Are You Successful?

Successful: “Having the correct or desired result.”[1]

Last night, I had the opportunity to play in a thrilling hockey game. My team, a mishmash of random people from the Findlay area, joined together to take on a team of players which is primarily composed of members of the Findlay High School hockey team. Needless to say, the skill level difference between the two teams was astonishing. I couldn’t help but be in awe watching the Findlay High School team so eloquently pass the puck up the ice in professional fashion, deek around our defenders, and place the puck precisely where they wanted in the back of the net.

The objective in hockey is to put the puck in the net more times than the other team. Since success is defined as “having the correct or desired result,” to be successful last night, my team needed to score more goals than the Findlay High School hockey team. We were outshot by a 2-1 ratio, out-skilled, and out-worked, but somehow, in the only place where success in hockey is measured, we won by a score of 8-7. If I didn’t believe in miracles before that game, I certainly would believe in them now!

What Is Your Objective?

When you play a sport, you have a clear objective at which you are aiming. When you play hockey, the objective is to score more goals than the other team. When you play football, the objective is to score more points than the other team. When you play golf, the objective is to put the ball in the hole in as few shots as possible. These objectives are fairly straightforward and aren’t questionable. It’s not like someone is going to randomly decide to change the rules of golf so that the person who puts the ball in the hole in the most shots would be the winner. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to this rule change because I’d win almost every time.

But when it comes to measuring life success, the objective is not quite as straightforward. Some people have the objective to gain wealth, respect, fame, and power. Some people have the objective to gain a vast array of experiences. Some people have the objective to build lasting, meaningful relationships. Some people have the objective to earn their way into an afterlife of reward. These are just a few examples of the wide variety of objectives people have.

Now, I want to ask you to dream with me. What is your life objective? You may have lots of different objectives, but if they all came into conflict with one another and you had to choose only one, which one would it be? Do you have a clear picture in your head of this objective? Once you have a clear picture of your objective, move on to the next section.

Are You on Track to Accomplish Your Objective?

It’s one thing to create a clear picture of our life objective, but it’s another to actually achieve it. The easy part is the dreaming; the hard part is the achieving. How well are you doing at achieving your objective?

This is actually a much tougher question than it may seem on the surface. If you’re objective is to have a million dollars in your 401k plan, then it’s pretty easy to track how well you’re doing at achieving your objective–just plug the numbers into a spreadsheet with a certain rate of return and you can quickly generate a chart to see how well you’re doing. But not all objectives are this easy to track. If your objective is to build long-lasting relationships, for example, then how do you track your progress on this objective? It’s quite a bit more difficult than plugging numbers into a spreadsheet and generating a graph. Can you imagine trying to graph this objective? It’s virtually impossible!

Nonetheless, the people who achieve their objectives do well at continually tracking their progress. They know what they want to achieve, they have a plan to get there, and they continually evaluate their progress, or lack thereof. These are key ingredients which lead them to be able to call themselves “successful.”

How are you tracking your progress? When you evaluate where you want to be versus where you are, do you think you’re on track to achieve your objective?

What Is Success For Me?

I’ll wrap up by sharing a few of my experiences with success. When I was growing up, I decided that my primary objective was to be a millionaire. When my seventh grade math teacher gave me a plan for how to achieve this objective, I went to work on achieving it. The plan started with investing $1,000 in a mutual fund that year, so I scrounged up $1,000, which was a lot of money for a seventh grader, and invested it in a mutual fund. Throughout high school and college, I continued to stick to my plan. After graduating from college, I began working as an engineer and married an engineer, both of which allowed me to continue stashing money away in investments. I regularly ran numbers in spreadsheets to track the progress of our investments, which time after time indicated that we were well on our way towards not only achieving our objective, but blowing it out of the water.

