Drop the platitudes and you might found out. ;o)

U tell Us, K??? EnJOY! John DOCTRINE OF HAPPINESS A. Definition and Vocabulary. 1. English words used in the Bible for happiness. a. The English noun "joy" refers to a state of happiness or bliss or something which causes happiness. b. The verb "rejoice" is defined as an expression of a state of happiness. c. The English noun "happiness" is defined as a state of well being characterized by a relative, permanent contentment. d. But these English words do not necessarily reflect the original languages of Scripture. 2. Hebrew words used for happiness. ESHOR is translated blessed, blessedness, happiness. It is usually found in the construct form ASHERE, generally translated happiness, blessing, blessed. This is the greater happiness the believer attains in the execution of the spiritual life in time of historical disaster only. God gives us the greatest happiness in times of historical disaster. 3. Greek words used for happiness. a. The noun CHARA is translated "joy." But the Romans and Greeks were very cynical about happiness, and didn't seek it in things and people as we do. So these Koine Greek words have different connotations from their English translations. b. The noun MAKARIOS (usually in the plural MAKAROI) is translated "blessed" or "happiness." But again, the words used for translation do not explain the Biblical doctrine of happiness. c. The noun AUTARKES comes a little closer, because it means contentment, to be content, to be self-sufficient. It actually describes the happiness of spiritual autonomy, the second stage of spiritual adulthood. d. Its verb ARKEO, in the active voice, means to be sufficient; therefore to be self-sufficient. This comes closer to describing what Biblical happiness really is, and what happens to us when we execute the protocol plan of God for the Church Age. In the passive voice, this verb means to be satisfied and content. Hence, this refers to an expression of happiness related to spiritual autonomy. 4. We cannot discover from these words alone what happiness is. We commonly use them in relationship to our emotions, stimulation, excitement, and anticipation. But we do not know what happiness is from these words in isolation. Therefore, to understand what happiness is becomes a grammatical, exegetical, contextual examination of certain passages of the Word of God'. In other words, one word doesn't really describe it. But to refer to it, we will use the commonly-used word "happiness." 5. We carry the entrenched notion that some set of circumstances, things, or people can "make" us happy. But happiness is not something that is made or manufactured by you. We must never confuse happiness, as taught in the Word of God, with the various stimuli of life which are enjoyable for the moment, but have no ability to sustain us in day-by-day living. Happiness by stimuli of life is happiness for all the wrong reasons. 6. Whatever happiness is, it is something we have with us all the time. It's only in the body to the extent that the soul is in the body, for happiness is related to the soul and spirit, to the immaterial parts of man, and is not related to the body at all. 7. Rapport with God must precede rapport with people. If you have no rapport with God, you will never have rapport with people. B. The Biblical Categories of Happiness. 1. Pseudo-Happiness or minus H. a. Pseudo happiness is Satan's attempt to counterfeit the happiness, the contentment, the blessing which God has provided for every Church Age believer as royal family of God. The provision of perfect happiness is found in our portfolio of invisible assets and the game plan for the Church Age, the protocol plan of God. b. As the ruler of this world, Satan likes to keep his constituents happy. He does so by providing stimulation, ambition, and self-indulgence which will either counterfeit or cancel out the happiness God provides for us. c. God provides two categories of happiness: neutral H which is establishment happiness, and perfect happiness or sharing the happiness of God, one of the great problem solving devices of the Christian way of life. d. Satan himself does not personally administer minus H to any person, but he provides the system. e. Satan's myth of arrogance is that both people and pleasant circumstances in life can make you happy. Satan's propaganda is that money, success, pleasure, social life, sexual life, public approbation, fame, material things, travel, health, and pleasant circumstances in life can make you happy. This is true under certain circumstances and with certain limitations; however, it doesn't last. Often these things are pleasurable, stimulating, fun, and enjoyable, but they don't carry you in suffering. f. By way of contrast, what God has provided for us in perfect happiness is a permanent factor and a problem solving device. Anything that is worthwhile is worthwhile in adversity as well as in prosperity. (1) If you are dependent on any person or set of circumstances for happiness, you are weak and you do not have happiness. To the extent that you are dependent on people, circumstances, prosperity, success, or any accouterments of life for happiness, you are weak. (2) But if, as a believer in Jesus Christ, you have been faithful in the reception, retention, and recall of Bible doctrine and have advanced to spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, or spiritual maturity; you are not only a strong person, but you have that great inner happiness. You take it with you wherever you go. It isn't dependent on environment, associations, or circumstances of prosperity or adversity; it depends on none of these things. It is a part of God's grace policy to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. g. Satan is the ruler of this world, Lk 4:5,7; Jn 12:31, 14:30, 16:11; 2 Cor 4:4; Eph 2:2. Satan rules and controls through a policy called arrogance (in contrast to God's policy of grace). h. Satan's administration of pseudo happiness to any believer or unbeliever can only exist when that person is involved in the cosmic system; primarily in cosmic one, where through arrogance, any capacity for happiness is destroyed. The presence of arrogance in your soul is a guarantee of unhappiness perpetuated for the rest of your life. (1) Arrogance includes jealousy; you cannot be jealous and be happy. It includes self-pity; you cannot have self-pity and be happy. It includes a guilt complex, which you cannot have and be happy. It also includes implacability, vindictiveness, hatred, revenge motivation, revenge function; none of which you can have and be happy. (2) All mental attitude sins, which add up to motivational arrogance, guarantee the exclusion of any happiness. Next you will move to functional arrogance, which only intensifies your unhappiness, causing you to begin a frantic search for happiness, trying all sorts of things that will only make you unhappy. (3) Mass unhappiness destroys the potential for contentment among those who have the potential for happiness. The complete and total search for pleasure that results eventuates in the total destruction of a national entity. i. The arrogance complex is very deceptive because it deludes, distracts, and deceives mankind into false notions about what constitutes happiness. (1) A short, good time can certainly be construed as happiness during the time it occurs. Pseudo happiness can be stimulation, fun, entertainment, or something that is enjoyable, but it isn't permanent; it is momentary. It depends upon a set of circumstances and an environment pleasant to you. (2) But this is called minus H because, beyond that moment of good time, there are bad times, routine times, or dull times. When you are bored or facing problem solving devices, that past temporary happiness does not sustain you. People are not carried by good times. (3) By way of contrast, perfect happiness is a magnificent problem solving device because you have it all the time, and you merely tune into it during problem solving devices. Perfect happiness is not only a problem solving device, but it is a basis for capacity for life. j. Arrogant preoccupation with self through involvement in the cosmic system guarantees unhappiness, and that every moment of stimulation, success, or enjoyment will not be perpetuated, and will not sustain you in the day-by-day living of life. Therefore, it is called pseudo happiness. You are stimulated and you call it happiness, but it's gone tomorrow. k. Pseudo-happiness is associated with any form of stimulation, enjoyment, or excitement which provides temporary pleasure but does not sustain, motivate, or encourage the believer in time of adversity, pressure, suffering, or testing, during which time he needs to use the resources of doctrine to solve the problem solving devices that beset him. l. Instead of true happiness, our involvement in the cosmic system guarantees our self-induced misery and divine discipline. m. You are not happy because you are free to do what you want to do. You can be free to indulge yourself in every whim of life, and yet become frustrated and miserable. You must have capacity for happiness to really be happy, and then you can be happy in whatever life has to offer you in a given moment. n. Capacity for happiness must precede the experience or function of happiness. This is the great lesson that morality, self-regulation, and self-determination based on divine standards will produce two kinds of happiness in your life. (1) The unbeliever who functions under morality without arrogance will have neutral H from the laws of divine establishment. (2) The believer who functions under consistent postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation will receive perfect happiness, which is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment happiness that carries you in the darkest of nights and the most difficult of times. o. For the believer, living can be happiness or unhappiness. Life is divided into two parts: living and dying. If you have perfect happiness in living, you will have perfect happiness in dying whether it is prolonged and painful or short and sweet. (1) The only difference between living and dying is that, in living, we have the full use of our volition toward doctrine. However, in dying, our volition is no longer an issue. God's sovereignty selects the time, place, and manner of our death. (2) If you live poorly, you will have minus H in living and therefore minus H in dying; you will die miserably. Your mental attitude of panic will actually intensify all your problem solving devices in dying. But if you have perfect happiness, you will have a magnificent life and a magnificent time while dying. p. Another area in which you can have either minus H or perfect happiness is in your single or marital status. If you have minus H, when you are single, you wish you were married; and when you are married, you wish you were single. But if you have perfect happiness, it doesn't make any difference whether you are single or married. If you have perfect happiness and impersonal love in marriage, you can resolve all marital problem solving devices. q. The four divine institutions are for believer and unbeliever alike. They are the structure of society, the basis for the perpetuation of human life, and the basis for order in society by which each person can fulfill his own destiny while others fulfill theirs. Neither divine institution number one, volition, nor divine institution number two sustained and carried Adam and the woman in perfect environment. (1) Marriage is one of the two divine institutions which existed before the fall when mankind was in a state of perfection on the earth. But the marriage of Adam and the woman was a failure, as noted by Adam's original sin and the woman's sin. As they left the garden, God gave each one a mandate: "Husband, work! Wife, bear children!" But God didn't tell them, "Go forth and be happy." Throughout the Scripture, there are no mandates to be happy in marriage, because marriage is not a state of happiness. (2) A happy marriage is when two happy people enter into a state of matrimony and in that state retain their happiness. The only happy people who can do this are those who have perfect happiness or neutral H. (3) An unhappy marriage is when two unhappy people get married and retain their unhappiness. Or it is when a happy person and an unhappy person get married, and the unhappy person dominates and controls the marriage so that the happy person loses his happiness. (4) A successful marriage is when two unhappy people get married, and through the protocol plan of God or the laws of divine establishment, attain happiness and live together in a state of contentment. (They do not want more!) (5) But with regard to believers, it is impossible for believers to have a happy marriage apart from spiritual growth, execution of the protocol plan of God, and each one possessing perfect happiness. In other words, happiness in marriage is execution of the protocol plan of God. The actual marriage has nothing to do with it; it is a spiritual factor. (6) The best potential for a great marriage belongs to believers who are positive toward doctrine. If the carnal believer tries to have a good marriage through establishment, his carnality and arrogance cancel out the establishment principles. Therefore, the believer's only hope is to grow in grace through the perception of Bible doctrine. So a successful marriage is possible for any two believers who are both positive toward Bible doctrine. (7) An unsuccessful marriage is when a happy person and an unhappy person get married, and the unhappy person causes the happy person to revert to the cosmic system. (8) A failing marriage is when the happy person married to an unhappy person changes his priorities in life so that he loses his premarital happiness. (9) Marriage will not make you happy. If you are involved in the arrogance of the cosmic system, marriage will intensify and increase your misery. If you run away from that marriage, you will lose the chance to resolve that problem solving devices. Once you run away from marriage, you run away from life and are never the same again. (10) Happiness is a state of the soul, not something that someone can do for you. (11) Happiness is an insulation against fear and arrogance, which always go together. r. You can have either minus H or perfect happiness with money, success, health, work. s. Arrogance developed from negative volition toward Bible doctrine destroys any potential for happiness or any capacity for contentment. (1) For example, the arrogant visitor to the local church demands attention under the false assumption that a so-called "friendly church" will bring happiness. A friendly church cannot make you happy. (2) People, marriage, sex, prosperity, success cannot make you happy. Only the execution or fulfillment of the protocol plan of God and the use of the ten problem solving devices can make you happy. (3) Once you have perfect happiness, you have the same happiness and the same capacity for happiness in adversity as well as in prosperity. t. In other words, happiness is an individual state of the soul, and actually has nothing to do with associations in life. Rom 12:3, "For I say through the grace which has been given to me to everyone who is among you: stop thinking of self in terms of arrogance beyond the point you ought to think, but think in terms of sanity for the purpose of being rational without illusion, as God has assigned to each one a standard of thinking from doctrine." (1) This Biblical definition of happiness is to think in terms of sanity, to be rational without illusion. (2) "The standard of thinking from doctrine" is the inner happiness of your soul, i.e., perfect happiness. If you have epignosis doctrine in your right lobe, and you are living the life beyond gnosis, then obviously you will be able to use that mental attitude to have capacity for happiness in all circumstances. True happiness is a system of thought in the soul, not association with stimulation or pleasure. u. Happiness is a state of the soul, not something someone can do for you. People with unhappy souls wait for others to make them happy. This is the gimmick of the "friendly church" and society. v. Actually, happiness comes from thinking, i.e., from perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine taught from the pulpit of the local church; it is not associated with hypocrisy and flattery, people, places or things, or success. w. Unhappy people seek happiness through the control of their environment, including persons in their environment like family, friends, and loved ones. They do this in one of two ways: (1) By causing those around them to have a guilt complex or a guilt reaction for alleged or real neglect. (2) By arousing pity from others in their state of self-pity. The attention that comes through pity is the worst attention you can receive. x. The arrogance of unhappiness, or pseudo happiness, not only seeks to dominate and enslave, but has wide emotional swings. It is one of the many reasons for a great number of psychotic believers. y. Illusions of pseudo happiness. (1) You cannot build your happiness on the details of life: money, success, pleasure, social life, friends, relatives, health, sex, or status symbols. (Don't misunderstand this statement. For if you have capacity from perfect happiness, you can enjoy these things to the maximum. They are not a source of happiness, but simply a means of expressing the happiness you already possess.) (2) You cannot build your happiness on pleasant environment. This is one of the reasons why people travel; they think a change of environment makes them happy. (3) You cannot build your happiness on people, romance, marriage, friendship, children, or social activity. (4) You cannot build your happiness by changing the devil's world through reform crusades, social engineering, violence, civil disobedience, or revolution. Of course, the devil's world hasn't changed a bit. Your objective is not to change the devil's world. Instead, you should be witnessing to people. (5) You cannot build your happiness on someone else's unhappiness. In that case, you are full of all the sins of the arrogance complex. You're jealous, bitter, vindictive, implacable, angry, full of hatred, self-pity, filled with guilt reactions that motivate you. You malign, gossip, run down, and get involved in revenge modus operandi. z. The principles of pseudo happiness. (1) Pseudo happiness depends on involvement with the evil of the cosmic system of Satan, and therefore can only be related to a moment of time, a moment of pleasure, a moment of history, a moment of power, a moment of approbation, or a moment of success. Anything you have in a moment which cannot be perpetuated is not happiness; too often it is related to emotion. (2) When you get into serious trouble, you never recall the "good times," because you've already entered into a state of arrogance and fear. These two mental attitudes guarantee that you will never find any happiness as long as you live apart from the laws of divine establishment for the unbeliever, and the attainment of spiritual self-esteem and spiritual adulthood for the believer. (3) Pseudo happiness depends on the environment, superficial pleasures of life, material things, status symbols, approbation from society, pleasure, success, social life, sexual activity, stimulation from drug abuse; hence, self-gratification related to the lust pattern of the old sin nature. (4) Pseudo happiness is superficial, volatile, unstable, frustrating, and evanescent; it's the source of self-induced misery under the law of volitional responsibility. By frustrating is meant that pseudo happiness has its own emotional hangovers. (5) No one can make you happy. This is the myth of marriage, sex, success, prosperity, wealth, and social life. People think of marriage as a state of happiness. Idiots get married because someone promises to make them happy forever; or because they want to leave the environment of an unhappy home and transfer their unhappiness into their own unhappy nest. This is the "both sides of the