Happiness is required Ephesians 5:18-21

I’ve heard people say a lot that there is a difference between joy and happiness.

My usual response is that people who say that don’t have either.

They refer happiness to the occasional times when everything is good, and a person feels, well, happy.  But joy they attribute to a deep-seated long-term state of mind where, though things can get really tough, they’re still optimistic that things will work out. 

Honestly, I really don’t think that that is what God had in mind when the Bible talks about rejoicing and joy. 

And besides, the question that is commonly asked of people is: are you happy, not do you have joy somewhere deep down inside of you?  Happiness deals with your basic overall view of life and your place in it.

When I was growing up, nobody would ever accuse me of being a happy person.  Come to think of it, that all started after I became a Christian.  Now that I’m an adult, I’ve gotten better, but I still have a bit to go.

I’ve learned a lot in the process, and there’s so much I want to talk to you about, but everybody wants short videos and short articles, so I can only touch on this in little pieces at a time. 

The first time I had cancer was in 1996.  I had lymphoma.  I strongly suspect that the reason I got it was that I was not a particularly happy person at the time.  There were long simmering issues that caused a lot of frustration and sadness. 

They wanted to do a bone marrow biopsy, because lymphoma, or I suppose any cancer, can affect the bones.  And this got me thinking.  Or I prefer to think that God brought it to my attention.

Proverbs 17:22      A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones.

Yeah, I could say that I had a broken spirit.  Yep, I definitely had a broken spirit.

So what can I do about that?

The first part of the verse mentions a joyful heart, but that seemed beyond me.

Then another passage came to mind.

Ephesians 5:18-21: 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; 20 giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; 21 and being subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

Now frankly I don’t see this passage as most Bible teachers do.  We even studied Ephesians in Greek class a long time ago, and I saw the problem then too.

I don’t know if I can present a convincing case in a short video, but let me explain the issues.

The first matter is whether Paul is saying be filled with the Holy Spirit or be filled in spirit, meaning, your spirit.  Like people can have broken spirits as in the Proverbs passage, people can be full in spirit. 

The expression being filled with the Spirit is almost always, or maybe always, I didn’t check,  found in the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, and it is a very different Greek expression. 

But the question that I think answers that first question is: what about the rest of the verse?

You have 5 participles that modify the verb ‘be filled.’: speaking, singing, making melody, giving thanks, and being subject. 

If you say that Paul is saying be filled with the Holy Spirit, then these participles are all considered as results of being filled with the Spirit.  So Christians pretty much ignore them.  Why talk about them?  If they are filled with the Spirit, they will just do what they do anyway.

But no.

Paul is saying: don’t fill your body with wine, but fill your spirit, BY speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things, and being subject to one another.  These are the things you do to fill your spirit.  You can’t just say, Oh, I’m going to be filled with the Holy Spirit. 

These are things that WE do, consciously and intentionally.  Doing these things fills our spirits and give us the good medicine that counteracts the broken spirit drying our bones.  And, yes, the Holy Spirit wants to produce fruit in us so that this will put us more in tune with Him, but these are not results of the Holy Spirit filling us but things that we do on our own.

My bone marrow biopsy was postponed a week.  In that time, I began memorizing Scripture and singing praises and giving thanks.  God had already started me on giving thanks before, but this gave me a form to that.  Scripture and songs.

When I had the test, the results were negative.  Now I cannot say that if I had had the test when it was originally scheduled, it would have shown up something, but I thought it significant that the test was delayed and God then showed me about broken spirits and how to change that.

God wants His people to be happy.  A joyful heart is medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.  Be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, sing and make melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God the father, being subject to one another in the fear of Christ.