But then things changed. Looking back on it, I guess the word “changed” is really putting it lightly. I didn’t go through a dramatic job loss, death in the family, or some other tragedy; I had a personal encounter with the God of the universe. He turned my world completely upside down and inside out. I had a radical heart transformation which changed everything, and I mean everything, about my life. I was hanging out in my living room one evening and clearly heard God, not audibly but in a still small voice in my heart, calling me to lay down my kingdom. For twenty-seven years, I had been building a kingdom by myself in my own strength, which, according to the Creator of the universe, was good-for-nothing. He was calling me to lay it down so that he could replace it with his kingdom. Having read the Bible countless times, I knew exactly what was going to happen–God was going to completely destroy my kingdom and start over from scratch, including ripping out the foundations. I knew it was going to hurt more than anything I’d experienced in my life. Everything inside of me wanted to continue holding onto my kingdom. But God gave me the strength that evening to acknowledge the inevitable–He also had an objective for my life, and his objective was not for me to become a millionaire, but to become his child. Whether I decided to acknowledge it or not, he was going to get his way because he always gets his way. So I decided it was better for me to go along with his plan than to continue to fight with him about it. Following this encounter, my life has been continuing to be radically transformed as God continues building a new kingdom within me, his kingdom, which is of infinite value compared to my kingdom which had no value whatsoever.[2]

This transformation has brought with it a new objective for my life. Instead of working towards gaining a million dollars, my objective now is to gain Jesus. If I gain Jesus, then I will count my life as a success. How can I track my progress? Well, that’s a complicated question. Since God is the one in control of achieving this objective, he’s the one who’s responsible for tracking the progress and evaluating it rather than me. This actually brings me a lot of peace because I trust him to accomplish his objectives much more than I trust myself, considering he has the power to thwart the plans of men, but no one has the power to thwart his plans.[3] But that doesn’t stop me from trying to catch a glimpse of his progress. The way I track God’s progress on achieving his objective is evaluating the “fruit” coming out of me.[4] Fruit is not outward behaviors, but rather, it is the condition of my heart. Is the fruit coming out of my heart idolatry, enmity, lust, jealousy, greed, and divisions, or is the fruit coming out of my heart love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control?[5] If the second type of fruit continue to be more and more present in my life, then I know God is accomplishing his objective, which means I’m accomplishing my objective!

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Picture yourself, maybe many years from now, when you’re retired and reflecting back on your life. Did you achieve your objective? Were you successful?

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[1] Merriam-Webster, “Success,” n.d., Accessed may 17, 2017, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/success.

[2] See Matthew 13:44-46 and Philippians 3:2-11.

[3] See Psalm 33:10-11 and Job 42:2.

[4] See Matthew 7:15-20, 12:33-37, and John 15:8.

[5] See Galatians 5:16-24.

The Biggest Hindrance to Your Happiness

Do you want to be happy? Of course you do. After all, who doesn’t want to be happy?

Now, let me ask you a serious question: Are you happy? I’m not asking whether you’re happy every once a while; I’m asking whether your life is characterized by happiness. Are you truly happy or have you tricked yourself into believing you’re happy when deep inside, you long for something more? During the past couple years, I have uncovered what I believe to be the biggest hindrance to your and my happiness: settling for less when we could have more. Let me explain.

Dietsch’s Ice Cream

When I was old enough to start walking on my own, my parents began walking me down the street to our local Dairy Queen where they’d buy me a treasured ice cream sandwich. This was definitely the highlight of my week. The taste of DQ soft-serve ice cream wedged between two chocolate wafers was to die for. I savored every bite. As a kid, I thought nothing could top my weekly treat of a DQ ice cream sandwich.

Five years ago, I moved to Findlay, Ohio, home of Dietsch Brothers fine chocolates and ice cream. One day at work, my boss treated us to some ice cream from Dietsch Brothers. As I was surveying their broad selection of ice cream options, I noticed that they made an ice cream sandwich which looked exactly like the ice cream sandwiches I had eaten at DQ as a kid. Remembering the glorious taste of those ice cream sandwiches, I selected a Dietsch’s ice cream sandwich. I opened the package and scanned the sandwich, comprised of two chocolate wafers with a slab of vanilla ice cream wedged in between, for the best entry point. After picking a spot, I took a large bite into my ice cream sandwich. I couldn’t believe my taste buds! This was absolutely the best tasting ice cream sandwich I had ever eaten. I’m convinced that if there are ice cream sandwiches in heaven, they’re going to be from Dietsch’s. I was so impressed with my ice cream sandwich that I went back for another one and another one and another one. I couldn’t get enough of them!