fence" syndrome. Both the poor and the rich, the single and married are unhappy, looking to the other side for happiness. (6) But you take your unhappiness with you, even when you cross the fence. Those who reject Bible doctrine cultivate unhappiness, and take it with them at all times. Unhappy people complain constantly. (7) Hence, the arrogance of unhappiness assumes that people, success, prosperity, promotion, romance, marriage, friendship, attention, approbation can make you happy. But in reality, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, only Bible doctrine in your soul can make you happy; i.e., reception, retention, recall of Bible doctrine. Only the provision of God's grace policy can really make you happy. (a) Reception is consistent perception of Bible doctrine. (b) Retention is the metabolization of doctrine, converting gnosis to epignosis doctrine. (c) Recall is the application of doctrine to whatever your circumstances, whichever your side of the fence. The day you can look over on the other side and be glad you're on your side of the fence is the day you begin to apply this point. (8) Look at Satan himself. He was the most beautiful, successful, attractive creature genius of all time. He had a maximum amount of power over millions which he still has today. Yet Satan, right now as the ruler of this world, is bored, miserable, frustrated, and very, very unhappy! If all the things you think will make you happy haven't made Satan happy and he has them in spades, then you are the dumbest person alive and you deserve the misery you get! (a) Satan as the ruler of this world has certain ways to provide pseudo happiness. One is to provide temporary happiness to certain believers and unbelievers who carry out his will of evil and perform human good. Satan's system of evil provides certain stimulus for human emotions. He has stimuli whereby you think you are happy. His system rewards people who follow his precepts. (b) This pseudo happiness is related to reversionism, the interlocking systems of arrogance (his cosmic systems one and two) and the function of evil in the soul. (c) Since this pseudo happiness depends on involvement with evil, it can only be related to time and history in this life. (d) Therefore, this type of pseudo happiness involves pushing for a better environment, superficial pleasures in time, accumulating the details of life, being promoted, and saturating the lust pattern of the old sin nature. (e) This pseudo happiness is the temporary triumph of evil in the human soul, 2 Sam 1:19-20. (f) However, this category of pseudo happiness is not only superficial, but unstable and frustrating, Eccl 11:8-9. (g) Satan is the greatest genius of all created beings. While he has the ability to provide pseudo happiness, he doesn't have the ability to maintain it for you. He can't give logistical support to human prosperity. (h) Therefore, pseudo happiness quickly evaporates in time of historical disaster, or in time of divine administration of punishment. It is also quickly wiped out by boredom, frustration, and the satiation of human pleasure. The principle is that the believer who has anything from -H is miserable with what he has. (i) Pseudo happiness doesn't sustain mankind, but destroys both his perspective as well as his eternal future. 2. Establishment Happiness, or Neutral Happiness (neutral H). a. Establishment happiness is derived from the compliance with the laws of divine establishment, which are designed to remove arrogance and fear from the life, and to replace it with a genuine humility which results in a capacity for life. This results in the attainment and development of human honor and integrity. This explains why so many unbelievers are happier than many believers. b. Neutral happiness is the temporal happiness of the unbeliever who lives by establishment principles. Establishment is for believer and unbeliever alike. The unbeliever moves beyond morality to a place of limited virtue, becoming a person of honor. c. The unbeliever can achieve neutral happiness through enforced and genuine humility from the laws of divine establishment. The key to happiness in the unbeliever is having a fantastic humility. d. The unbeliever can marry a woman with whom he has total compatibility (i.e., compatibility of both soul and body), and at the same time he can work in some job or profession which he enjoys. Eccl 9:9 mentions these two areas of life, marriage and work, as the basis for which unbelievers can have a genuine short-term happiness compatible with their capacity. Eccl 9:9, "Enjoy life [neutral happiness] with your right woman whom you have loved all the days of your life of vanity which God has given you under the sun, for this is your reward in life [neutral happiness]: this successful marriage and happiness in your occupation in which you are working under the sun." (1) A "life of vanity" refers to the life of the unbeliever. Whatever kind of life it is, it's very short-term. And, as flawed as he is, God has provided for him a system in which he can have happiness in marriage. (2) Note that God gives life even to the unbeliever. There is a reward in life for certain unbelievers who have virtue and honor based upon establishment principles. The type of work is not specified; it is any job he enjoys. (3) This explains some very happy unbelievers, but remember it is very short-term. Beyond the grave they will first face Torments in Hades, and then spend eternity in the Lake of Fire. (4) So two things can make an unbeliever happy: a successful relationship in marriage, and his occupation in life. Happiness in these two areas come to the unbeliever who has developed honor and integrity from the laws of divine establishment. (Note what is not mentioned: social life, pleasure, emotion, stimulation, etc.) This is the unbeliever's reward for compliance with the laws of divine establishment. (5) This reward is not due to the unbeliever's morality, which carries with it the sting of arrogance. Once a person becomes arrogant about his morality, he enters into self-righteous and crusader arrogance, and becomes the unhappiest of all people because he is judgmental. e. The tragedy of neutral happiness is that there is no perpetuation of this happiness beyond the grave, which brings it to a screeching halt (if not terminated before then). But even when perpetuated to the grave, neutral happiness cannot be perpetuated beyond time. And eternity is a long, long time. f. All too often, neutral happiness becomes a victim of circumstances. Certain adverse circumstances are stronger than neutral happiness and can wipe it out. So neutral happiness cannot even survive tragedy or any real adversity. g. Neutral happiness is a restricted and temporary happiness. It is related and tied into establishment principles. But it is vulnerable to its environment and its circumstances. For example, a man may be very happy with his wife. But if she becomes unhappy and leaves him, his reward in life is gone. For example, a man may love and enjoy his job or profession, but this can be taken away from him by various means (e.g., litigation, unemployment). h. Therefore, neutral happiness is establishment happiness dependent upon cognition and compliance with establishment principles, according to Rom 13. Where establishment does not exist, neutral happiness does not exist. Morality is merely the bottom step in establishment; honor and integrity are higher. i. Part of neutral happiness is national happiness. (1) God provided a system whereby both pristine, aboriginal areas and sophisticated societies could get away from their fears and adversities: nationalism. Nationalism is related to neutral happiness. (2) Ps 144:15 tells us that within the function of the client nation to God, both believers and unbelievers can possess neutral happiness. Ps 144:15, "How happy [neutral happiness] are the people [believers, unbelievers in laws of divine establishment] so situated [establishment prosperity]; how happy [perfect happiness] are the people [believers] whose God is the Lord." Unbelievers can be carnal, and not even in the protocol plan of God, and still have the potential for establishment happiness. But believers have the potential to share God's happiness. (3) There is neutral happiness for the client nation to God under the principle of freedom through military victory. Soldiers can be very happy fighting and winning a war. Ps 89:15-18, "Happy are the people who keep knowing the sound of the trumpet [orientation to authority, genuine humility, the orderliness of military life]. They shall advance, O Lord, in the light [pivot] of Your presence. In Your person they [mature believers] rejoice [perfect happiness] all the day, and by Your righteousness [integrity of God] they [pivot] are exalted. For You are the glory of their strength, and by Your grace You cause us to be promoted [military victory]. Our shield belongs to the Lord, even to the Holy One of Israel, our King [Lord Jesus Christ]." Ps 137:8-9. (4) When the laws of divine establishment, as found in the Mosaic Law, are taught and accepted by the population of a client nation, establishment happiness results. The establishment principles are taught to the Church in Rom 13:1-10. The result of obedience to the laws of divine establishment is not a happiness associated with pleasant things, but a happiness associated with important things. (a) The establishment principles of the Torah are amplified for the millennial reign of Christ when Israel is restored as client nation, as our Lord taught in Matt 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount. (b) Prov 29:18, "Where there is no revelation [of establishment principles], the people of that nation are unrestrained [and will perish under fifth cycle of discipline], but happy is the person who keeps the Law [laws of divine establishment]." Here is neutral happiness from cognition and utilization of the laws of divine establishment. (c) People who are not authority oriented are not happy! An unrestrained population is an unhappy population. (5) Under the laws of divine establishment, neutral happiness is possible when one's children turn out well. Prov 23:24-25, "The father of the virtuous children will be happy [neutral happiness]. Therefore, he who sires a wise son will be happy. Therefore son, let your father and your mother be happy. Let her who gave birth to you be happy." Neutral happiness is dependent on establishment and the perpetuation of establishment to the next generation, when one's children have virtue and integrity. (6) Again however, neutral happiness is a temporary happiness which does not sustain under pressure or carry over into eternity. For example, you could be very proud that your children turned out well, and then something may go wrong and your neutral happiness would disappear in a moment. All it leaves is a scar and a hangover. Neutral happiness doesn't last! It applies to some circumstance related to establishment. 3. Perfect happiness, the Possession of God's Happiness (+H). a. Introduction. (1) Neutral happiness is dependent happiness; perfect happiness is independent happiness. Neutral happiness is dependent on circumstances; perfect happiness is independent in the soul of any believer who has attained any stage of spiritual adulthood. It begins at spiritual self-esteem, continues at spiritual autonomy, and becomes the most fantastic thing in life at spiritual maturity. (2) Perfect happiness or divine happiness is the monopoly of the believer in spiritual adulthood. It only belongs to those few believers who reach the three stages of spiritual adulthood. (3) However, relatively few believers have this perfect happiness because it requires consistent epistemological rehabilitation after salvation, cognition of Bible doctrine, and the advance to spiritual adulthood, especially maturity. So it requires something that no lazy-minded person can do, and that is to concentrate on anything for very long. Most believers can't concentrate on doctrine long enough to learn the system. They are easily distracted and discouraged. (4) Perfect happiness or God's happiness carries over into the eternal state. Especially if you pass evidence testing, perfect happiness remains in perpetual status quo under three circumstances. (a) Living as a mature believer. (b) Dying as a mature believer. (c) The eternal state, where you will have a far, far greater happiness than believers who are losers but also in resurrection bodies. The capacity of the mature believer for the most fantastic eternal rewards is built into the perfect happiness the mature believer has. There are degrees of life after death. b. Perfect happiness, or sharing the happiness of God, can defined as the happiness of the humanity of Christ during the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union. It is the only happiness that does not change with the weather, with someone's moods, or with disastrous or difficult circumstances in life. c. With the perpetuation of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union into the Church Age, perfect happiness is further defined as divine happiness resident in the soul of the Church Age believer who utilizes his portfolio of invisible assets and divine omnipotence to attain spiritual maturity. In spiritual maturity, perfect happiness reaches its peak; there is nothing like it in this life! d. When the positive believer fulfills the protocol plan of God beginning in spiritual adulthood, he attains the ultimate in perfect happiness by utilizing two categories of divine power: (1) The omnipotence of God the Father related to portfolio of invisible assets. (2) The omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit related to our divine dynasphere (Divine dynasphere). e. Perfect happiness results from postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation through the constant perception of Bible doctrine inside the operational-type divine dynasphere. f. Perfect happiness is a perpetual happiness for every category of existence after salvation. That's why Paul said in Phil 1:21, "For me living is Christ and dying is profit." He had this perfect happiness in living, in dying, and in the eternal state waiting for the resurrection. g. The opposition from Satan and persecution by other believers in the cosmic system intensify the believer's perfect happiness. 4. Biblical descriptions of the three happiness categories. a. Pseudo-happiness. Lk 11:27-28 gives a perfect description of pseudo happiness. The woman in this context spoke of happiness, but she was not happy, nor did she understand happiness. She was an unhappy person trying to control her environment. Here is her attempt to put our Lord down using the false propaganda of women's liberation. "Now it came to pass while our Lord was teaching these things, that a certain [special] woman from the crowd shouted with a loud voice, `Happy is the woman whose womb carried you and whose breasts you have sucked.' But He Himself replied, `Wrong! Happiness belongs to those who keep hearing and retaining the Word of God.'" (1) This woman had no class or manners; she was rude and interrupted our Lord. She interrupted to draw attention to herself. In cosmic one, she was jealous, vindictive, and ambitious. She expresses the false doctrine of motherhood. She says that Mary was only happy because she was carrying a baby in her womb. (2) Being a student of the Old Testament, she knew that there is no human life in the womb, so she adds the phrase "breasts you sucked." Here she's trying to prove that woman is superior to the man. In other words she is saying, "You may be a great public speaker, Jesus, but you too were once a little baby and a happy mother gave you suck. The only people who are really happy are mothers who nurse so that their baby can live." (3) In other words, she was saying, "You're a mere man! And no mere man has the ability (like I have) to teach ladies in Bible class." So to put Him down, she was pointing out to her class and everyone that this was merely a man from a womb. No, he was the God-man. But more important, in the womb he was not yet even human life, not until the point of the virgin birth. From then on, He was different from all other humanity, born trichotomous and perfect. (4) She added "and whose breasts gave you suck" as if all men are still just little boys and totally inferior to women. In other words, "He cannot compare with what I am teaching you girls." (5) Our Lord was perfect and an aristocratic gentleman. The answer to this arrogant woman, who was not a lady, came from the perfect gentleman! His first word in verse 28 was "Wrong!" He shouted this right back, (and was still in fellowship). Then He went on to explain what real perfect happiness really is. (6) Our Lord taught that perfect happiness is individual, and that it is associated with doctrine, not with all the things we associate with happiness. Our Lord gave the perfect definition of perfect happiness. (7) "Hearing" refers to consistent reception of doctrine. "Retaining" refers to retention of doctrine, converting gnosis to epignosis doctrine by positive volition. (8) Our Lord could have made an issue out of any of the things she brought out, but He only made an issue of doctrine. He did not make an issue of her arrogance or of women, but of the Word of God. There is no happiness in life for the believer apart from Bible doctrine, which must come first in the life. b. Neutral Happiness is found in Prov 29:18. "Where there is no revelation [establishment], the people are unrestrained. But happy [neutral happiness] is that person who keeps the Law [laws of divine establishment]." c. Perfect happiness is found in 1 Jn 1:4. "In fact, we write these things that our joy may be brought to completion." (1) John got this message from the upper room discourse. (2) Whatever perfect happiness is, it comes through the communication of doctrine, and it is a process which has to be completed. (3) Joy is brought to completion by entering the door of hope on God's agenda. 5. Definition of perfect happiness, or Sharing the Perfect Happiness of God. a. Perfect happiness, or sharing the happiness of God, can defined as the happiness of the humanity of Christ during the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union. b. With the perpetuation of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union into the Church Age, perfect happiness is further defined as divine happiness resident in the soul of the Church Age believer. He has this happiness because he has utilized his portfolio of invisible assets and divine omnipotence to learn doctrine and attain spiritual maturity. In spiritual maturity, perfect happiness reaches its peak; there is nothing like it in this life! c. Perfect happiness is a perpetual happiness for every category of existence after salvation. That's why Paul said in Phil 1:21, "For me living is Christ and dying is profit." Perfect happiness is for in living, for dying, and for the eternal state. 