancer, isn't it? I mean, we've all been affected by

it in one way or another. It takes our loved ones. It takes our own health far too soon. So we relate to this story. Now, the recent novel Fault on Our Stars is a play on words to one of Shakespeare's famous lines in Julius Caesar, where Cassius and Brutus are having a conversation. And Cassius says, The Fault, Dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. See, these two gentlemen, Cassius and Brutus, are going to die meaningless and forgot. as Julius Caesar's little underlings unless they do something about it. So rather than blaming fate, they want to take matters about their happiness into their own hands. So these authors and their play on words have opposing messages. On one hand,

the keys to happiness are completely out of reach, the fault in our stars. Even if we do find love or joy, our circumstances have the power to take it away from us. On the other hand, the keys to a happy and meaningful life are within us. It's what we do that matters. So what is the key to a happy life for you? How much time and energy do you spend pursuing happiness every day? In Psalm 274, we hear David say, one thing have I desired of the Lord. One thing will I seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord to behold the beauty of the Lord all the day, of my life. Let's be honest, are we able, like David, to name the basic requirement for our happiness, joy? Are you willing to dig a little deeper and name what it is for you? We have at least 75

Psalms written by David where we get to watch him work out his life before the Lord so that he can say that the one thing he seeks after is to dwell in the presence of the Lord. Now maybe the reality is that we think we need a lot of things to make us happy. Happy kids, healthy bodies, a nice vacation, time to ourselves, a title that says we mean something. So how do we get to where David is in Psalm 27, where we truly want our happiness to come from being in God's presence? And is it okay to pray for a happy life? Can I pray for a happy life for me and for my kids? Do I have to act like circumstances and other things and people around me don't contribute to my happiness at all. Proverbs 30 shows us a wise way to think about our horizontal life

and how it connects to our happiness. Verses 7 through 9 in Proverbs 30 are part of a prayer the author gives to God. He says two things I ask of you. Deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches. feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you, and say, who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of the Lord.

I think the word that best summarizes this prayer is contentment. In his wisdom, he asked the Lord for just enough, food, wine, clothing, friendship, but not too much, not so much to eat or drink. or do or have to be so full that he denies the Lord, not to have so much success at work that he doesn't have time to recognize his need for God, not to have so much responsibility that a relationship with God is on the periphery, but also not to have too little, not to be without enough to keep him warm and to fill his stomach, not to be lonely without friends, responsibility, or a job to provide for his family.

Augustine said we should pray for a happy life, but he also said that if we have made anything other than God our highest pleasure, we will never find it. He related Proverbs 30 to their quest in the Lord's Prayer. Give us this day, our daily bread. In other words, give me what I need, Lord. Do not give me Lord that which will carry me away from you. Augustine believed the same thing David wrote about.

in Psalm 27, if we have made God our highest pleasure, the things we want and need, yes, they will come and go, but they will not shape what we consider a happy life. The truth of God's presence will define our happiness supremely above and beyond our horizontal circumstances. Okay, let's say you're like some of the girls in my small group, I've mentioned them before, and you're waiting on something. Maybe it's getting into a school like med school or college or maybe it's getting a job that you really want. Maybe you're waiting on an engagement. Proverbs 30 teaches us to pray something like this. Lord, give me the school or the job that will provide for me and challenge me, that will

give me relationships and add meaning and value to my life. But don't give me so much I find my status and meaning without you. Give me only as much responsibility and wealth as I can handle without it harming. my ability to put you first. Now that sounds really vulnerable and scary. Why should we pray like that? Because when we have too much, we lack the ability to see all that we have in Jesus. We're vulnerable when we have too much. If a two-year-old had their favorite toy taken by another two-year-old on a playground, no mother is going to walk over to her kicking and screaming child and comfort them like this. It's okay, honey, you don't need that toy. You have a trust fund waiting for you when

you're 21. Right? I mean, those words aren't going to comfort that child in the moment. But we feel like toddlers when we don't get what we want and what we wish for, because we lack the ability to see and recognize all that we've been given in Christ. That's why Paul wrote what he did in his letter to a group of people in Ephesus. Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 through 19. You should look at them. Look at them later. Look at them now.

They outline three main points that are the keys to a happy life. Paul prays, number one, that Christ will dwell in their hearts through faith. Number two, that they would be full of the fullness of God. And number three, that they would know God's love. After taking a minute to walk outside and think about, what I truly have in Jesus, this is the prayer I offer to God and how we're going to end our time today. God, thank you for forgiving me, keeping me, loving me, protecting me, exposing me, blessing me, denying me, growing me more into your likeness, into your holiness,

into your everlasting love. Amen.