A week later, I was traveling for work and happened to be driving by a Dairy Queen. Remembering the taste of heaven I had experienced a week earlier while eating Dietsch’s ice cream sandwiches, I pulled in to the DQ and bought myself an ice cream sandwich, expecting similar results. Eager to experience the taste of absolute amazingness again, I quickly opened the package and took my first bite. Similar to my experience a week earlier, I couldn’t believe my taste buds, but for a completely different reason. This ice cream sandwich didn’t taste anything like the ice cream sandwich I had gotten from Dietsch’s the prior week. It didn’t even taste good. I was so disappointed with my DQ ice cream sandwich that I haven’t been back to DQ for an ice cream sandwich since.

When I Experienced More, I Became Disenchanted with Less

What happened? For years, I savored the taste of DQ ice cream sandwiches, but once I experienced the taste of a Dietsch’s ice cream sandwich, I became completely disenchanted with DQ ice cream sandwiches. Was it because Dairy Queen changed their recipe? Not at all. It was because I had experienced the taste of an ice cream sandwich which was so much better that it made the DQ ice cream sandwich taste disgusting.[1] All those years I had settled for DQ ice cream sandwiches which were disgusting compared to the far-superior Dietsch’s ice cream sandwiches.

We do this same thing every single day. We become so desperate to be happy that we’re willing to grab any happiness we can find, even if it’s only a small ounce of temporary happiness. Instead of holding out for Dietsch’s ice cream sandwiches, we settle for DQ ice cream sandwiches. Instead of experiencing an intimate relationship with a loving spouse, we settle for one-night stands. Instead of pursuing happiness in the creator of the universe, we settle for the temporary, ever-disappointing happiness we find in his creation. As C. S. Lewis once wrote:

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.[2]

Like C. S. Lewis, I believe the biggest hindrance to your and my happiness is that our desires to be happy are not too strong, but too weak. We’ve experienced painful disappointment after painful disappointment in our lives, and as a coping mechanism we’ve successfully suppressed our desire for happiness in order to lessen the pain. We’ve reasoned with ourselves that if we can completely kill every desire we have to experience happiness, then when we don’t experience it, we won’t feel pain, and when we do experience it, it’ll seem like a special treat. The only thing this logic is doing is robbing us of the joy we can experience by allowing our desires for happiness to be so strong that we’re unwilling to settle for anything less than a full tank of happiness.

What Can Quench My Hunger for Happiness

When I first came to this discovery, I began trying to figure out how to increase my desire for happiness. I went searching for it. I prayed for it. I even reasoned that it was okay to glut myself on things which brought me temporary happiness such as Dietsch’s ice cream sandwiches in order to try to maximize my happiness. But I was really doing nothing more than making the same mistake which had originally gotten me to the point where I had suppressed the desire for happiness: I was settling for temporary happiness in things which can’t really quench my long-term hunger for happiness. Had I continued on that path, I would’ve done nothing more than repeated the same cycle all over again of trying to find long-term happiness in things which can only provide temporary happiness.

What can quench my hunger for long-term happiness? In the Bible, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”[3] Does Jesus really possess the ability to quench our hunger for happiness? I can tell you from my own personal experience that he continues to quench more and more my hunger for happiness day after day. But if you’re still skeptical, consider this question: If the creator of the universe is powerful enough to give life to everything in the universe, why wouldn’t the creator of the universe also be able to quench our desire for happiness, a desire which he built into us?