6. The relationship between our Lord's perfect happiness and the Church Age believer's perfect happiness is given in Jn 15:11, "I have taught you these things, in order that My happiness [+H] might be in you, and that your happiness might be completed [fulfilled]." a. In His thirty-three years on earth until His resurrection, ascension, and session, our Lord had perfect happiness. He acquired perfect happiness through His residence in his prototype spiritual life. Now in this dispensation of the Church, we have the potential for the same perfect happiness in our operational type spiritual life. b. In the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union, our Lord attained perfect happiness inside the divine dynasphere; this was the happiness of His humanity. c. What our Lord was saying in this verse is that inside the prototype divine dynasphere, He attained perfect happiness. Since the operational-type divine dynasphere would be made available to us in the Church Age, that same perfect happiness can be attained by us. There is nothing that even comes close to it on planet earth. It is one of the greatest of all objectives in the Christian life. d. The words "in you" teaches that happiness resides in the individual. It does not come from any collective function. It is something in your soul. e. To say that happiness "becomes completed or fulfilled" means it develops in stages. Spiritual self-esteem is only the beginning of perfect happiness. By advancing through providential preventative suffering to spiritual autonomy, perfect happiness becomes stronger. By advancing through momentum testing to spiritual maturity, perfect happiness reaches its peak. When you pass evidence testing, then you have the perfect happiness that will exist forever and ever; in living, in dying, and in the eternal state forever. This is one of the most phenomenal of all things. This is the one "thing" you can take with you when you die, for perfect happiness resides in your soul, which you do take with you. 7. The execution of the protocol plan of God through the utilization of available divine power is the means of attaining perfect happiness; i.e., the omnipotence of the Father in providing our portfolio of invisible assets, and the omnipotence of the Spirit in teaching us Bible doctrine inside the divine dynasphere. 8. Prov 3:13, "Happiness belongs to the person who finds wisdom, even to the person who gains understanding." a. Wisdom is metabolized doctrine being applied to your experience. It is postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation; i.e., the perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine. b. You gain perfect happiness through understanding, the only thing you can take with you. 9. Ps 31:7, "I will rejoice and be happy in the provision of Your grace." Perfect happiness is always related to the grace policy of God. 10. This great happiness is a combination of four things: a. A personal sense of destiny. Without a personal sense of destiny you will never be happy as a Christian. b. Occupation with Christ. There must be an interlocking of a personal sense of destiny and occupation with Christ to produce God's happiness. No one can make you unhappy, if you are occupied with Christ. You are no longer hurt by the unkind things other people say about you or do to you. c. Sharing the happiness of God. No believer ever shares the happiness of God until he has a personal sense of destiny and occupation with Christ. No one you love will ever make you happy until you are occupied with Christ. d. The result is maximum glorification of God. You are an ambassador for Christ. You must have this great happiness to be an ambassador for Christ. Maximum glorification of God brings the greatest happiness you can have. These for four things will interlock to bring the greatest happiness the believer can have in this life. The greatest happiness is a witness to the fantastic grace of God in proving and providing for us the divine solution in time of historical disaster. God has provided in grace the fantastic demonstration that all true solutions in life reside in heaven and are dispersed to the believer who executes the unique spiritual life. When you put these four things together, you have blessing. 11. Scripture. a. Eph 3:20-21, "Now to Him, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think according to the power that works in us, to Him be the glory in the Church in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever." The power that works in us is the filling of the Spirit, which produces love and happiness. This greatest happiness is described here as "exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think." (1) The foundation for true happiness is in the soul, never in the body. (2) The Hebrew word ASHERE refers to the greatest happiness we have, which we can also have in time of disaster. This happiness is the sign of the advance to the high ground of spiritual maturity. b. Ps 119:1, "How happy are those whose way is complete (having integrity), who walk in the law of the Lord (the life God has provided for us)." (1) The believer who is prepared for historical disaster has a spiritual life classified as integrity. (2) You cannot be happy without integrity. Integrity is absolutely necessary for love, for everything that relates to God, for everything that relates to people, and for happiness. (3) The believer's happiness in disaster is a great testimony to others. (4) Sin never makes you happy, especially as a believer in Christ. (5) You glorify God by having His happiness. (6) Having God's happiness is a testimony on behalf of the Lord. It is also the basis for true leadership in a crisis. (7) This happiness is only possible through walking by means of the power of God the Holy Spirit. c. Ps 119:2, "How happy are those who observe His testimonies (a series of mandates from God), who seek Him with all their heart (stream of consciousness)." d. Ps 146:5, "How happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose confidence is in the Lord his God." e. Ps 84:12, "O Lord of the armies, how happy is the man who trusts in You!" f. Ps 128:1, "How happy is everyone who respects the Lord, who walks in His ways." g. Ps 112:1, "Praise the Lord! How happy is the man who respects the Lord, who greatly delights in His commands." There is no true love without respect. h. Happiness and love meet in Ps 100:1-5, "Shout the shout of great happiness to the Lord, all the land (client nation). Serve the Lord with a super abundance of happiness; come into His presence with singing. Know that the Lord He is God; it is He who delivered us (Jesus Christ controls history), and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture (the spiritual life). Enter into His gates (a place of worship) with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him; salute His person. For the Lord is absolute good; His unfailing love is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations." (1) The Hebrew word SIMCHAH means super abundance of happiness. The word CHESED means the unfailing love of God. CHESED is the source of SIMCHAH. By putting the two words together we have the concept that the unfailing love of God has provided a super abundance of happiness for every believer. The victory of the Lord is the blessing of the believer. There never was a time when the unfailing love of God and the perfect happiness of God did not exist. (2) The unfailing love of God is the source of the super abundance of happiness. The unfailing love of God is the most powerful source of blessing we have and provides an increasing degree of the super abundance of happiness for the Church Age believer. (a) The unfailing love of God provides super abundance of happiness in time for the mature believer. (b) This happiness increases, when the nation is delivered by the Lord from historical disaster. (c) The happiness in time becomes even greater in dying grace. (d) The moment we die, we enter into an even greater happiness being face-to-face with the Lord in interim body with loved ones, who have preceded us into heaven. (e) Even greater happiness is the happiness we will have in resurrection body at the Rapture of the Church. (f) We take this great happiness in resurrection body with us for a thousand years into the millennial reign of Christ as we rule with Christ and have an even greater happiness. (g) Then we have a greater happiness beyond description in the eternal state. Our human soul today could not stand this happiness of the eternal state, but the resurrection body has a soul that has the capacity for such a great happiness. There are additional blessings and rewards in the eternal state received by believers who have executed the spiritual life. i. The privilege of eating from the tree of life in the Paradise of God. ii. They receive the crown of life. iii. They receive the crown of righteousness. iv. For pastors only, who continued to love their congregation and teach them doctrine, the crown of glory. v. The order of the morning star. vi. The new knighthood. vii. The uniform of glory. viii. The pillar in the Temple of God a permanent historical record of all the things that believer did to glorify the Lord. ix. A coat of arms. (3) The unfailing love of God is absolute good and it is faithful to all generations. The unfailing love of God produces no super abundance of happiness, when we fail to execute the unique spiritual life. In His absolute good He has come to provide for us from His unfailing love this absolute good or deliverance. This deliverance produces a super abundance of happiness. (4) To fail to execute and apply the unique spiritual life in time of historical disaster is to miss this super abundance of happiness and the worst thing that can happen to you on this earth. (a) If there is no execution of the unique spiritual life which God gives to believers in the client nation, then instead of entering into His gates with thanksgiving the client nation enters into slavery and punishment. (b) The client nation must recognize that it is the Lord who provides the deliverance. There must be respect for the Lord. (5) We are to serve the Lord with a super abundance of happiness by the execution of the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. This is our ambassadorship for Christ. Serving the Lord by advancing in the spiritual life is a point of great happiness in time of historical disaster. As we serve the Lord and grow up spiritually, we will find that the unfailing love of God has provided the greatest happiness possible on earth. (6) Knowing that the Lord is God means that you start to handling these in life because of occupation with Christ rather than reacting to people and circumstances in life. (7) The phrase "it is He who delivers (ASAH) us" refers to all the blessings that come to us from executing the spiritual life in historical disaster. We serve the Lord and He delivers us. We execute the spiritual life and He delivers us. The result is a super abundance of happiness. (8) We reach this happiness through: 1) momentum of epignosis doctrine circulating in the seven compartments of the stream of consciousness, 2) the motivation of reciprocal love for God, 3) the protection of grace, and 4) the power of God the Holy Spirit. (9) The verb BERAQ means to kneel, praise, salute; we don't bless God; He blesses us. We salute the Lord's name by the recognition of the unfailing love of God in eternity past and the super abundance of happiness you have at that moment. The unfailing love of God is our motivation to salute or recognize the Lord. We are happy to do so. i. Zeph 3:14-15, 17, "Shout with happiness, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Israel! Rejoice with super abundance of happiness [SIMCHAH] and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away His judgments against you, He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; You will not fear evil." Zeph 3:17, "The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a warrior who causes victory. He will rejoice over you with a super abundance of happiness [SIMCHAH], He will renew you in His love, He will rejoice over you with the first shout of happiness." j. Each of these verses is related to some facet of your spiritual life. If you are not happy, it is because you have rejected some facet of your spiritual life. For example, you may have rejected the integrity of the spiritual life or neglected to observe God's mandates. The believer glorifies God to the maximum by the happiness God has given him. 12. The greatest opportunity of the spiritual life is the doctrine of the increasing super abundance of happiness. a. There are three factors related to this doctrine. (1) The potential for the super abundance of happiness is the same for all believers. Those who believe in Christ have this potential. Every Church Age believer has the same equal privilege and opportunity of executing the spiritual life, attaining spiritual maturity, and having this super abundance of happiness. You are given everything necessary to fulfill this potential. (2) The heritage of the super abundance of happiness is related to the hypostatic union. Our heritage is the fact that Jesus Christ in hypostatic union had the most fantastic spiritual life and happiness, and this spiritual life has been given to us. (3) The opportunity of the super abundance of happiness. All believers live long enough to have the opportunity of growing in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and attaining this super abundance of happiness. b. Satan provides all the distractions he can to keep us from our potential, heritage, and opportunity for this happiness. c. This great happiness develops gradually through the perception and application of doctrine and the execution of the spiritual life. 13. Some principles of the greatest happiness. a. The greatest happiness is a witness to the fantastic grace of God in providing the divine solution in time of historical disaster. b. Therefore, we have a combination of: 1) blessing to the believer who has attained the greatest happiness in time of historical disaster, 2) and maximum glorification of God, who has provided in grace this magnificent opportunity to demonstrate the fact that all true solutions in life reside in heaven and are dispersed to believers who execute the unique spiritual life. c. Even though mankind is looking for investments that will give him alleged happiness and security in life, they cannot compare to investing in the grace of God. Investment is not wrong, but the greatest investment in life is investment in the spiritual life, which pays far greater dividends. d. The security and blessing that comes to the believer in the execution of the unique spiritual life provides the peace of God which passes all understanding shall garrison your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, Phil 4:7, and it brings to the soul's application that divine solution is the only solution. All true solutions come from this great happiness. This happiness has all kinds of facets and becomes a blessing that makes the happiness greater. e. Man is helpless and it is only God in His grace who is helpful. f. True happiness is relationship between the believer and the grace of God as manifest in the love of God. When you put the two together you have fellowship with God. g. True happiness includes the glorification of God in time of historical disaster, utilizing the tremendous principles that are learned in time of prosperity through perception and metabolization of Bible doctrine. h. This is accomplished by the motivation of reciprocity, so that fellowship with God in prosperous times prepares the believer for greater happiness in his extension of fellowship with God in time of the greatest historical disaster. i. Therefore, the greatest happiness in life is related to a fellowship between the believer and the Lord Jesus Christ. j. God is glorified and mankind enters into the greatest happiness he will ever know under these conditions. This happiness is intensified in time of historical disaster. k. God is glorified when the believer enters into true happiness, inasmuch as true happiness is a part of the advance of the spiritual life. l. In time of disaster we glorify God to the maximum as we attain this happiness. m. Gal 5:22, "But the produce of the Spirit is love, happiness, tranquility, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness." Gal 5:25, "So if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep on walking by means of the Spirit." Eph 5:8, "Keep on being filled with the Spirit." Gal 5:16, "But I say keep moving forward by means of the power of the Holy Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the sin nature." There is no happiness in the desires or lust of the sin nature. This is the antithesis of happiness. n. Jn 15:11, "I have taught you these things, in order that My happiness might be in you and that your happiness might be complete." This means that you might have maximum use of this happiness in the unique spiritual life. Jn 14:26, "But our Mentor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." o. Acts 2:28, "And You have made known to me the ways of life (the spiritual life). You will make me full of happiness with Your presence." p. Phil 4:1, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, whom I long to see, my happiness and my crown, so stand firm in the Lord, my beloved." Those who have this great happiness in time have a special crown in eternity. q. 1 Thes 1:6, "You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the doctrine in much tribulation (historical disaster) with the happiness inspired by the Holy Spirit." The believer who has great happiness keeps on responding to Bible doctrine. r. Jam 1:2-3, "Considerate it all happiness my fellow- believers when you encounter various testings, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance (stability)." s. 1 Jn 1:4, "In fact, we write these things in order that our state of happiness might be completed." There is a state of happiness and there is a completion to that state of happiness. t. Jn 17:13, "But now I (Jesus Christ) come face-to- face with You (God the Father) and these things I am communicating in the world that they may keep on having My happiness, having been fulfilled in themselves (the execution of the spiritual life)." You cannot lose your salvation, but you can lose God's happiness. C. Happiness is Related to the Essence of God. 1. God is happy and has always been happy for all eternity; He has never been unhappy. No one has ever made God unhappy. God's happiness is related to His divine power. 2. God is perfect; therefore, His essence is composed of only perfect attributes, one of which is His perfect happiness. Perfect God can only possess perfect happiness. It cannot be tarnished or in any way challenged or destroyed. This same perfect happiness is available to you. 3. God is eternal; His happiness is eternal. There never was a time nor ever will be a time when God is not happy. Although His omniscience has always known the billions of angelic and human creatures who would be a disappointment, He cannot be disappointed or frustrated because He has perfect happiness. 4. God is immutable, meaning He cannot change. Therefore, His happiness is unchangeable; nothing can make God unhappy. No creature has the power to make God unhappy, but God has the power to make you happy and to share His happiness. 5. God is perfect, immutable, and eternal virtue. His virtue is composed of His justice and righteousness. a. Since God is perfect justice, His happiness is always related to being fair. b. Since God is perfect righteousness, His happiness is never built on the unhappiness of someone else. God's righteousness never destroys His happiness (as is true with self- righteous people who are miserable.) Therefore, whenever someone is unhappy because of discipline or suffering, this is not in any way unfair. God cannot be unfair. c. So regardless of the circumstances of life, of history, or of the prehistoric angelic conflict, God's happiness has never varied or changed. It has always run at maximum efficiency. d. God's happiness is always fair, always related to virtue. There can never be true happiness unless the believer has true virtue or integrity. This true virtue and integrity is the utilization of the two power options, function of the three spiritual skills, deployment of the problem solving devices, and entrance into the three stages of the adult or sophisticated spiritual life. God's happiness and virtue can never be separated. 6. In a sense, happiness is a form of energy. This is energy beyond human imagination or understanding. It is a perpetual energy, without ever having any loss or even transference into another form. God's perfect happiness is an energy that is available to us! 7. God is omnipotent. Therefore, He has the power and the ability to possess perfect happiness without any form of distortion. a. God's happiness does not depend on the use of His power. Furthermore, the use of His power never destroys His happiness. b. This is contrary to creature power and authority, which often destroys one's own happiness by one's own decisions and motivations. Very few can handle too much power and authority. So human power is a system of energy that changes into frustration, bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, and hatred through the abuse of that power or authority. c. Arrogance converts the energy of happiness into the energy of misery and frustration. But God's power has never corrupted His perfect happiness. God continues to have maximum happiness with His maximum power. 