Is the God you think of day to day much happier than you? Do you think the Father bright and abundant or rather frownful and displeased? Does he enjoy his Life? Or is he just a tad bored, waiting for you to cheer him up a bit? What is your God like? We smile less than we might, because we feel little warmth from the smiling God.

We have heard the good news of the holy God, the just God, the three-in-one God, the mighty and compassionate, the faithful and all-wise, the loving and prayer-hearing and covenant-keeping God — but what of the happy God, the blessed God? If we look forward to “enjoying him forever,” do we not first need to be convinced that he is enjoyable? And can a King who stifles song or laughter really satisfy our souls (though he be otherwise strong and wise and good)? Do we color the God of Beauty grey, imagining him who makes the seraph burn and the bird warble to be the Sovereign Eeyore in these Hundred Acre Woods?

Gospel of God’s Happiness

Again, the inescapably personal question: Is your God happy? Is he deeply pleased, eternally bright, the waterfall cascading the edges and satisfying your adopted soul, if born again you be? Can you join to sing,

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,God of glory, Lord of love;Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,Opening to the sun above.

I want my heart to unfold more sweetly, more fully. So, let’s gaze up at the brilliance of the divine happiness together. As with the apostle John, if everything were to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books (John 21:25). Most must be omitted, but even as a little honey can brighten the eyes, a few glimpses of his happiness can freshen our joy in him.

His Pleasure Precedes Us

Mercifully, the Arkenstone jewel of God’s happiness is not the creature — his perfect, holy, complete joy precedes us. God’s happiness is infinite and eternal and untainted precisely because it is independent — he draws from wells we knew not of, that which always was and always will be.

Survey the pantheon of gods, and here alone we find the only Being that can satisfy the soul forever. A fulsome ocean surges within himself — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — waters of bliss that he invites the redeemed to swim within. God has never been needy or lonely or bored. The salvation of man is a subplot, a minor theme, within an eternal drama of Trinitarian love. Baffling man-centric theologies, John Piper writes,

Within the triune Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), God has been uppermost in his own affections for all eternity. This belongs to his very nature, for he has begotten and loved the Son from all eternity. Therefore, God has been supremely and eternally happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. (Collected Works, vol. 2, 48–49)

Here we find our glad tidings: His happiness does not depend upon us — thus he can satisfy us. None can pickpocket his pleasure. Not Satan, not the world, not our sin. “It should delight us beyond all expression,” writes Henry Scougal, “to consider that the one who is beloved in our own souls is infinitely happy in himself and that all his enemies cannot shake or unsettle him from his throne” (Life of God in the Soul of Man, 83). The triune God’s delight cannot sag or wobble; his cheerful crown cannot topple from his brow. He does not sink into despair.

Gladness Who Creates

If eternity were an apartment, God did not need a pet to keep him company. The triune God needed nothing upon which to dote or depend. His golden existence never borrows from other suns.

Yet we read, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) — why? If he is so happy and blessed, why create anything at all? Because God delights to share his fullness, his happiness, his life, his love, his glory — not to complete that fullness, but to extend it to others.

“There is an expansive quality to his joy,” writes Piper. “It wants to share itself. The impulse to create the world was not from weakness, as though God were lacking in some perfection that creation could supply.” To quote Jonathan Edwards, “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow.” Again, Piper writes, “All his works are simply the spillover of his infinite exuberance for his own excellence” (Works, 49).

In the beginning, then, God created the heavens and the earth freely, bountifully, happily. He looked down as an artist painting — stars, fish, mountains, man — “Oh, that is good!” He creates and admires and gives and fills and blesses from a full cupboard.

Delight Comes for Us

The God who didn’t need you to be happy, the heaven within himself that needed not angels or humans, sacrificed to include us in that happiness. He came for us.

The God who did not need us chose us — and at total cost to himself. The blessedness of God increases the gospel’s voltage. If God had thrown all into the lake of fire, downed Adam and Eve in a flood, and moved on, God would have lost nothing. But the great I Am — rising from his own good pleasure as Giver, for his own great name of Love, growing from the everlasting heart of a Father — authored a story, perilous and splendid, full of darkness and light, to communicate himself more fully, and exalt his Son, and so fill our cup to overflowing.