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Maybe you’re feeling pretty down right now and aren’t experiencing happiness at all. Maybe you’re feeling like you’ve just been coasting for years, hoping that there’s more, but not quite knowing where to find it. Then again, maybe for the most part you’re experiencing happiness, but still have a deep yearning for something more. If any of those are you, I would encourage you to ask God to allow you to experience the type of happiness he can offer, a type of happiness that won’t come through the created things in this world, but through him. As Jesus once said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.”[4]

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[1] I don’t want you to get the impression that I think Dairy Queen ice cream sandwiches are disgusting. They are not disgusting. A Dietsch’s ice cream sandwich’s taste is so superior to that of a DQ ice cream sandwich that on a comparative basis, it’s disgusting.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, rev. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1980), 26.

[3] John 6:35.

[4] John 4:14.

What Is the Reward for Being a Disciple of Jesus?

Why would anyone want to be a disciple of Jesus? After all, doesn’t being a disciple of Jesus sound more like a bait and switch maneuver where Jesus gives you the gift of grace with “no strings attached,” but then he seems to expect you to obey a bunch of rules like reading your Bible, praying, going to church, giving your money back to him, and being nice to everybody? What is the reward for being a disciple of Jesus? Is there a reward or is it all a hoax?

A Familiar Question

The question of reward is a normal question and one which should be asked when we embark upon any endeavor in life. For example, if I had a million dollars which a corporation wanted me to invest in their company, I would want to know what reward I was going to get out of it. I wouldn’t just randomly turn over a million dollars to a group of people because I am a nice person; I would want to know that I was going to get a reward (something of value) for “loaning” them my money.

In the same way, Jesus’s disciples one day said to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”[1] Amongst a few other things Jesus said specifically to those disciples, he replied by saying, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”[2] This part of his response was not just meant for the twelve disciples, but those of us today who are disciples of Jesus.

A Reward of Infinite Value

It’s interesting that the first reward Jesus mentioned was that his disciples would receive a hundredfold of everything they had left behind rather than that they would get to heaven.[3] The idea of “getting to heaven” was not first and foremost on Jesus’s radar; he was first and foremost concerned with the disciples receiving something of infinite value as a reward and merely “going to heaven” wasn’t the reward of infinite value.

So what is the reward of infinite value which Jesus promised to his disciples? In my post last week, I pointed to this reward in Matthew 13. Here’s another passage which points towards this reward:

For [Jesus’s] sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish,[4] in order that I may gain Christ… - Philippians 3:8

In this verse, Paul said that he gained something of so much value–Jesus–that everything in which he formerly found value seemed worthless in comparison. In the same way, when Jesus promised his disciples that they would receive something of much greater value than all the things they gave up–their land, their homes, and their families–he was telling them that they would gain him, the treasure of infinite value. And the reward for being a disciple of Jesus is exactly the same today: Jesus’s disciples gain him.

Secondly, Jesus said that his disciples would inherit eternal life. To inherit eternal life doesn’t simply mean going to heaven. Yes, heaven is the name given to the place where Jesus dwells, but it is merely a place which, like every place on earth, was created by him. But heaven and eternal life are not synonymous terms. Instead, to receive eternal life means to be with Jesus for all of eternity since he is the giver of life.[5] Throughout the Bible, the church is referred to as the people who are called out of this world to be disciples of Jesus.[6] These people are referred to collectively as one body[7] which comprise the bride of Jesus.[8] The church, as the bride, will be united together in marriage to Jesus for all of eternity meaning that the two shall become one and the eternal life which Jesus possesses will also be shared by his bride.[9]

Is This the Prosperity Gospel?

There are two strands of the gospel message floating around right now which are equally false gospels: (1) the prosperity gospel and (2) the poverty gospel. The prosperity gospel claims that Jesus wants to make his disciples healthy, wealthy, and prosperous in this life while the poverty gospel claims that Jesus wants his disciples to live in poverty in this life. All the things I have said during the last two weeks about gaining a reward for following Jesus could be misunderstood as a strand of the prosperity gospel when they are, in fact, not even in the same ballpark as the prosperity gospel. Here’s why.