8. God is perfect love which is expressed in His perfect happiness. His perfect happiness is actually expressed in three categories of divine love. a. God's perfect personal love is directed toward the perfect righteousness of the other members of the Trinity, and toward all believers who possess His perfect righteousness. b. God's perfect love is directed toward His own perfect righteousness, called His perfect divine self-esteem. God's perfect happiness never feels threatened. This is the confidence that goes with perfect happiness. Likewise, when you have perfect happiness, you will have a happiness that never feels threatened. c. God's perfect impersonal love was directed toward imperfect man in the saving work of Christ on the cross. This is God's problem solving device for mankind. This comes from His divine self-esteem. Because of impersonal love for the sinner, Jn 3:16 says, "For God loved the world so much that He gave His uniquely-born Son." (1) The motivation of God the Father sending God the Son into the world was His perfect impersonal love. The Son remained impeccable inside the prototype divine dynasphere by the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit. (2) At the cross, the Father expressed His divine self-esteem in judging God the Son. Imputing the sins of the world to Christ and judging them did not threaten Him. Jesus Christ remained under the burden and judgment of billions of sins on the cross, and He remained perfect humanity in His substitutionary spiritual death. (3) The Holy Spirit sustained our Lord throughout His life, and especially on the cross. All this salvation work came from God's impersonal love motivation. (4) Since God could not love spiritually dead man personally, He developed impersonal love from His divine self- esteem. His impersonal love and power, sovereignty and justice all combined to provide our salvation. Yet in this worst moment of history for God, each member of the Godhead retained their perfect happiness. 9. God is omniscient. His eternal and infinite genius makes Him perfectly happy. Human genius makes most people unhappy, because of arrogance. a. His omniscience knows every sin and evil, every cruel and vicious thing in angelic and human history. He has always known all the thoughts, decisions, motivations, and actions of every person in history. Yet none of this ever caused God to lose His happiness for a moment. b. Furthermore, God in His omniscience found a way to design a plan to make us happy. He found a system whereby He could share His perfect happiness with us without compromising it in any way. 10. God is sovereign, possessing perfect volition. He has never made even one wrong decision. This is a part of His perfect happiness. In eternity past, God made the sovereign decision to share His perfect happiness with the new spiritual species, the Church Age believer as royal family of God. This is one reason why we are a new spiritual species, so that the wonderful things God has for us can be shared, and so that we can enjoy these things now in time; we don't have to wait until the end of our life. 11. Therefore, nothing can destroy or change the happiness of God. It's impossible for God to be unhappy. a. Neither the failure of angels nor members of the human race has ever given God even a second of unhappiness. b. Nothing can change the essence of God. Therefore, nothing can change or destroy the happiness of God. c. God's happiness is related to His personal, perfect, and complete sense of destiny. Happiness and a sense of destiny always go together. d. Even when you refuse God's wonderful provisions by failing to attain the capacity, the encapsulation for this perfect happiness, God still cannot be unhappy. God is in His heavens and is extremely happy. e. Therefore, it is impossible for the spiritually mature believer who is executing the protocol plan of God to be unhappy. No power in this world can make him unhappy. 12. It is a matter of grace that God shares His perfect happiness with believers through the portfolio of invisible assets, through the omnipotence of the Father, Son, and Spirit, through the indwelling of the Trinity, and through the marvelous protocol plan of God. Only grace can provide the way by which God can share His perfect happiness with us. Grace is a policy with mechanics which must be understood. a. It is a matter of grace that God has decided to share His perfect happiness with believers through our portfolio of invisible assets, which God the Father designed for us in eternity past, and through the omnipotence of the Son who holds the universe together so that history can continue, and through the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit in the divine dynasphere, who functions as our I.Q., who acts as our teacher so that we can understand Bible doctrine, grow in grace, execute the protocol plan of God, and share this phenomenal divine happiness. b. Perfect happiness is absolutely perfect in itself, and can be taken with you wherever you go; it will not be disturbed or destroyed. 13. Ps 16:11 teaches three ways in which God shares His perfect happiness with us. "You will make known to me the path of life. In Your presence is the fullness of happiness; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." The happiness described here as belonging to God is now the potential for any Church Age believer who reaches spiritual adulthood. a. "You will make known to me the path of life" means that the first principle in gaining perfect happiness is cognition of Bible doctrine (reception, retention, and recall), and epistemological rehabilitation. You will never have God's perfect happiness in this life unless you learn. God's perfect happiness is related to thought. Thought energy is the key and basis for all God's perfect happiness. Although God's perfect happiness is available to all believers, if you reject Bible doctrine you'll never sort things out, let alone have perfect happiness. b. "In Your presence is the fullness of happiness" is the thrust of this point. In the presence of God is perfect happiness, the fullness of happiness. God is perfect, eternal, infinite, immutable, just, righteous, omnipotent, love, omniscient, and sovereign, and God's perfect happiness is characterized by all these divine attributes. God has made this same perfect happiness available to us. "In Your presence" means the Old Testament believer had this happiness only when He died and became absent from the body and face to face with the Lord. But for the Church Age believer, there is the potential while alive on earth to experience this fullness of happiness. c. "At Your right hand there are pleasures forever." Pleasures in life are fleeting and do not sustain. They are wonderful and stimulating for a few moments, but they have no perpetual sustaining ability. They cannot carry you in adversity and are not a source of blessing. Pleasure is the monopoly of God. Pleasure follows the possession of God's perfect happiness; it does not precede it. Now at the right hand of God the Father is the Lord Jesus Christ, and He has given a fantastic heritage of pleasures forevermore. This means not only eternal pleasure, but also perfect happiness in life! 14. Only God has a monopoly on happiness and is the source of all perfect happiness. Ps 43:4a, "Then I will go to the altar of God [place of worship]; to God, the happiness of my happiness." The altar of God is the place of learning Bible doctrine. God was the happiness of David's happiness. God is the happiness of those believers who reach spiritual adulthood. God is perfect happiness, the source of perfect happiness. David had achieved a happiness that very few in the Old Testament could achieve, for every few had even the spiritual assets to achieve it. But David was one of the Old Testament believers who was given one percent of divine omnipotence. You can have that happiness for you have been given one hundred percent divine power. 15. God's happiness and virtue-love. a. God's perfect happiness is also related to His virtue-love. God is sovereign; therefore, His love is self-motivated and totally compatible with His divine essence. b. God is infinite and eternal. Therefore, God possesses infinite and eternal love and happiness. Love and happiness go together once you understand what virtue-love is. c. God is immutable. Therefore, His divine happiness and love are unchangeable and incorruptible. d. God is holy, both justice and righteousness. Therefore, God's love and happiness are both perfect and compatible with His righteousness. So also, when you have perfect happiness and virtue-love and righteousness with it, it is a magnificent virtuous righteousness. e. The self-consciousness, self-determination, and modus operandi of God is eternally and infinitely perfect. Therefore, God acts rationally without prejudice in the function of His love and His happiness. So also, He has provided for you a love and a happiness which will function without prejudice and without any irrationality. f. God's love and happiness exists eternally, unsustained by Himself or any other source. Because God is immutable, His love and happiness are unchanging, which means they do not improve or decline, grow weak or grow strong, increase or diminish. That same happiness is available to you. Therefore, there is no unstable characteristic related to the perfect happiness or love of God. g. Therefore, God's love does not become subjective; neither hypersensitive nor insensitive. God's happiness contains perfect virtue where there is true sensitivity and the absence of insensitivity. This same characteristic in you provides the potential for fantastic leadership. For this can be shared and distributed to His rational creatures, specifically to believers in Jesus Christ. This is accomplished only through the protocol plan of God, and so has never existed before in history. h. God's happiness cannot be disappointed or frustrated by the failure of any believer to fulfill His plan. This happiness will make your dying as easy as your living. This same happiness and virtue-love will give you fantastic capacity for life, and no set of circumstances can ever get you down. i. God's love exists with or without an object, since love is a part of His infinite and eternal essence. So you can have in your very life a love that requires no object since the capacity is always there. You will have personal love for God and the capacity of impersonal love for all people. So that when God brings your way personal friends and loved ones, you will have the magnificent capacity for personal love toward them, which will make your life very meaningful. j. Such love does not require reciprocation for its existence. Therefore, God's love does not depend on our response or our rejection of His love. God's love is not sustained by attraction or rapport, human good, human morality, worthiness, self-righteousness, patronizing flattery, or anything else mankind can do. k. Therefore, God's happiness does not depend upon the performance of the believer, but is an integral part of His divine essence. God's love and happiness is related to who and what God is, not who and what man is. 16. Perfect happiness is attained by any believer who executes the protocol plan of God, Neh 8:10b, "Do not be grieved; do not be unhappy. For the happiness of the Lord is your strength." The dynamics of spiritual adulthood is that the happiness of the Lord is the strength of spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity. 17. Our Lord had two categories of perfect happiness during the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union. a. As God in 1 Tim 6:15, "He who is the happy [MAKARIOS] and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords." Jesus Christ as God has always had perfect, eternal, immutable happiness. b. As humanity, Jesus Christ had acquired the happiness of God inside the prototype divine dynasphere, and maintained it even while on the cross, Heb 12:2, "Be concentrating on Jesus [occupation with Christ], the author and perfecter of our doctrine, who because of His exhibited happiness He endured the cross, having disregarded the shame, and He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." c. When Jesus Christ was being judged for our sins on the cross, He demonstrated the fact that the mature believer with perfect happiness can endure anything in life. This is one of the reasons for the extension of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union into the Church Age. d. Therefore, the power that sustained our Lord on the cross, the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit inside the divine dynasphere, is now available to us as members of the royal family of God. With this availability of divine power, every Church Age believer can attain the same perfect happiness which carried our Lord through a type of suffering beyond human imagination. 18. The Holy Spirit is the source of our sharing God's perfect happiness because He is the teacher of Bible doctrine. Perfect happiness is said to be the "fruit of the Spirit" in Rom 14:17, "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and prosperity and happiness by means of the Holy Spirit." a. In other words, the spiritual part of our life, the protocol plan of God, goes way beyond our normal functions of eating and drinking. In that sense, we have a dual life. b. In our spiritual life, we can have the righteousness of virtue, prosperity, and perfect happiness all by means of the Holy Spirit. First comes righteousness, which is virtue from postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation. Then comes prosperity when you reach spiritual maturity. Finally throughout spiritual adulthood you have perfect happiness. This is all accomplished by the Holy Spirit who is the teacher of Bible doctrine. 19. Gal 5:22, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, happiness, prosperity." Happiness here refers to three categories of perfect happiness. In spiritual self-esteem, perfect happiness begins; in spiritual autonomy, perfect happiness continues; and in spiritual maturity perfect happiness peaks out. 20. Part of the great power experiment of the Church Age is perfect happiness produced by God the Holy Spirit, 1 Thes 1:6, "You also become imitators of us and of the Lord [by fulfillment of the protocol plan of God through utilization of divine power in the operational-type divine dynasphere], having received the Word in much pressure [affliction, oppression] with happiness from the Holy Spirit." a. Two people are to be imitated by us. One is the only invisible hero of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union, Jesus Christ. The other is Paul, the great invisible hero of the great power experiment of the Church Age. We are to imitate him by imitating the copybook, by receiving the Word consistently. When you begin to be consistent in learning Bible doctrine, there is much pressure. Having perfect happiness in the midst of it from the Holy Spirit is due to being sustained by the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit inside the operational- type divine dynasphere. b. The power that sustained Jesus Christ during those last three hours on the cross when He was being judged for our sins is now available to us during the great power experiment of the Church Age. This power is used in three categories to attained perfect happiness: (1) The omnipotence of God the Father is used to attain perfect happiness through the perception of our portfolio of invisible assets and using those assets. (2) The omnipotence of Jesus Christ is used by knowing He gives us a day at a time and is faithful in sustaining our life so we can attain perfect happiness. (3) The omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit is used to attain perfect happiness because God the Holy Spirit is the teacher of Bible doctrine; Jn 14; 1 Cor 2:9-16, 2:24. 21. If you want this perfect happiness, it only requires daily decisions from the right scale of values. Your number one priority must be Bible doctrine. You must be motivated to come and hear it under the ministry of the Holy Spirit. You must listen, learn, advance, and grow, and you will be happy for all time and for all eternity. 22. Unique Happiness for the New Spiritual Species. a. The basis for God giving us this marvelous happiness is the fact that each one of us, at the moment of salvation through the ministry of the baptism of the Spirit, became a new spiritual species, unique to this dispensation. Only in this unique Church Age does every believer have the potential of sharing God's happiness. Sharing God's perfect happiness is unique to the Church Age; it never occurred before, and will never occur again, not even in the Millennium. b. Israel was a new racial species. Gal 6:15, "For neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision; but a new [spiritual] species." (1) At one time, circumcision had a spiritual connotation; it doesn't anymore. The day of the racial species is gone. In this dispensation, the Jew or Gentile who believes in Christ becomes a new spiritual species. For those in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile. (2) "Circumcision" refers to the new racial species of Israel. "Uncircumcision" refers to the original genus of homo sapien. (3) Every Church Age believer is a new spiritual species. c. As a new spiritual species, we are designed to utilize the omnipotence of God. (1) The omnipotence of God the Father is related to our portfolio of invisible assets. (2) The omnipotence of God the Son is related to the perpetuation of human history. He always provides a spot in this world for invisible heroes, no matter how bad things get throughout the world. (3) The omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit is the power and means of executing the protocol plan of God, related to the divine dynasphere. God the Holy Spirit is the teacher of Bible doctrine; Jn 14; 1 Cor 2:9-16, 2:24. d. God's happiness belongs "naturally" to the new spiritual species; it is a happiness that only the new spiritual species can have. It is a happiness designed for both prosperity and adversity. It is a happiness that gives the most fantastic capacity for life, whether you have little or much, whether you are great or insignificant. All human distinctions mean nothing now as a result of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. e. A new spiritual species means there is a new family function, i.e., the royal family of God. The baptism of the Spirit made you royal family of God since the day you believed in Jesus Christ. f. 2 Cor 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ [and he is as a believer], he is a new [spiritual] species. The old things have lost their power; behold, new things have come." (1) You are "in Christ" by the baptism of the Spirit at the moment of your salvation. You were entered into union with Christ. (2) The adjective KAINE means new; the noun KTISIS means species. (3) What old things have lost their power over us? Genetic, environmental, and volitional handicaps; human dynamic, personality, talent, and works flaws. (4) The "new things" that have come refer to your portfolio of invisible assets, to the ten unique characteristics of the Church Age, and the ten problem solving devices of the protocol plan. g. Rom 12:3 teaches the mental attitude for this new spiritual species, out of which comes perfect happiness. "For I say through the grace which has been given to me to everyone who is among you: Stop thinking of self in terms of arrogance beyond the point you ought to think, but think in terms of sanity for the purpose of being rational without illusion, as God has assigned to each one of us a standard of thinking from doctrine." (1) If you think of self in terms of arrogance, you have destroyed any possibility of happiness. (2) Fear, for example, is arrogance. The more you surrender to fear, the more things you fear. Therefore, to the extent to which you surrender to fear, to that extent you increase the power of fear and arrogance in your life. (3) Fear, worry, anxiety, plus the irrationality of emotionalism are contradictions to the Christian way of life which reflects lack of problem solving devices. D. Mandates to Happiness. 