“God’s happiness does not depend upon us — thus he can satisfy us.”

Ours is not just the gospel of God, but “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11). Rightly do angels longingly gaze after it. When time ripened, the eternal Son came. Begrudgingly? Reluctantly? Indifferently? “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19–20).

Glimpses of eternal rays pierce through at Jesus’s baptism and transfiguration. The Father’s supreme delight shone down upon his Son: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased” (Matthew 12:18; 3:17; 17:5). “Father,” Jesus prayed on the eve of his death, “I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

The Son’s whole drama — sung to us as good news — plays out in a theater of eternal love: The Father to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Spirit lifting the elect to dwell in those clouds.

Happiness Brings Us Home

The God who does not need us to be happy himself promises to make his people happy forever. At the end of our weak service, the Master says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23). Enter into the paradise of triune bliss, the Promised Land of milk and mirth, of honey and happiness.

Does your God invite you into his own joy? I find the unfaithful servant of the story instructive. The Master gave him one talent, and he went and buried it. Why did he bury it away?

Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours. (Matthew 25:24–25)

He did not know the Master who invites into his own joy. The Master who smiles and says, “Well done.” He harbored hard thoughts, buried his talents under hard ground, and received a hard wage: “You wicked and slothful servant! . . . Take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. . . . And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:26, 28, 30).

How vital it is to know God’s heart. How many talents hide beneath mounds of dirt in our backyards? Do you believe you serve a hard and extorting God? Believer, come to the open window and gaze through Jesus’s words: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Stir at your God’s vow: “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul” (Jeremiah 32:41). Quiet under his singing:

The Lord your God is in your midst,     a mighty one who will save;he will rejoice over you with gladness;     he will quiet you by his love;he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)

Orthodox of Heart

Brother or sister in Jesus, the God you serve from day to day, is he happy? Not just holy, powerful, righteous, or wise, but happy? Not flustered, standoffish, or unimpressed, but happy?

“Is it not a pity,” asks Richard Baxter, “that our hearts are not as orthodox as our heads?” Yes, it is a pity. Oh, how our hearts would burst. How fiercely his happiness would arm us against worldliness. How carelessly we would laugh off lesser pleasures of lust and pride. How we would dare to take greater risks with our talents, empowering evangelism and world missions.

When we see the heights and depths of God’s happiness, how can commands such as “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” seem unreasonable (Philippians 4:4)? How can we resist the psalmist’s summon, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!” (Psalm 100:1–2)? How can we not endure unwanted trials knowing that we shall soon be before our Lord in whose “presence there is fullness of joy” and at whose “right hand [there] are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11)?

A few more days, a few more sorrows, a few more disappointments, and then . . .

It was a November evening in 1983, the time of year in Minneapolis marked by light snow and fog and drizzle as the temperatures grow colder and winter approaches. Tom Steller — a 28-year-old associate pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church — was at home with his wife and one-year-old daughter on the upper level of their duplex, just a couple of blocks south of downtown.

Sleep eluded Tom that night, and so at 2:00 am, he slipped out of bed, quietly making his way to the living room so as not to disturb his young family. He picked up an audiocassette by Christian folk singer John Michael Talbot, put it in his tape recorder, pressed play, and sat on the couch to listen.

Road of Glory

The eleventh track, “Lord, Every Nation on Earth Shall Adore You” — based on Psalm 72 — begins with a guitar plucking in the background and Talbot’s solo tenor singing,

Lord, every nation on earth shall adore you.Lord, every people will call on your name.Every knee shall bow,Every tongue confess your name:Jesus the Lord.

The same words repeat, this time with a choir joining Talbot in the background as the praise ascends.

The cry of the psalm set to music began to come alive to Tom in a way it not had before. Tom’s heart already beat for the glory of God, but he had never before seen the connection between the fame of God’s name and the proclamation of his name to the ends of the earth. Jesus would rule to the ends of the earth as he saves his people. A revolution was happening in Tom’s heart — one that would reverberate for decades to come.