The prosperity gospel teaches that we will be rewarded for following Jesus. The reality is that no matter how we try to twist scripture, we can’t get away from the fact that Jesus says there will be a great reward for his disciples. In this high level claim, the prosperity gospel and what I’ve written are in alignment. But that’s as far as the alignment goes. Whether it’s intentional or unintentional, the teaching known as the prosperity gospel views Jesus as a means to an end. In other words, its adherents ultimately want to worship earthly pleasures such as health, wealth, and prosperity and see Jesus as someone who can give them these earthly pleasures. Their nominal worship of Jesus only serves as a means to get what they ultimately want: earthly pleasures.

The Bible actually tells us that Jesus isn’t a means to an end; he is the end. We’re told that Jesus isn’t a means to get us health, wealth, and prosperity, or even a get-out-of-hell-free card. Now, that doesn’t mean that Jesus calls all of his disciples to literally sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor. This is the error of the poverty gospel. Some of his disciples are given lots of wealth while others are given little wealth, neither of which are a sign one way or the other of the quality of the relationship they have with Jesus. Over and over again, the Bible claims that Jesus is the ultimate valuable reward his disciples will gain, whether or not they experience great earthly rewards in their earthly lifetimes.

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Is the reward of Jesus enough of a reward to make being his disciple a worthwhile investment? What people or things are hindering your desire to gain him?

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[1] Matthew 19:27.

[2] Matthew 19:29.

[3] The Greek word hekatontaplasiona, which is translated “hundredfold” in this verse, is used symbolically in scripture to mean totality or all-inclusive or even infinite, meaning that Jesus’s disciples were promised a reward of infinite value.

[4] The Greek word used here is skubalon. Our English translators were nice when they translated this word as “rubbish” in the ESV. In the KJV, it is translated “dung” and can mean poop, crap, or shit. Skubalon is something that is good for nothing except to be discarded.

[5] In John 11:25-26, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

[6] The Greek word ekklesia is commonly translated “church” in English although the definitions of the two words are not synonymous. Ekklesia literally means “out of a calling.”

[7] See 1 Corinthians 12.

[8] See Ephesians 5:22-33.

[9] Revelation 19:6-8.

Who or What Is Most Valuable to You?

When I was in elementary school, I had a compulsive fear that our home was going to catch on fire. I often dreamed that I was standing outside our home watching it go up in flames. Why was I so concerned about it catching on fire? It wasn’t because I was concerned for our home or for my family. Instead, it was because I was concerned for all my toys. My toys, above everyone and everything else in my life, were the things which were most valuable to me.

Some people place value on a piece of property. Some people place value a specific home. Some people place value on a specific vehicle. Some people place value on their job title. Some people place value on their family. Some people, similar to the elementary school version of me, even place value on their toys. Who or what is most valuable to you? If you’re struggling to come up with an answer, ask yourself the question: Who or what would you be most terrified to lose? This is most likely the thing you value the most.

What Makes Something Valuable?

Although I’m going to get a little philosophical here, I think you might find value in this short discussion. What makes one piece of property valuable and another worthless? What makes one home valuable and another worthless? What makes an ounce of gold worth over a thousand dollars, but a large rock in my backyard worthless? The value of something is determined by the amount of something else a person is willing to give in exchange for it. For example, someone may be willing to exchange over a million dollars for a small plot of land on the beach in Fort Myers, Florida, but that same person would only be willing to exchange $20,000 for the same-size plot of land in Findlay, Ohio.

When I was growing up, beanie babies were a huge fad. People flocked to the stores in droves buying them up because they were told that beanie babies were going to be worth lots of money in the future. Although people are still willing to purchase the extremely rare beanie babies for a lot more money than was originally paid for them, the majority of them are not selling for as much today as was paid for them in the 1990s. They no longer carry the same value as they did twenty years ago. Similarly, I ask: How much value is found in a million dollar beach property when a hurricane hits and makes it part of the ocean? How much value is found in paper money when the government prints off paper money without gold reserves? How much value is found in a job title when the company goes out of business?

Does Our Work Really Matter?

I think most of us, especially millennials, want to do work that makes a difference in this world. We want to do work that matters; we want to do things that will have long-lasting value. For example, I don’t know anyone who would want to move a pile of dirt back and forth from one location to another day after day, even if he got paid good money for it. He wouldn’t see the value in moving a pile of dirt back and forth. But this same person may be interested in being on the project management team to construct a new building because that job would seem to add more value to society.