1. Since God possesses perfect happiness, He desires to share His perfect happiness with us, and so He mandates that we have His perfect happiness. We as members of the royal family of God therefore have the potential or realizing His perfect happiness. God will keep you alive long enough to attain that perfect happiness, provided you are faithful in the perception of doctrine. 2. No attribute of God is compromised in the grace policy and the power mechanics of the protocol plan of God. The ultimate objective of the protocol plan of God is to provide for you perfect happiness, a part of growing spiritually. 3. Consequently, perfect happiness is attained in the three stages of spiritual adulthood, and is a part of glorifying God in the Church Age. 4. Since the acquisition of perfect happiness is related to spiritual adulthood and the glorification of God in the protocol plan of God for the Church Age, such happiness is a command! You are ordered and commanded by the Word of God to have happiness. The fact that you do not have God's perfect happiness is another act of disobedience on your part. a. Ps 97:12, "Be happy in the Lord, O righteous ones, and give thanks for the memory of His holiness." We have the imputed righteousness of God since salvation, which qualifies us to be the recipient of God's personal love. As you begin to have perfect happiness, thanksgiving becomes a moment-by- moment attitude of your soul. As the command says, "In everything give thanks; this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." Until you can give thanks for everything, both the blessings and adversities of your life, you have not yet come close to having perfect happiness. b. Phil 3:1, "Finally, my brethren, keep on having happiness in the Lord. To be writing this same mandate to you, on the one hand, is not tedious, while on the other hand, it [+H] is a safeguard to you." (1) The recipients of this letter may have been irked because Paul had commanded them to be happy before. Paul had the audacity, even in writing Scripture, to repeat. But inculcation and repetition is the only way to learn doctrine. The best things in life are learned by repetition. (2) The greatest experience of security in this life is to attain perfect happiness. Once you have God's happiness in your soul, it is the ultimate of security, the basis for spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity. (3) This is security for you because, when you get under pressure, you will think the right thing, do the right thing, and apply the right doctrine because you have repeatedly learned to do the right thing under normal circumstances. The more things you can do automatically, the greater your life will be. 5. Phil 4:4, "Keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times; once more I repeat the command, keep on having happiness." a. Perfect happiness is the only happiness in the world you can have at all times, wherever you are, no matter what your circumstances. The perfect happiness which you attain in time you carry with you into the eternal state. Perfect happiness is not something you attain in the eternal state, although there is happiness and blessing for all believers there. But perfect happiness must be developed here in time. It is designed for living and dying now! b. But how do you obey the command "Be happy!"? You can't be hypocritical and fake it. To obey the command to "keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times" is something we cannot do any more than we can do anything for our salvation. All we can have is the momentary -H or neutral happiness. c. This divine command can only be executed through residence, function, momentum inside the divine dynasphere in the attainment of the three stages of spiritual adulthood. Neh 8:10 anticipated this. "Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your power." d. Hearing this twice-repeated command and knowing how to execute it are two different things. As with anything, there are a number of things you first must learn to execute God's plan. Everything in life must be done by the numbers. Yet Christians want instant solutions and miracles, implying that God is disorganized. We must get with His plan and His system to have His perfect happiness. 6. The principle of happiness must be related to each of the eight gates of the divine dynasphere. It is inside the divine dynasphere that we execute the protocol plan of God. Traveling from gate one to gate eight is the road to happiness, as described in 1 Tim 6:6-8, "But godliness [momentum in divine dynasphere] is a means of great profit when accompanied by contentment [+H]. For we have brought nothing into this world and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and shelter, we shall be content [+H] with these." a. Godliness means you're in the place where God can train you, that is, residence, function, and momentum inside the divine dynasphere. This is a means of great profit because reaching gate five is the beginning of perfect happiness, becoming occupied with Christ, and having personal love for God. Perfect happiness is continued at gate six, where God's happiness begins to work in our lives. At gate eight, perfect happiness is completed in the top floor of the edification complex of the soul. Having perfect happiness, God then gives us the ultimate in suffering for blessing, evidence testing. This is how "godliness is a means of great profit." It is the greatest profit this world has to offer. b. "Contentment" refers to perfect happiness, begun in spiritual self-esteem, continued in spiritual autonomy, and completed in spiritual maturity. Here is where we have capacity for life. c. We cannot take material things or relationships out of this world. d. Being content with food and shelter means that if you're content with the basic things and you develop perfect happiness, then God can trust you with the most magnificent things in life, as packaged in your escrow blessings for time. 7. Perfect happiness is not dependent on pleasure, success, social life, marriage, sex, love, health, etc. Perfect happiness is developed through life in the divine dynasphere and is the only happiness totally independent of the status symbols of life. Perfect happiness is dependent upon metabolized doctrine in the soul and results in momentum in the protocol plan of God. 8. The mandate for happiness is found in Phil 4:1, where you are commanded to have perfect happiness, which is, in effect, a command for postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation. "Keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times; once more I repeat the command, keep on having happiness." To keep on having happiness at all times means this is a perpetual happiness. It is fantastic contentment in all circumstances. 5. God's Happiness is Related to the Three Stages of Spiritual Adulthood. 1. Spiritual Self-Esteem. a. The characteristics of spiritual self-esteem are a part of perfect happiness (see the doctrine of spiritual self- esteem). b. There are three stages of spiritual adulthood. (1) Spiritual self-esteem is gate five of the divine dynasphere. (2) Spiritual autonomy, gate six of the divine dynasphere. (3) Spiritual maturity, gate eight of the divine dynasphere. c. There is a progression of perfect happiness at each stage of spiritual adulthood. God's happiness begins at spiritual self-esteem. As it gains momentum, perfect happiness continues in spiritual autonomy, and it is completed in spiritual maturity, where it reaches its peak in the top floor of the edification complex of the soul. d. So what is the happiness of spiritual self-esteem? Ps 128:1, "How happy is every believer who is occupied with the Lord." Ps 146:5, "Happiness belongs to the one whose confidence is in the Lord." Occupation with and confidence in the Lord is the basic definition of perfect happiness in spiritual self- esteem. e. A more detailed explanation is given in 2 Cor 12:10, "For this reason I find contentment [beginning of perfect happiness] in weaknesses [providential preventative suffering]: in slanders [people testing], in pressures [thought testing] in persecutions [system testing], in stresses [disaster testing] on behalf of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (1) Providential preventative suffering at spiritual self-esteem puts you in a state of weakness in that there is no human solution to the problem solving devices. Whatever the solution, it must be a divine solution, spiritual common sense, which come from your own soul's resources of Bible doctrine. The four types of testing are warm-ups for spiritual self-esteem in order to advance to spiritual autonomy. These are warm-ups for momentum testing faced in spiritual autonomy. (2) The four parts of providential preventative suffering cover the whole scope of problem solving devices in life in principle. You pass these tests by having the beginning of perfect happiness. There is enough happiness in your soul from spiritual self-esteem so that you can be happy in all categories of providential preventative suffering! Only in this Church Age has God provided a well-organized system for us to have fantastic blessing in the midst of suffering. Suffering can be just as great a blessing as any prosperous circumstances. (3) "On behalf of Christ," the glorification of our Lord, demands that the believer in spiritual self-esteem put muscle on that status, that he pass providential preventative suffering so that he might advance to spiritual autonomy, thus increasing his perfect happiness. (4) Being "strong when weak" refers to the utilization of divine power for momentum in the protocol plan of God under the great power experiment of the Church Age. To be "weak" means you must make maximum use of divine power, the basis for blessing in the midst of testing. You don't try to intrude on God's solutions with your own ability, human power, human ingenuity, attitudes, or concepts. Providential preventative suffering brings you to the point where you realize life and the devil are bigger than you, and that you won't be able to solve your problem solving devices on your own. (5) Your strength comes from the use of any of the four problem solving devices. In this case, perfect happiness in its beginning form, i.e., contentment, is used. (6) It often takes a lot to make you weak, especially if you're high-spirited and strong-willed. Until you know you're weak, you will never be strong. To the extent that you have illusions about your so-called strong points, you are depriving yourself of the blessings of grace. True strength comes from using divine power to match your weakness, rather than using human power to hold at bay God's grace provision for you. f. 1 Pet 1:8, "Even though you have not seen Him, you love Him; in fact, though you do not see Him now but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with happiness inexpressible and full of glory." (1) We "see God" through the greatest gift ever given to man: the Word of God. To love someone you have not seen is impossible apart from thought, usually from reading about them. The motivational virtue of spiritual self-esteem is personal love for God, occupation with the person of Christ, the fulfillment of Heb 12:2. To love Him is perfect happiness in spiritual self-esteem. (2) Everything related to success in the spiritual life invisible. Invisible assets + invisible God = invisible heroes. (3) "Full of glory" anticipates the full realization of perfect happiness in spiritual maturity. The believer with perfect happiness is on the road to glory at the point of spiritual self-esteem. (4) It is perfect happiness which motivates love for Jesus Christ and virtue and humility, as opposed to love for self and arrogant self-righteousness. 2. Documentation for perfect happiness in spiritual autonomy. a. Heb 13:5, "Let your lifestyle be free from the love for money, being content [+H] with what you have. For He Himself has said [Deut 31:6], `I will never leave you nor will I ever forsake you.'" (1) There is nothing wrong with money; it is necessary to live. But when money becomes your master, you become a pitiful slave to money. Money was not designed to bring happiness. If you already have capacity for perfect happiness, you can handle the accumulation of money without any problem solving devices. So your lifestyle is to be free from the love for money. However, if your life is free from money you won't live long. The objective is to have money as your slave and perfect happiness as your master. (2) If you are content with what you have, you have perfect happiness in spiritual autonomy. You no longer think you want more, more, more! (3) This promise is God's guarantee to you from the day of your salvation, based on God's perfect integrity. He will never leave or forsake you. This promise assures you of both temporal and eternal security. God will never leave you in life, nor forsake you in dying. However, this doesn't prevent God from disciplining you or allowing the law of volitional responsibility to function. b. Rom 14:22, "The doctrine which you have [metabolized doctrine], have it according to your own norms and standards before God. Happiness belongs to that person who does not condemn himself in what he approves." (1) This verse refers to the status quo of the believer in spiritual autonomy, who has doctrine in his soul according to his own norms and standards so that his priorities are right. Therefore, he has God's perfect happiness. (2) The believer in spiritual autonomy does not feel threatened by the criticism of legalism. He knows he's doing the right thing even while being maligned and judged, the victim of jealousy, bitterness, arrogance, implacability, and all the revenge motivation related to envy. (3) The believer in spiritual autonomy doesn't copy those he admires, nor is he bullied into any legalism. The result of having one's own norms and standards before God is the rise of perfect happiness in the life. (4) We go through life in self-condemnation as we violate our norms and standards or as we are victimized by legalism and society's standards. (5) A lot of people approve of their lifestyle and do not condemn themselves because of arrogance. This phrase doesn't refer to those who don't condemn themselves simply because they have no norms and standards. Their arrogance and ignorance replace any norms and standards. (6) But the believer in spiritual autonomy has norms and standards and yet, because of perfect happiness, no longer condemns himself. c. 1 Pet 3:14, "But if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness [I wish you were, but you're not], you are happy [+H in spiritual autonomy]. [Isa 8:12b] `Therefore, do not fear what they fear, and do not let yourself be intimidated.'" (1) To suffer for righteousness' sake is a reference to momentum testing at gate seven, the suffering for blessing to those in spiritual autonomy. The recipients of Peter's letter had not yet reached spiritual autonomy. But this is their potential if and when they ever reach spiritual autonomy. People aren't happy in suffering unless they are in spiritual adulthood, the place of perfect happiness. (2) "They" in the phrase "what they fear" refers to believers who have not yet reached spiritual autonomy. spiritual autonomy is not intimidated, is not afraid of who or what he is. Fear is a subjective form of arrogance. Intimidation comes to the believer who allows fear into his life. d. 1 Pet 4:14, "If you are reproached because of the person of Christ [and you are in spiritual autonomy], you are happy because the Spirit of glory and of God refreshes you." In momentum testing, others will reproach you. This phrase specifically refers to people testing. "The Spirit of glory" is a specific reference to the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit functioning inside the operational divine dynasphere. Refreshment in disaster is perfect happiness in your life. e. Jas 1:2, "Consider it all happiness [perfect happiness in spiritual autonomy], my brethren, when you encounter various testings." You can't consider perfect happiness until you have perfect happiness. And until you have perfect happiness, you can't use it to handle suffering. The "various testings" refer to the four parts of momentum testing. 3. Documentation for perfect happiness in spiritual maturity. Phil 4:11-13, "Not that I speak with reference to need, for I have learned to be content [+H] in whatever circumstances I am. In fact, I have come to know how to be humbled and I have come to know how to live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance, I have been initiated, both how to be filled, how to be hungry, how to be prosperous, and how to suffer need. I have the power to attain all things through Him [God the Father] who makes me strong." a. Once you reach spiritual maturity, you have an entirely new and refreshing system of thinking, and you never think in terms of needs. We all continue to have needs, but they become less and less important as you advance through the stages of spiritual adulthood. This is because you finally come to realize that God has known your needs all along. In effect, "needs" then become rather silly. This is because once you reach spiritual adulthood, needs become inconsequential and so you don't have to spend time thinking about them. Of course, you still plan for them, being organized. But your needs aren't nearly as important once you reach spiritual adulthood, resulting in an improved prayer life that doesn't include all your needs. As long as your needs have number one priority in your life, it's impossible for you to reach spiritual adulthood. b. Happiness is something you learn, not something you have, want, or anticipate. You must learn how to live in adversity and how to live in prosperity. To learn to be content takes a lot of doctrine repeated, knowledge about the uniqueness of the Church Age and all the mystery doctrine. c. Contentment is a synonym for perfect happiness, as in other passages, such as 1 Tim 6:8, "If we have food and shelter, with these we shall be content." The point is, when you have perfect happiness, what more do you need? There isn't anything more than perfect happiness, even when you are in adversity and have needs. But really, you don't need anything beyond food and shelter if you have perfect happiness. One of the greatest signs of prosperity is maximum use of perfect happiness. This comes from going through the valley of momentum testing and passing them, advancing to spiritual maturity. d. This is also taught also in Heb 13:5. There the reason for being content with such things as you have is because "I will never leave you nor forsake you." This really refers to temporal security which is freedom from worry, fear, anxiety, etc. e. "In fact, I have come to know how to be humbled." This is something we all must learn, because by nature none of us have it. In humility you are objective. Humiliation is associated with arrogance; being humbled is associated with spiritual growth and understanding God's grace. Humility comes with the organized life of the believer in spiritual adulthood. f. What we cannot learn from Bible doctrine, we must learn from adversity and undeserved suffering. Suffering is a great teacher to the wise, but is a bitter pill to those who resist Bible doctrine. Suffering provides maximum opportunity to apply metabolized doctrine to life. One of the hardest things to learn in life is to be humble. But God will provide this lesson for us through doctrine and suffering. You cannot be great without humility. Humility is the most fantastic spiritual dignity that carries with it perfect happiness. g. "And I have come to know how live in prosperity." You must learn how to be prosperous and how to be happy in prosperity; yet very few prosperous people understand this. It is difficult for prosperity to successfully work in anyone simply because of arrogance. Arrogance destroys capacity for life and especially capacity for prosperity. h. To be initiated means to learn the secrets of the fraternity, to endure the testings of the fraternity. The Church is the fraternity, and we are initiated through learning Bible doctrine and suffering for blessing. i. "How to be prosperous and how to suffer need;" both categories are necessary for the advance to spiritual maturity and the fulfillment of the protocol plan of God. j. How did Paul attain the fantastic point of having God's perfect happiness in every possible circumstance? By having divine power. "I have the power" is a reference to the availability of divine omnipotence for the execution of the protocol plan of God. It is a reference to the same power available to us in the great power experiment of the Church Age as Christ used on the cross. He was able to remain perfect, though judged for all the sins of the world, because He was sustained by the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit inside the prototype divine dynasphere, and because He had perfect happiness, the greatest of all problem solving devices. k. Whether you are strong or not depends on you learning that God's power exists in three categories (omnipotence of the Father, omnipotence of the Son, and omnipotence of the Spirit) and is available to you, and then utilizing it through the perception of doctrine. l. It's really important for you to attain perfect happiness before you die. It's the only way to die and the only way to live. Perfect happiness actually equates living with dying for the believer. So whatever the circumstances, you still have perfect happiness. That's why Paul said in Phil 1:21, "For me, living is Christ and dying is profit." m. "I have the power to attain all things." "All things" refer to the three stages of spiritual adulthood, the four great problem solving devices, the tremendous invisible impact on history. Perfect happiness is increased at each stage, but must be learned. You have the same opportunity to attain the same spiritual adulthood and perfect happiness and invisible impact. n. The source of this power is the Father, "through Him." (EN + instrumental of agency = expresses personal agency.) This is the same power available to our Lord in the prototype divine dynasphere in Hypostatic Union. And this power is now available to us. o. ENDUNAMOO can be translated either "through Him who makes me strong," or "through Him who pours the power into me." It is God the Father who makes it available to you. F. The Mechanics for Attainment of Perfect Happiness. 