For an hour that night, with tears rolling down his cheeks, he worshiped with “a mingling,” he would later say, “of joy at the vision of God’s glory filling the earth and penitent longing to be involved in that great purpose of God.”

Road of Joy

In a way that providentially paralleled what was happening at the Steller residence, a strange and exhilarating awakening began to happen in the home office of John Piper, just a few blocks away. Every fall, Bethlehem held a missions conference and brought in a guest speaker. But for that November, the mission board did something they had never done before: they asked the senior pastor to deliver the message.

John Piper had come to the church in 1980, at the age of 34, leaving Bethel College to enter his first (and only) pastorate. In 1983, Piper was in the middle of a sermon series on Christian Hedonism, the seed of his first popular-level book, Desiring God, which was published four years later. He thought it might work to incorporate missions into the series, calling missions “the battle cry of Christian Hedonism.” So, he accepted the invitation, though he had hardly written or preached about missions up to this point.

As he began to work on his message, God was at work behind the scenes. During the evening service that night, Bethlehem would be commissioning David and Faith Jaeger, who would leave just two days later for Liberia, the first Bethlehem missionaries to be sent in over a decade. What might the Lord be doing and stirring?

“God, speed the day of Christ’s return, when every knee will bow and every nation will be glad in him.”

On Sunday morning, November 13, Piper stood behind the pulpit and looked out at his beloved flock. If God moved in the way he was asking, some of these people would set a new trajectory for their lives, moving to foreign lands to proclaim the glory of God and the way of salvation. Some of them might even lose their earthly lives for the sake of Christ. “I want to push you over the brink this morning,” Piper preached. “I want to make the cause of missions so attractive that you will no longer be able to resist its magnetism.”

The congregation, for the first time, was hearing the biblical language and logic of Christian Hedonism coming to bear on the call to the nations. Here was their pastor imploring them to increase their own joy in God. “I do not appeal to you to screw up your courage and sacrifice for Christ,” he said. Rather:

I appeal to you to renounce all that you have in order to obtain the Pearl of pearls.

I appeal to you to count all things as rubbish for the surpassing value of standing in the service of the King of kings.

I appeal to you to take off your store-bought rags and to put on the garments of God’s ambassadors.

While Piper was writing the sermon, a seminary had called, wondering if he might want to return to academia. He said no right away, and he told the congregation why he wanted to stay:

I want to build a world church with you at Bethlehem.

I want to see new missionaries go out from this body every year.

I want to be here to welcome home David and Faith on their first furlough.

I want to travel to some of our fields and minister to our missionaries and bring back reports of what God is doing.

I want to preach and write in such a way that young, and old, and men, and women cannot go on with business as usual while there are more churches in the Twin Cities than there are missionaries in half the world.

The challenge is great. God is greater.

The rewards are a hundred times better than anything the world can offer. The battle cry of Christian Hedonism is: Go! Double your joy in God by sharing it on the frontiers.

Roads Converge

A few years later, Piper reflected on what God was doing in that season of global awakening at Bethlehem:

Tom was coming on the road of glory, and I was coming on the road of joy.

What hit us both in November of 1983 with life-changing force was this: God does everything he does for the glory of his name. He loves his glory above all things. He is committed radically and unswervingly to preserve and display that glory throughout the universe and to fill the earth one day with nothing but the echo of his glory in the lives of the redeemed — that is, with worship. And the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

But God has conceived a universe in which the magnifying of his own glory is accomplished in the delight and joy and satisfaction that the redeemed find in him. And therefore, God’s pursuit of his glory and my pursuit of my joy are not finally in conflict. They are, in fact, one pursuit.

If our passionate joy in the glory of God is the very thing in which his glory is most fully reflected in this world, and if our joy is multiplied as God extends the praise of his glory among the peoples, then how could Tom and I, as lovers of God’s glory and Christian Hedonists, not give ourselves to the global cause of God in world missions?