However, I have to ask: How much value is really added to society by being on the project management team to construct a new building? Even if you got a chance to work on a twenty-one story cancer research hospital at The Ohio State University, how much value is really found in spending four years of your life helping to construct that building? Many years from now when that building is falling apart and needs to be torn down, how much value will the building have? Buildings, which are inanimate objects, cannot last forever. Even the Egyptian pyramids, which were built thousands of years ago, yet still remain standing, will one day crumble to the ground.

How about if a cure for cancer was found within that building? Would it have long-lasting value at that point, even if it eventually got torn down? Initially, we would probably think that it would. But our conclusion here would be based on the assumption that our goal is to make it so that people never have to experience death. However, I’m convinced that whether people die of cancer or they die of some other cause, they will still one day die. Our medical advancements, which overall are allowing people to live longer, are still unable to keep people alive forever. Curing cancer, as great as it sounds, would only delay the inevitable.

Is There Something of Value Which Lasts Forever?

Some of you may decide to stop reading right here because you don’t like my seemingly pessimistic perspective on the way we ascribe value to worthless things. If you’re content living the way you are right now and don’t want to risk moving out of your comfort zone to find something potentially more valuable than what you currently possess, then feel free to stop reading. But if you have even a tiny hope that there’s something more out there that’s worth far more than everything you currently possess, then you may find value in hearing out the rest of what I have to say.

Personally, I am not content to continue accumulating possessions and doing work which has no eternal value. I’m no longer motivated to spend my relatively short life trying to find mere temporary happiness in accumulating millions of dollars-worth of wealth, becoming the CEO of a company, and developing lots of good character traits when I’ve discovered something, or rather someone, of so much value who can give me eternal happiness. And I want to share this “someone” with you because I want you to find him too.

When Jesus was a human being on earth, he told a parable which gave me the answer to my question:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. – Matthew 13:44

At the heart of the kingdom of heaven is its King: Jesus. In this parable, Jesus was referring to himself as the treasure which is worth far more than everything else the man had accumulated. He is so valuable that the man who found him joyfully sold everything he had in order to get him. Here's what this might look like for us today.

Let’s say you are walking down the road and while looking out across a recently-plowed farm field, you see the sun reflecting off something shiny. In your curiosity, you decide to walk over to it to see what it is. When you pick it up, you realize that it is a small gold nugget worth a few thousand dollars. Let’s say you, like Mary Poppins, are able to pull a shovel out of your backpack and started digging to see if there is more. Within a few minutes, you discover that there is an extensive amount of gold buried beneath the top soil which is worth millions of dollars. What would you do? Would you steal it off of the farmer’s land? Hopefully not. Would you cover it up and walk away like you saw nothing? Again, hopefully not. Wouldn’t you go to the farmer and ask how much he wanted for his field? After giving you a price, wouldn’t you do everything you could, including selling all your “valuable” stuff, in order to purchase this field? As a matter of fact, wouldn’t you joyfully sell all your "valuable" stuff in order to buy the field? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that what you’re giving up is far less valuable than what you’re getting in return.

Jesus claimed to be the gold in the field that is not just worth millions of dollars, but is actually of infinite value. He can give us more than mere temporary happiness, but rather, he can give us eternal happiness![1] Who doesn’t want that? Personally, I see such great value in Jesus that I’ve, sometimes tangibly and sometimes intangibly, joyfully given up everything in which I formerly found value in order to have him. I no longer wake up in the middle of the night anxiously worrying about a fire destroying all my toys because I have someone of so much greater value who can never be taken away from me.

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[1] Some people claim that Jesus wants to make us happy by giving us lots of wealth or by shielding us from painful experiences, but this is not what Jesus said. He said we may literally lose everything we have and that we will endure literal pain and suffering. The eternal happiness found in Jesus is not found in what he gives us, but in him. He is the greatest treasure rather than a means to obtain what we believe to be the greatest treasure.