1. Prov 3:13, "Happiness belongs to that person [believer] who finds wisdom even the person who gains understanding [of doctrine]." "Wisdom" or CHAKMAH refers to the three R's: reception, retention, and recall of Bible doctrine; i.e., perception, metabolization, and application of Bible doctrine. The function of gate four carries you to personal love for God, spiritual self-esteem, and the beginning of perfect happiness. The momentum of gate four continues perfect happiness as you advance to gate six, spiritual autonomy, and gate eight, spiritual maturity, in which perfect happiness is completed. a. The Hebrew word CHAKMAH means wisdom that comes from doctrine, i.e., the application of metabolized doctrine. b. The Hebrew word for understanding is BIN, which refers to the perception and metabolization of Bible doctrine. c. So this verse actually includes perception, metabolization, and application of doctrine. d. 1 Jn 1:4, "And these things we write that our joy may be brought to completion." 2. Jn 15:11, "I have taught you these things in order that My happiness [perfect happiness of the humanity of Jesus Christ] may be in you and that your happiness may be fulfilled." a. During the entire great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union, Christ had perfect happiness. He never got out of the prototype divine dynasphere. He never lost perfect happiness for a second. Part of the legacy of our Lord for the royal family in the Church Age is for us to have the same happiness that He had, both in His deity and in His humanity. b. This is "taught;" perfect happiness comes through the perception of Bible doctrine as it is taught; it does not come through something you enjoy. c. You can endure anything with perfect happiness, as Jesus Christ has proved, Heb 12:2, "who for the happiness that was set before Him endured the cross . . ." He didn't endure the cross because He liked it, but because He had perfect happiness. The greatest suffering in all of history occurred on the cross, when Jesus Christ, perfect humanity, received the imputation and judgment for every sin in human history. Yet, He stayed on the cross because of His perfect happiness. d. Is God's happiness in you or not? Perfect happiness is the ultimate problem solver. You can endure anything with perfect happiness, as well as having the most wonderful capacity for life and for death. e. Your happiness can only be fulfilled, as a Church Age believer, through the execution of the protocol plan of God, through advancing to spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity. The happiness of the Church Age believer is fulfilled by the utilization of the same divine power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead; the utilization of the omnipotence of the Father related to our portfolio; the utilization of the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit related to our divine dynasphere. f. Perfect happiness is not only a problem solving device for you personally, but also for your historical periphery, the client nation. You have at your disposal the two greatest problem solving devices in history: virtue-love for the interaction with people, and perfect happiness for your own life. Problem solving toward self and people all comes together at gate eight. Then you can walk through evidence testing as if it were nothing. There is no pain, adversity, tragedy, or difficulty greater than perfect happiness in your soul! g. So our Lord's "happiness in you" is spiritual self- esteem and spiritual autonomy. "His happiness fulfilled" is spiritual maturity. h. Perfect happiness is not only a problem solving device, but it is the great principle of contentment in this life. With perfect happiness, it makes no difference whether you are in adversity or prosperity, living or dying. If you have perfect happiness, you have the stabilizer for any situation in life. 3. 2 Jn 12, "Although having many doctrines to write you, I do not wish to do so with paper and ink. I will pay you a visit, and I anticipate coming to you and teaching face to face that our happiness might be fulfilled." "Our" happiness means the happiness John will have as the communicator, and the happiness the believers have as they receive his teaching of Bible doctrine. Reception, retention, and recall of Bible doctrine add up to the growth of your perfect happiness, the greatest problem solving device related to yourself. 4. 1 Jn 1:4, "In fact, we write these things, in order that our joy may be brought to completion." a. The happiness of a pastor is made complete by the communication of doctrine to his congregation, and by their reception, retention, and recall of doctrine which results in their having that same perfect happiness. Joy is brought to completion by entering the door of hope on God's agenda into the adult spiritual life. b. Note that in the 2 Jn passage, John will bring certain believers to spiritual maturity and perfect happiness by teaching them face to face. But in 1 Jn, he will bring other believers to spiritual maturity and perfect happiness through non-face-to-face teaching. Both means are legitimate for the communication of doctrine resulting in the reception, retention, and recall of doctrine in the souls of believers, eventuating in their perfect happiness. G. Perfect Happiness as a Problem Solving Device. (See the Doctrine of Problem Solving Devices.) 1. There are problem solving devices in the protocol plan of God which are for your benefit, and require your consistent perception of doctrine. a. Toward God: the faith-rest drill. In spiritual childhood and adolescence, the believer claims the promises of God. In spiritual adulthood, the mature believer applies Bible doctrine which has been metabolized into rationales. Faith-rest makes doctrinal conclusions, which means having control of the situation. In spiritual adulthood, this faith makes it transfer into personal love toward God, or occupation with the person of Christ. b. Toward people: virtue-love. With the reception, retention, and recall of doctrine at gate four, we move in momentum to gate five, spiritual self-esteem. Motivational virtue is personal love for God. After adding providential preventative suffering, the believer advances to gate six with spiritual autonomy. Here he has developed impersonal love for all. The combination of the two is virtue-love as a problem solving device necessary to pass momentum testing and arrive at eight. In spiritual maturity, the combination of virtue-love, the advanced use of the faith-rest drill, and the use of perfect happiness gives the believer the most fantastic problem solving situation anyone in human race can have. c. Toward self: Perfect happiness in the soul, absolute happiness. Perfect happiness begins at spiritual self- esteem, continues at spiritual autonomy, and is completed at spiritual maturity. This is the overflow of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union into the Church Age. As with our Lord facing the cross ("Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross ...), the believer with perfect happiness can endure anything in the world and resolve it! d. Toward sin: the rebound technique, based on the substitutionary spiritual death of our Lord on the cross. He received the imputation and judgment of all our sins. Our problem of sin was resolved by Christ's use of perfect happiness in the prototype divine dynasphere, when He reached spiritual maturity. e. Toward doctrine: hope 2 and hope 3. 2. Just as perfect happiness can endure anything in life, so perfect happiness can endure anything in dying. There is no situation in dying greater than this indwelling happiness which belongs to the mature believer. 3. God has provided in His plan for our life two parts: living and dying. The problem solving devices for one also apply to the other, because living and dying are all a part of the same package. The one difference between living and dying is that the manner and time of our death is strictly up to the sovereignty of God; our volition is not involved. Even losers execute the will of God two times in their life: when they believe in Jesus Christ, and when they die, the latter not involving their volition. As Paul said in Phil 1:21, "For me, living is Christ and dying is profit." He learned that both are a part of the same package. 4. Rev 14:13, "Then I heard a voice [Holy Spirit] from heaven which said, `Write: Happy are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes,' says the Spirit, `that they may rest from their labors, for their accomplishments will accompany them.'" a. Although there are winner and loser believers, the first half of this verse makes no distinction between them at their death. Of course, some losers die horribly under the sin unto death, and winners die under dying grace. But winners and losers alike are immediately face to face with the Lord, receive their interim bodies, and suffer no more sorrow, tears, pain or death. Even though the manner of death may vary, no distinction is made among believers once they are dead. "From now on" they are happy in heaven. b. Distinction does not occur until the Judgment Seat of Christ following the Rapture. Then winners receive their great escrow blessings for eternity, and losers remain with only their resurrection body. From then on, there is great inequality in heaven forever. c. The second half of the verse refers to the mature believer who has been able to face every kind of circumstance, use the problem solving devices, and always recognize that "the battle is the Lord's." The fact that you brought nothing into this world and so you can take nothing with you out of this world when you die is true for the loser, but not for the winner. The winner takes with him his "accomplishments," i.e., his escrow blessings for time, and his perfect happiness. d. Therefore, mature believers die magnificently just as they lived magnificently. Death has lost its sting and power for all believers. But there is the difference in the manner of death between winners and losers, and there are great differences and inequalities between believers for all eternity beginning with the Judgment Seat of Christ. 5. There is no disaster or adversity in the world that perfect happiness cannot resolve. And there is no disaster that the believer cannot endure when he has perfect happiness as a problem solving device in his soul. 6. Job 5:19-27, "From six disasters He will rescue you; furthermore, in seven, no evil will touch you. In economic disaster, He will preserve you from death; in battle, from the stroke of the sword. You will be hidden from the lash of the tongue; you will not be afraid of death when it comes. You will laugh at death, and you have nothing to fear from the wild animals of the earth. For you have a covenant with the stones of the field, and wild animals will be at peace with you. Therefore, you will know that your tent is in prosperity; you will visit your permanent home, and you will not forfeit blessing or reward. And you will know that your seed will be numerous, and your descendants [human race] will be like the grass of the earth. You will come to the grave in a full age like a shock of corn in its season. Behold this doctrine! We have researched it; this is the gist of it. Hear it and apply it to yourself." a. This verse says there are four major disasters in life, which can be resolved by virtue-love and God's perfect happiness in your soul, the two greatest problem solving devices. Although seven disasters are said to exist, only four are mentioned. Only four can be generalized which all believers have in common; the rest (three) are individualized and personalized. b. Even though you may be in economic disaster, you are alive due to logistical grace. Warfare is the second disaster. God also preserves you alive in battle, if it is not your time to die. c. Verse 21 says that though you will be maligned, which is social disaster, you will be protected. Death is the fourth disaster. d. The first and fourth disasters, economic disaster and death, are discussed further in the following verses. e. To laugh at death is not a hysterical laughter, but refers to a relaxed mental attitude. It's humorous because you are not afraid of death as most people. This is perfect happiness at work in your soul! f. At the time of writing, wild animals represented instruments of violent death, and so represent murder, vehicular accidents, warfare, conventional and nuclear weapons. You fear none of these things, because you know that nothing will take you out of this life until the sovereignty of God wills it. Once the sovereignty of God calls you home, nothing can keep you here. Therefore, the believer with Bible doctrine in his soul can laugh at death, for doctrine provides a sense of humor in disaster. This laughing at death is perfect happiness in the soul, the ultimate function in spiritual adulthood. g. Verse 23, says you have a covenant with the stones and a peace with wild animals, which means that no instrument of death can remove the believer from life until God permits it. Therefore, whatever the instruments of death, they cannot harm the believer with doctrine in spiritual adulthood unless the sovereignty of God permits it to happen. Principle: No believer in Jesus Christ, winner or loser, can be removed through death until the Lord is ready to take him home. But once the Lord calls you home, nothing can retain you. The believer cannot die until the Lord decides. Neither historical nor natural disaster, neither any instrument of death nor any dangerous environment can remove the believer from this life apart from divine consent. We who remain therefore have no right to question the wisdom of God when our loved ones depart from us; i.e., neither the manner in which it happens, nor the time. h. Who knows that his tent, the human body, is in prosperity (verse 24)? The mature believer. Death means leaving your tent, a temporary shelter, and going to heaven, a permanent shelter, a "place of many mansions" or castle for the mature believer. It is the mature believer with perfect happiness who knows, before and during his death, that he is going to a state of prosperity. i. You will know while you're living as a spiritual adult, that you have blessing by association, national impact, and international impact before you die. But your seed being numerous does not refer to your progeny, but it refers to the function of the mature believer in the client nation to God. He knows, even while living, that he has historical impact once he attains spiritual maturity. The mature believer has personal impact in blessing by association, national impact in the pivot, and international impact for missionary functions to non-client nations. Your "descendants" refer to the human race, as numerous as the grass of the earth. In other words, you can be sure that after you die the human race will continue; no system devised by man can destroy the world and mankind. The human race will continue until the last day of the Millennium. j. To come to the grave in a "full age" (verse 26) doesn't mean old age, but the right time. In all matters of life and death, timing is extremely important. God is perfect; therefore, His timing is perfect. God's timing for the death of any believer is perfect. Therefore, in dying we accept the wisdom of God as mature believers just as we did while living in spiritual adulthood. A part of spiritual maturity and perfect happiness is accepting the wisdom of God. So no matter how he dies, how prolonged, or how painful, the mature believer accepts the wisdom of God concerning his death. k. The illustration of dying in verse 26 is taken from the agriculture of the ancient world. There is a right and a wrong time to pick corn. Only the expert can determine when. In this case, God is the expert, and He decides when it's time for each one of us to depart from this life. God must decide the manner in which we die, for He knows best. God must decide the time in which we die, for He knows best. Once the corn is ripe, it is harvested and separated from its sheaf. The sheaf here is our human body, from which we are separated in physical death, just as our soul and spirit go to be with the Lord. When the right time for the death of the believer occurs, the integrity of God removes the soul and spirit from the body and brings us to Him. Since God knows best, no one has the right to question how we die or the time we die. l. Verse 26 does not promise a long life, but a full life for the believer with perfect happiness. Perfect happiness is maximum capacity for life and for death. While it's normal to think of life in terms of longevity, we must remember that God thinks of life in terms of His infinite wisdom, His eternal love, His immutable integrity, and His impeccable sovereignty. God knows exactly what He is doing! We have no right to question His timing in the death of ourselves or any loved one. H. Happiness and Fullness. (Eph 411, 12/16/86) 1. The fullness of Christ includes two great factors of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union. a. The perfect happiness of the humanity of Christ. Jesus Christ, inside the prototype divine dynasphere, quickly gained perfect happiness, reaching gate eight rapidly. b. Perfect capacity for life, which comes from that great inner happiness, absolute happiness. Perfect happiness is the result of spiritual living, never the result of psychological living. 