In short, “Everything came together to make an electric moment in the life of our church, and it all flowed from a passion for the glory of God.”

Piper and Steller — and, for that matter, Bethlehem Baptist Church — have never been the same. God would answer these prayers. Hundreds of missionaries would go to the nations, and God would use the influence of Piper and Steller in remarkable ways.

Piper has helped mobilize mission efforts around the world through books and messages and conferences, challenging the church to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And Steller has helped to found institutions (like Bethlehem College & Seminary) and organizations (like Training Leaders International, where he now serves) that share the same desire to see God receive glory from every tribe and nation and tongue, as they discover that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

What About Us?

Forty years later, their passion remains, these truths endure, and the work is not finished.

There are men and women and children who woke up this morning in people groups that have never heard the name of Jesus. No one has yet arrived to tell them in their own language the greatest news in all the world: “The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over his enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy.”

For the faithful, inaction is not an option. So, how will you and I respond? Will we go? Will we send? Will we pray? Will he find us faithful to this task when he returns? “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

God, speed the day of Christ’s return, when every knee will bow and every nation will be glad in him.

Like a viper from the bushes, the Amalek attacked Israel. The shores had not yet washed clean of Pharoah’s army, nor had the people reached Sinai, before new enemies emerged: “Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim” (Exodus 17:8).

Desperate circumstance made soldiers of slaves. Moses, their commander and chief, instructed Joshua to gather men and march into battle. Moses would take a different route, fight on a different front: “Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand” (Exodus 17:9).

So it happened. “Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed” (Exodus 17:10–11). A strange way to win or lose a battle. The lives of men suspended in midair with Moses’s staff. Held high, Israel aggressed. As hands drooped, Amalek played havoc. The prophet learned that gravity is an unrelenting foe: “Moses’ hands grew weary” (Exodus 17:12).

Pastors too know such weariness — this burn of holding their arms up in intercession for God’s people. Almost tireless, see them upon the hill, day in day out, month in month out, year in year out. Seasons change, but there they are upon the peak. Sometimes it all seems useless. Sometimes it is thankless. The sunbeams of complaints beat upon the brow; the sorrows of their people wear on the spirit. Gravity, in ministry, is an unrelenting foe.

Years pass. Arms droop. Just a few years, and some pastors have dropped them altogether. Blessed then, is the pastor who has Aaron and Hur with him:

Moses’s hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. (Exodus 17:12–13)

The proverb is here embodied: “Though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him — a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12). Blessed is the man who stands with brother elders at his side, but abundantly blessed is he who has a whole church holding up his arms.

How to Love Your Pastor

Before becoming one, I rarely asked, How do I best care for my pastors? How can I be a blessing to them, refresh them, uphold their arms? My pastors always seemed to have it together. I needed their help, it seemed, on a one-way street. But Scripture does not show it to be so. Drawing from John Owen’s short but excellent little book Duties of Christian Fellowship, consider a few ways a flock cares well for their shepherd.

1. Esteem Them

Some families find it easy to spend the car ride home from church doing little more than criticizing the pastor and his sermon. I stand convicted overhearing Charles Spurgeon,

Filled with the same spirit of contrariety, the men of this world still depreciate the ministers whom God sends them and profess that they would gladly listen if different preachers could be found. Nothing can please them, their cavils are dealt out with heedless universality. Cephas is too blunt, Apollos is too flowery, Paul is too argumentative, Timothy is too young, James is too severe, John is too gentle. (Eclectic Preachers)

How important, then, to have the primary description of a flock’s relationship to its pastors be one of esteem.

Overhear the apostle enjoin what many a humble pastor might blush to mention: “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work” (1 Thessalonians 5:12–13). Esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Does this describe you? Or for that to happen, does the pastor need to have generational giftings and fit your preferences?

2. Imitate Them

Consider one way the author of Hebrews calls us to esteem them: “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). Imitation is the sincerest form of esteem.