2. These two factors were produced in the prototype divine dynasphere: Perfect happiness and capacity. Our Lord was never married, never had any children, was never wealthy or successful from the human standpoint. He was ridiculed, under greater pressures than we will ever know; yet all those years He had perfect happiness. The King James Version calls the word "joy," used instead of the usual word "happiness", which comes from the old Gothic root "happening." You're "happy" because of a "happening." This was not Christ's perfect happiness. 3. Gal 5:22 tells us the source of this great inner happiness: spiritual living. "The fruit of the Spirit is virtue- love. This could also be translated the "advantage [gain, profit] of the Spirit is virtue-love." The advantage of the filling of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace. "Joy" is the next word. It is the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit inside your very own palace, the operational-type divine dynasphere, that produces this joy. It is the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit in epistemological rehabilitation, via the Holy Spirit as the teacher of doctrine. Next is EIRENE, which means "peace and prosperity." That is the conveyance of your escrow blessings. God cannot convey these fantastic blessings to you until you have the capacity, which comes from virtue-love, gates five and six, and perfect happiness, gate eight. 4. In Jn 3:29-30, John the Baptist is the context. a. From the psychological, human viewpoint of life, he had a tragic life. b. He had the type of ministry not associated with fun and games and happiness. c. He had tremendous opposition even though he was always right. (It is very frustrating to always be right but never be recognized as being right even once.) That was the "tragedy" of his life. d. But John says at the end of verse 29, "and so this joy [inner happiness] of mine." John was one of those rare individuals in his generation who had reached spiritual maturity. e. John was a man who lived from salvation to his death under spiritual living. He said, "this joy of mine has been made full," using the same words we have in Eph 1:23. f. He was recognizing Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the God-man, the only source of salvation. Then he added, "He must increase; I must decrease." That is the antithesis of psychological living. 5. In Jn 15:11 our Lord, during the course of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union, taught some doctrines to the disciples in preparation for the Church Age. He said, "These things I have communicated to you that My joy may be in you." Inner happiness is exactly that: something on the inside. If you are alone, you are perfectly happy. The problem of loneliness is the easiest problem to solve for the mature believer. If you are in a crowd, you are happy. Whether in pleasant or adverse circumstances, you are happy. If you are alive and healthy or dying, you have perfect happiness. 6. The same perfect happiness Christ had on the cross may reside in us through the great power experiment of the Church Age: "Who for the joy that was set before Him . . . " Jesus Christ in His humanity had this perfect happiness perpetually. He did not have any of the accouterments of so-called happiness as defined by psychological living. He did not even have a dog, not fame, not approbation, etc. But He had perfect happiness. He advanced to gate eight. At the beginning of His ministry, He faced evidence testing with true, real happiness. His humanity is the perfect demonstration of spiritual living from birth throughout His life to death. 7. When the omnipotence of God the Father called for all our sins and imputed them to Christ on the cross, He was still perfect, still inside the divine dynasphere, still under the power of the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit. In approaching the cross, "who for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame." He endured the cross in perfect happiness. During the last three hours on the cross, perfect Jesus Christ received the imputation and judgment of our sins. Not once did He sin; if He had there would be no salvation. He remained perfect inside the divine dynasphere under the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit, and remained in a state of perfect happiness under the greatest adversity the world has ever known, with billions and billions of sins imputed to Him and judged. 8. He was seated at the right hand of the Father, the humanity of Christ received the highest honor ever given to a human being. He had EXACTLY THE SAME HAPPINESS then when He received His third royal warrant as He had when bearing the sins of the entire human race! 9. That is why our Lord said, "These things have I communicated to you that My joy may be in you." Then in the last half of Jn 15:11, He adds something related to Eph 1:23, "and that your joy may be full." That is based on two principles: a. The fullness of your happiness is the capacity to enjoy your escrow blessings for time. The fulfillment of the escrow conditions for receiving blessings in time is related to advance to spiritual maturity, where you have this great inner happiness. b. The capacity for evidence testing, maximum glorification of God. 10. In eternity, the resurrection body is the capacity factor for receiving your escrow blessings for eternity at the Judgment Seat of Christ, given to winners only. The loser also receives a resurrection body minus the old sin nature and minus human good, and so capacity. So now he has the capacity without the accouterments; he receives no escrow blessings for eternity. Again Jn 15:11, "These things I have communicated to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full [fulfilled]." The capacity for the prosperity which comes from spiritual living is an inner happiness that nothing can deter. His perfect happiness existed during the three most intense suffering hours on the cross. 11. In Jn 17 is our Lord's prayer for the church. In verse 13b, Jesus prayed that "they [church] may have My joy made full in themselves." Notice that perfect happiness is inside you. a. Psychological living is always relating you to something outside of yourself: to your environment, people, standards, situations. Psychological living is the indefatigable search for happiness which is never found. So there are two categories of psychological living, abnormal and normal, and neither comes close to perfect happiness. b. To have "His joy" is the result of the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union. This perfect happiness is inside the mature believer. 12. Rom 13:15, "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy that you may abound in hope by the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit." That refers to hope two and hope three. X+Y+Z = the protocol plan of God. In Y radical is the great issue of psychological living versus spiritual living. This verse is accomplished by residence, function, and momentum inside the divine dynasphere. 13. 1 Jn 1:4, "In fact, we write these things in order that our joy may be brought to completion." John recognized that there is certain amount of perfect happiness at gate eight, and that increases with spiritual autonomy and spiritual maturity. The ultimate is to utilize that perfect happiness every moment in momentum testing so that when you arrive at gate eight, you have that perfect happiness from spiritual living that cannot be deterred or frustrated or destroyed by any situation or circumstance in life. 14. 1 Pet 1:8, "And though you have not seen Him you love Him, and though you do not see Him now but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible." This is the inner perfect happiness of the mature believer. Next is the perfect passive participle of DOXZAZO, meaning to be glorified or honored, translated "having been honored [glorified]." Once you have this inner happiness, you have been honored! The greatest honor conveyed to you in time is this inner perfect happiness, this phenomenal spiritual capacity for spiritual living. 15. Eph 1:23, "Which is His body [Church universal], the fullness of Him [tactical victory that complements our Lord's strategic victory] who has filled all winners with all things." Jesus Christ is not only the head and ruler of the Church, but also the depositary and escrow officer for our escrow blessings. Winners are those who, through residence, function, and momentum inside the divine dynasphere, achieve spiritual maturity from spiritual living. This is the tactical victory of the angelic conflict. The sign of the tactical victory is not simply the conveyance of our escrow blessings, but the capacity which precedes them, the inner happiness. I. The Basis for the Attainment of God's Happiness. 1. Perfect happiness comes through the believer's consistent positive metabolization of doctrine. Perfect happiness depends on Bible doctrine in the soul. It is something you think, not something you do. God has to share His thoughts with you before you can share His happiness. When the thinking of God becomes your thinking, then you will share God's happiness. Ps 31:7, 32:10-11. 2. Stability in the right lobe comes from words in the soul which form sentences and paragraphs, then doctrines and categories, resulting in norms and standards by which you live. Your perfect happiness is determined by the amount of Bible doctrine in your soul, Ps 33:4-5. 3. Perfect happiness starts potentially at salvation. Our first taste of perfect happiness comes when we believe in Christ, Gal 5:22; Rom 14:17; 1 Thes 1:6. This experience is limited because there is no capacity for perfect happiness yet. Capacity comes from the balance of the residency of maximum doctrine in the soul and the filling of the Holy Spirit. God sharing His perfect happiness with us is only a reality in maturity. 4. Once you have the edification complex of the soul, you move into supergrace status. Then you have the balance of residency, which is the mechanics for sharing the perfect happiness of God. Jn 17:13, 17; 1 Jn 1:4, "In fact these things we write, that our joy may be brought to completion." Doctrine is written so the royal family can have perfect happiness through learning the teaching of doctrine from their right pastor. 5. When enough categories of doctrine have been transferred to your soul, then God can share His perfect happiness because you have capacity to enjoy it and not abuse it. But this is all potential depending on your attitude toward Bible doctrine. J. The Happiness of the Supergrace Life. 1. "Blessed" is the word used in the King James Version of the Bible which means happiness. The Hebrew word is ASHERE; and the Greek is MAKARIOS. The plural is usually used in both languages because it denotes the many categories of blessings in supergrace which produce happiness for the mature believer. a. Spiritual blessings, where you receive the perfect happiness of God. b. Temporal blessings, you are happy regardless of the circumstances of your life. c. Blessing by association, you become a source of happiness to those in your periphery. They are either blessed directly by God or indirectly through you. Rom 16:32; Phile 7; 1 Cor 16:17-18. d. Historical impact, as goes the mature believer so goes the nation. The ultra supergrace believer is a stabilizer for many generations. Every generation must stand or fall on the basis of it's own lack or possession of mature believers. The pivot of mature believers is always on the right side of history. 2 Tim 1:5 illustrates. Ps 89-15-17. e. Blessing through undeserved suffering, 1 Pet 5:14, 4:14; Mt 5:4-10. f. Dying blessing, the mature believer even blesses those left behind after he dies. For him dying is profit, Phil 1:20-21; Rev 14:13; Ps 166:15; Job 5:21-22; 2 Tim 4:6-7. K. The Happiness of Reversion Recovery. Ps 30:5, 11. "For His anger [divine discipline] lasts but for a moment; but it results in a lifetime of grace benefits. The weeping of reversionism may endure for a night, but happiness [reversion recovery] comes in the morning." It is always darkest before the dawn. L. The Happiness of the Ultra Supergrace Life. Everything in ultra supergrace is intensified. Opposition is the highest decoration for the ultra supergrace believer. It is made up of all the people who oppose you. The more opposition you have, the greater happiness you have. Wearing this decoration of maximum pressure is the greatest of all blessings, Neh 8:10, "The happiness of the Lord is your strength." Phil 3:1, 4:4. The command to perpetuate happiness is the command to advance to the maturity of ultra supergrace where such happiness is intensified. 1 Pet 1:8. M. There are Relationships in Happiness. 1. Perfect happiness is related to the function of GAP (grace apparatus for perception), Prov 3:13, "Happiness to the man who finds wisdom [Bible doctrine in the right lobe], to the man who gains understanding of doctrine." Cf. 1 Jn 4:4. 2. Perfect happiness is related to grace function in the life, or the function of the royal family honor code, Prov 14:21. You are happy when you live and let live. When you despise the sins of others you make yourself miserable. 3. Perfect happiness is related to maturity, Ps 146:5; Prov 16:20, 28:14. 4. Perfect happiness is related to supergrace prosperity, Ps 128:1-4. 5. Perfect happiness is related to ultra supergrace, 1 Pet 3:14, 4:14. 6. Perfect happiness is related to the conscience of the mature believer, Rom 14:22. "Happiness to the one who does not condemn himself in what he approves." When you are around people who disapprove of things you do, which things you know are right to do, you will be happy when you do them, if you have Bible doctrine in the soul, and are doing those things because of the Bible doctrine in your soul. But if you do not have doctrine, and restrain yourself because of their bullying, you'll be unhappy. Hab 3:18, "Yet I will have maximum happiness in the Lord; I will be happy in the God of my deliverance." 7. Entrance into the plan of God at salvation is the beginning of grace function and happiness from God, Ps 9:14. Because of the nature of eternal salvation, it is often associated with happiness. 8. Happiness is related to the believer's recovery from carnality and reversionism, Ps 51:12. 9. Happiness is related to Bible doctrine in the soul of believers, Neh 12:43. N. Happiness as Taught in the Beatitudes, Mt 5:3-13. 1. Verse 3, "Happinesses to the helpless in the spiritual realm." You can't be happy until you recognize you are helpless to save yourself and to be spiritual through works after salvation. By being helpless, you are a candidate for salvation. "Because the kingdom from the heavens is for them." Happy are the helpless when grace is appropriated by: believing in Christ; and by the intake and application of doctrine as part of the faith-rest drill. The application of doctrine produces capacity for happiness. 2. Verse 4, "Happy are the sad because they shall receive comfort." Sad people are happy when they have Bible doctrine in their soul and use it in adversity. In adversity you have comfort-type happiness from Bible doctrine in the soul. 3. Verse 5, "Happy are those humble believers, because they shall inherit the land." A person who has God's perfect happiness in time will have even more of it in eternity. There is surpassing perfect happiness in eternity for the mature believer with perfect happiness in time. 4. Verse 6, "Happinesses to the ones who hanger and thirst for [DIKAIOSUNE] total fulfillment of spiritual progress [maturity], because they shall be satisfied." Happiness is related to positive volition to Bible doctrine. There is no happiness for the believer apart from positive volition to Bible doctrine. a. Perfect happiness in every dispensation comes from Bible doctrine in the believer's soul. b. Perfect happiness must be understood in terms of a positive attitude toward Bible doctrine. c. Anyone who hungers for Bible doctrine will not only be filled and satisfied, but will be happy in the eating and in the satisfaction which comes from the digestion of spiritual food. d. Perfect happiness comes with cracking the maturity barrier. God gives perfect happiness. e. Consequently, perfect happiness is inevitable for the believer who hungers for doctrine. f. Such a hunger can only result in cracking maturity, where the many categories of blessing are associated with happiness. 5. Verse 7, "Happinesses to the merciful [mature believer], because they shall receive mercy [blessing by association]." The mature believer receives grace in action and is a source of grace in action. God will perpetuate your perfect happiness. 6. Verse 8, "Happinesses to the pure ones with reference to the right lobe [freedom from mental attitude sins], because they themselves shall see God." Mature believers will be presented to God the Father by God the Son in heaven after the Judgment Seat of Christ as a special reward. 7. Verse 9, "Happinesses to the peacemakers [evangelists of the Millennium], because they themselves shall receive the designation of mature sons of God." From the transfer of epignosis comes maturity and the ability to accurately present the Gospel in witnessing. 8. Verse 10, "Happinesses to the ones [ultra supergrace believers] who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, because for them is the kingdom from the heavens." The millennial kingdom, among other things, is for the benefit of ultra supergrace believers who will rule many cities, states and nations as part of their eternal rewards. 9. Verse 11, "You [mature believer] are happy, when they heap insults on you; they both persecute and speak all kinds of evil, for they themselves are constantly lying against you on account of Me [Jesus Christ]." This kind of persecution and undeserved suffering as a part of providential preventative suffering is a guarantee that the believer in no-man's land has great reward in heaven. Therefore, it becomes a source of maximum happiness rather than pain and sorrow. 10. Verse 12, "Keep on having perfect happiness, even become extremely happy, because your reward is extensive in the heavens; for in this manner they have persecuted those prophets who have lived before you." Persecution of the ultra supergrace believer is as old as history. The special target of Satan is the ultra supergrace communicator of Bible doctrine. But God has turned this intensive opposition into intensive perfect happiness and blessing. 11. Verse 13, "You and only you [ultra supergrace believer] are the salt of the land; But if the salt has become tasteless [reversionistic], how shall it function [as a preservative or the nation or a seasoner of society]? It is totally useless, except having been cast outside [sin unto death] to be trampled down by men." The mature believer has historical impact upon his nation, and the ultra supergrace believer has historical impact upon the entire world. 12. Verse 14, "You and only you [ultra supergrace believer] are the light of the world. A city located on the top of a mountain cannot be hidden." The life of the ultra supergrace believer cannot be obscured in history by the genius of Satan or all the opposition of evil. 13. In all of these verses happiness is in the plural to denote the many paragraphs of blessing which bring happiness to the mature believer as part of his escrow blessing designed for him by God in eternity past, Eph 1:3-14. O. Summary of the Principles of Happiness. 1. Happiness is accomplished through grace, Ps 31:7, "I will rejoice and be happy in Your grace.". 2. Grace happiness comes through the function of GAP, Ps 32:10-11 cf Ps 33:4-5. 3. The starting point for happiness is at salvation, Gal 5:22. 4. The first taste of happiness is the filling of the Spirit, Rom 14:17; 1 Thes 1:6. 5. Bible doctrine in the soul, Jn 17:13. 6. Perfect happiness protects the believer from disillusion: a. Regarding the circumstances of life, Phil 4:11-12. You are content regardless of your circumstances. b. Regarding details of life, Heb 13:5-6. You are content with what you possess or don't possess because no matter what happens you have the source of your blessing, Jesus Christ, as your best friend. Therefore, gain or loss of the details of life never changes the attitude of the mature believer. c. Regarding other believers, Heb 12:2. You don't fall into the trap of iconoclastic arrogance, because you remember that all men have an old sin nature. 7. Perfect happiness stimulates and enhances capacity for love. In the edification complex of the soul, capacity for love and perfect happiness depend on each other and go together. 8. The fragrance of memory is related to perfect happiness, Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24-25; SOS 3:1, 4:6, 8:6; Phil 1:3; 2 Tim 1:5. 9. Greater happiness exists in phase three or eternity, Jude 24. 10. The happiness of the mature believer spreads to others. This is the ministry of refreshment, Phil 2:28-29; Phile 7; Rom 16:32; 1 Cor 16:17-18; 2 Cor 7:13. 11. The happy nation has both a spiritual and military heritage, Ps 89:15-17. 12. Happiness is described in the Millennium, Isa 35:1-2, 64:4-5, 65:18-19, 66:10; Mt 5:3-13. 13. Perfect happiness reaches its peak in occupation with Christ. Ps 128:1, "How happy is the believer who is occupied with the Lord." 14. Like occupation with Christ, perfect happiness equates adversity with prosperity and living with dying. Phil 1:21, "For me, living is Christ; dying is profit." P. God's perfect happiness as a Problem Solving Device in Marriage. 1. Both love and happiness are designed to be problem solving devices in life, not problem manufacturing devices. 2. Marriage is not the solution to the problem of life. Yet many people anticipate marriage with a romantic idealism, visualizing the ideal situation if only they could get married. With these dreams building up come the potential problem, because marriage is not a state of happiness. Marriage has problem because no one is perfect. But it's very difficult to tell that to people in love, and that marriage will bring the intimacy and familiarity which will begin to cause a series of problems and demand problem solving devices. 3. If a person enters a marriage with real happiness, the type God provides for believers in spiritual adulthood, there is a chance that the marriage will succeed, because that perfect happiness is a problem solving device. But for most, the peak of stimulation in their life is at the altar. They call it happiness, but it really isn't happiness at all. It is stimulation, excitement, motivation, and everything associated with enthusiasm, but it is not happiness as a problem solving device! 4. There are many kinds of happiness, as there are many kinds of love. But only one love and one happiness is successful, and that is Virtue-Love as a problem solving device and perfect happiness, sharing the happiness of God. In His grace, God has made His perfect happiness available, but you must have the capacity for it first. 5. Pseudo-happiness is Satan's attempt to counterfeit the happiness, contentment, and blessing which God has provided for the believer in the great power experiment of the Church Age. Satan's administration of pseudo happiness to any believer or unbeliever is developed into a fantastic system called the Cosmic System. 6. The woman in the Garden had everything in perfect environment and with her most perfect, wonderful husband. Yet she wanted more than a perfect husband, more than perfect sex, more than a genius, more than perfect environment. She was bored with perfect everything. But what more could she want? She had everything in life that would make a normal woman happy. She had a beauty that never changed and perfect health as she came from the hand of God. 7. Yet her conversations indicated that she was not satisfied with what she had. This immediately indicates that she didn't have perfect happiness, because contentment is a synonym for perfect happiness. She was perfect, but she didn't have contentment. We know she wanted more than she had, because in her conversations with the pet serpent, she must have indicated that there was something more she wanted. So he said, "Is there anything you can't have?" She said, "Yes, God has said we cannot eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." Then she added something God had not said, "You cannot eat from it or touch it lest you die." 8. In other words, the woman lacked something in her capacity to hear clearly and objectively what the prohibition involved. The woman had developed a fear. She was afraid that even if she touched the tree she would die. You cannot have fear without having arrogance. This woman was developing arrogance. The combination of arrogance and fear caused her to want something more. 9. Adam didn't understand this; he was his magnificent self: attractive, the greatest lover, wonderful, kind, intelligent, successful. But no matter what the woman wanted, it wasn't enough. She wanted something more. She lived in perfect environment, yet she didn't have perfect happiness as a problem solving device. Because of that, she was looking around. 10. So Satan began to use this prohibition. "Do you know why God has forbidden that tree?" What Satan would say merely reflected his own fall. He was Lucifer, Son of the Morning, the most beautiful creature that ever came from the hand of God. He was beautiful, magnificent, had a perfect personality and genius. But he also wanted something more! He was the ruler of all the angels; he sat at the right hand of the throne of God as Lucifer; he was the anointed cherub, the highest class of angels. There was nothing more he could have that he didn't already have; but he was not happy. Therefore, one day he decided that he wouldn't be happy until he replaced God! He considered God to be a challenge! 11. When people are not happy and do not have spiritual self-esteem or self-esteem, they feel threatened. Within them is a combination of two things, arrogance and fear, which always go together. In fear, you feel challenged by this or that, and in your arrogance, you want to overcome that fear by seizing the thing that threatens you. 12. So Satan made it clear that the woman was threatened by the Tree, so he re-exegeted that Tree. It was called the Tree of Knowledge. But the woman had perfect intellect; she had knowledge of all things around her, for was not her husband the ruler of the world? But this was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a knowledge she did not possess. For this reason, theologians have made the mistake of calling this state of perfection "the Age of Innocence." Adam and the woman were not innocent, but there were some things they did not have to know because they were in perfection. 13. Then Satan made his point: "There is something you're lacking. There is more to be had. Of course you're not satisfied. That's because God has been unfair to you. God has withheld something from you: God has withheld the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Do you know why? God is afraid." It was Satan who was afraid. Arrogance plus fear leads to great instability no matter what you have. In fear and arrogance you always feel threatened by something in life, even if you're in perfect environment. So Satan ascribed to God his very own fear. God is perfect and has never been afraid. 14. We see this in the human race: people ascribe to others their OWN weaknesses and fallacies. But in reality, the accused don't have those things; only they themselves have them. And they cannot identify with others unless the others are as weak as they are. Therefore, they accuse you of being arrogant when you are humble and they are arrogant. They say you are afraid when you are fearless and they are afraid; that's the problem. 15. The story of our original parents shows why love and happiness have eluded the human race in general down to this very moment. For you only have two chances at love and happiness: a. As an unbeliever who is establishment-oriented to the point of human self-esteem and humility. b. Or as a believer. The only hope for love and happiness in your life that is real and meaningful is to attain virtue-love and perfect happiness as problem solving devices. With perfect happiness, no matter what your circumstances, your perfect happiness continues to exist, and you equate living with dying (Phil 1:21), and adversity with prosperity. 16. Happiness and love are meaningless as a state of being. We all say at certain times that we are happy or in love, but we are really talking about being in circumstances that please us, or about something that has come into our possession that we enjoy at the moment. But beyond that there is always the same problem: no matter what you have, you will want MORE! Because marriage is not a state of happiness or unhappiness, nor is wealth, the possession of things, friends, social life . . . there's always something more you will want. And as long as there's something more that you must have, you aren't happy. Accumulating more and more doesn't make you happy. These things are just temporary stimulation. (This explains drug addiction. Having experienced some high the first time they tried it, they spend years trying to reproduce that same first high.) 17. Marriage is a divine institution ordained by God. He didn't ordain it as a system of happiness, but as a system of relationship. Whether you are happy in any relationship or not, whether it is marriage, business, social life, or friendship, you will never have happiness or love by simply being in some state that you now associate with happiness. Yet most people think, "If I could just....I would be happy." We associate so many things with happiness that are really not happiness at all. We mix up stimulation, sex, and animated conversation with happiness. 18. Happiness is a problem solving device. It is a status quo, but one that never looks over the horizon and wants more. 19. Due to the Fall, God in His matchless grace designed something that can overcome the best or worst of environment, that can handle prosperity and adversity, that can cause you to live or die with great capacity, and that can give you the capacity to handle being alone or in a crowd. There is no problem in life too great for what God has given to you as a part of your portfolio of invisible assets, a part of which is the problem solving device of God's perfect happiness! Q. The Concept of Self-Contained Happiness. 1. People have become slaves to a system of dependency: happiness or unhappiness depends on the circumstances of life. a. People believe that pleasant circumstances bring happiness and adverse circumstances bring unhappiness. Happiness has become very fragile because people are depending on something or someone else to make them happy. b. An instant change of circumstances means a rapid transition from happiness to unhappiness. c. People are dependent on overt circumstances for entertainment and subsequent happiness. d. Stability in society is disappearing because there is a lack of self-contained happiness. 2. Self-contained happiness is that contentment or delight, that active or passive state of pleasure and satisfaction, that rest without stress which is resident in a person at all times regardless of the circumstances of life. 3. Self-contained happiness depends on the believer providing his own happiness through his own right priorities and consistent postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation. Consistent postsalvation epistemological rehabilitation which means perception, metabolization and application of doctrine is the only way to have self-contained happiness as a believer. 4. Self-contained happiness is synonymous with Plus H or sharing the happiness of God with a slightly different emphasis. a. You are responsible for your own happiness, and nothing outside of you is responsible for that happiness. b. If you are unhappy, look to yourself rather than to poor entertainment or frustration in your social life. 5. Self-contained happiness is inner happiness and it goes with you as a constant companion. Therefore, you rise above your circumstances. You are not dependent upon circumstances, pleasure, or pleasant things for your happiness. You are a self- contained package with an inner happiness, sharing the happiness of God. 6. Self-contained happiness does not depend on someone else making you happy by their presence, approbation, attractiveness, attention, or love for you. Your basic happiness and contentment must remain in place, so that if their approbation, attention, or love turns to disapproval, you remain in a state of contentment. 7. Self-contained happiness does not depend on someone else making you happy or providing happiness for you. It does not mean that your children must succeed, you must be rich, etc. to be happy. 8. Self-contained happiness is a fantastic dimension of the Christian way of life. a. It has capacity for appreciation of the love, kindness, thoughtfulness of others. b. It has the ability to cope with all the categories of adversity, such as rejection, disappointment, antagonism, maligning, judging, slander, hatred, conspiracy, and all other interaction problems with others. 9. Self-contained happiness is a Biblical subject as part of the protocol plan of God for the Church. a. Rom 14:17, "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, instead it is righteousness, prosperity and happiness by means of the Holy Spirit." b. 1 Thes 1:6, "You also have become imitators of us and of our Lord, having received the Word in much pressure with happiness from the Holy Spirit." c. Rom 14:22, "The doctrine which you have, have it on the basis of your own norms and standards which you have before God. Happiness belongs to the person who does not condemn himself in what he does." 10. Self-contained happiness is related to the filling of the Spirit and cognition of Bible doctrine through the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. 11. Self-contained happiness is mandated as one of the problem solving devices of the protocol plan. In this case it is called Plus H. Phil 3:1, "Finally, my brethren, keep on having happiness in the Lord." 12. Self-contained happiness begins at the point of spiritual self-esteem, continues with growing force when one attains spiritual autonomy, and is stabilized and perpetuated as a means of coping with everything in life once you reach spiritual maturity. a. Phil 4:4, "Keep on having happiness in the Lord at all times. Once more I repeat this mandate: keep on having happiness." b. Phil 4:11, "Not that I speak with reference to need, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am." c. 1 Tim 6:6, "But godliness [life in the divine dynasphere] is a means of great profit when accompanied by contentment." Contentment is self-contained happiness. 13. Self-contained happiness is the greatest problem solving device related to self; for it does not depend on health, success, pleasure, approbation, sex, social life, money, or anything else for its function. 1 Tim 6:7-8, "For we have brought nothing into this world, and it is obvious that we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and shelter, we shall be content with these." 14. Self-contained happiness enhances all other problem solving devices. a. It enhances the faith-rest drill in Ps 146:5, "Happiness belongs to the one whose confidence is in the Lord." b. It enhances occupation with Christ in Ps 28:1, "How happy is everyone who is occupied with the Lord, who walks in His ways." 1 Pet 1:8, "Even though we have not seen Him, we love Him. In fact, you do not see Him now, but you believe in Him. Therefore, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible, having received glory." Self-contained happiness is a means of glorifying God. 15. Principles related to self-contained happiness. a. Self-contained happiness is on the road to glory, the glorification of God through the execution of the protocol plan of God for the Church. b. Occupation emphasizes Bible doctrine as the number one priority in life. And therefore, sharing the thinking of Christ as well as the happiness of Christ is the principle in this greatest of all ways by which self copes with life. c. Self-contained happiness not only motivates personal love for God but the function of impersonal love for all mankind. Therefore, self-contained happiness is a part of the great virtue of the Christian way of life. d. Self-contained happiness emphasizes grace- orientation. e. Self-contained happiness is not only a problem solving device in itself, but it contributes to the poise that goes with a personal sense of destiny. Heb 13:5, "Let your lifestyle be free from the love of money and be content with what you have; for He himself has said, `I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you.'" 16. Self-contained happiness is a problem solving device in adversity. a. Jam 1:2, "Consider it all happiness, my brethren, when you encounter various testings." b. 1 Pet 4:14, "If you are reproached because of the person of Christ, you are happy, because the Spirit of glory and of God refreshes you." Self-contained happiness means refreshment from God from the inner resources of Bible doctrine. c. 1 Pet 3:14, "But if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are happy. Therefore, do not fear what they fear, and do not let yourself be intimidated." When you let yourself be intimidated by anything in life, you lack self- contained happiness. Self-contained happiness overcomes fear and intimidation. 17. The Bible was written that the believer might learn its doctrine and possess in his soul self-contained happiness or perfect happiness. a. 1 Jn 1:4, "In fact we write these things that our joy may be brought to completion." Joy is brought to completion by entering the door of hope on God's agenda. b. 2 Jn 12, "Although I have many doctrines to write to you, I do not wish to do so with paper and ink. I anticipate coming to you and teaching that our happiness might be fulfilled." c. During the dispensation of the Hypostatic Union Jesus taught doctrine so that self-contained happiness might be a reality with believers. Jn 15:11, "I have taught you these things in order that My happiness might be in you and that your happiness might be fulfilled." Self-contained happiness is based on cognition of Bible doctrine. 18. Self-contained happiness is the endowment of Bible doctrine. Col 1:10-11, "That you might walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good of intrinsic value achievement; in fact, growing by means of metabolized doctrine from God. Because you have been endowed with all divine power from that superior power of His glory, resulting in all endurance and patience associated with self-contained happiness." R. The Characteristics of Happiness. 1. Perfect happiness is tranquility of soul. 2. Perfect happiness is a problem solving device preventing stress in the soul. 3. Perfect happiness is contentment of soul. 4. Perfect happiness is capacity for life, love, appreciation, gratitude, and thanksgiving. 5. Perfect happiness is never feeling threatened by adverse circumstances, by people, or by evil scenarios. 6. Perfect happiness is the invigoration of happiness. This is the stimulation and enthusiasm in life from right priorities, metabolized doctrine circulating in the stream of consciousness, and freedom from garbage in the subconscious. 7. Perfect happiness is having a true sense of security, like assurance regarding eternal security, eternal life, freedom from fear, worry, doubt, and apprehension. 8. Stability from honor and virtue, derived from doctrinal application, and resultant personal integrity. Integrity, honor, and virtue hinder trying to build your happiness on someone else's unhappiness through projection, malice, vilification, and revenge. 9. As a part of God's grace policy, God has found a way to share His happiness with the believer, a happiness which never depends on people or circumstances, a happiness which works for the believer in both prosperity and adversity.

I'm in joy in (enjoying) myself :-)