Are your pastors especially humble, careful with their words, fearless in adversity, tender to the wayward, deeply knowledgeable of the Scriptures, happy in Christ, constant in prayer, God-fearing fathers, husbands, leaders, evangelists? What in their lives of faith do you imitate in yours? Consider the outcome of their lives and imitate them. And tell them you are doing so.

John Owen calls Christians to cover their pastor’s weaknesses in love, recognizing that their teachers’ lives are “a means of grace from God provided as a relief for them when under temptation, and an encouragement to holiness, zeal, meekness and self-denial” (19). Are you neglecting this example for your faith — the pastors’ lives — whose feet, though made of clay, support a life above reproach? In a hero-less world, are your pastors a model you look to regularly?

3. Pray for Them

How much do you pray for your pastors?

If some spent as much time praying for their pastors as they did spotlighting their weaknesses, they might not have them anymore. The question stands, “Is it realized that any perceived weakness in the pastor’s ministry may be due to the prayerlessness of the church?” (Duties, 22).

Heaven will reveal how much a pastor was upheld by the prayers of his people (or not). You may be down on the field of battle with Joshua, but if you really care to uphold his arms upon the hill — pray for him. May your prayers be stones for him to sit upon.

It has been said of Spurgeon that when asked about his great success in ministry, he remarked simply, “My people pray for me.” And on another occasion, he brought visitors down to the “boiler room” of the church, the place that gave it power and heat. He opened the door, and the visitors beheld hundreds praying before the service started.

“Do you pray for your pastor to be kept by Jesus, to be upheld and satisfied in Jesus?”

Do you pray for your pastors to be kept by Jesus, to be upheld and satisfied in Jesus? And do you pray with your pastors, that souls be saved to Jesus and the church matured for Jesus?

4. Stand by Them

May it never be the anxious thought of your pastors’ minds: Where are they?

Paul was left to ask this question, sending the sad report to Timothy: “At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them!” (2 Timothy 4:16).

Do you leave your pastors to charge in alone? Owen remarks, “When a captain, advancing against danger, looks back expecting to see his soldiers with him but finds that they have run away, he is greatly betrayed and forced into an impossible position by his enemies” (28).

How different is it to have or be a church full of Onesiphoruses? Paul reports,

May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched for me earnestly and found me — may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day! — and you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus. (2 Timothy 1:16–18)

We can hear the gratitude spattering from Paul’s pen. Pastors are men who grow weary like the rest of us — even young pastors run and grow tired. They receive more opposition, criticism, and slander than the normal churchman. Beyond this, shepherds accept invitations into all the bitter things of the church — adulteries, betrayals, deaths, and divisions. Pastoring is a good and hard work. They stand and contest with demonic bears and lions for their sheep’s sake — will the church not stand with them?

How might you support your pastors, help them, encourage them, defend them? Resist the world’s consumer mindset and take responsibility to help nurture the flock — disciple, serve, volunteer. Remember, they equip you for the work of ministry and will be mightily encouraged to see you doing it (Ephesians 4:13).

5. Help Them Love You

A final way to care for your pastors is to help them care for your soul.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

“Following your shepherd’s lead is to your own advantage. Happy pastors pastor better.”

A wise flock wants its shepherds to lead with joy. As they seek to shepherd you, follow their lead to Jesus, be ready to be persuaded by their teaching, submit to their guidance as far as Scripture allows. Do so readily, eagerly, thankfully that they might cheerfully discharge their eternal duty of caring for your immortal soul (for which they will give an account).

Following your shepherds’ lead is to your own advantage. Happy pastors pastor better. If a plurality of pastors is met with mostly antagonism, indifference, or distrust, the flock does them no favors to pastor as God would have them — “exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you” (1 Peter 5:2–3).

So esteem your pastors highly in the Lord, imitate them, pray for them, stand by them in trials, join them in the work of ministry, and be eager to submit to their direction. In so doing, you will sit them down upon the Rock, hold up their arms, and help them to serve your soul more of Jesus. And by God’s grace, you will defeat the Amaleks of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Persist in this, that we may all have a good report to give to the Master on that day — pastors for how they shepherded, and sheep for how they followed.