The Bible tells us the story of a king who was blessed with wisdom, wealth, and power. The king was admired and loved by his people, and rulers throughout the world came to seek his counsel. Yet, the king was unhappy.
The Bible tells us that he sought to change that. He chased pleasure, but found it fleeting. He drank alcohol, but it did not cheer him. He married multiple women, but did not find fulfillment.
He turned his mind to his work—he made gardens and parks, planted all kinds of fruit trees, made reservoirs, owned herds of cattle. He denied himself nothing under the sun. Yet in the end, the king found himself right back where he started, unfulfilled and unhappy, writing, “Everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
It should not surprise us that lasting happiness cannot be found apart from God. No amount of wealth or material possession can take the place of knowing the joy of God’s love through Christ Jesus.
But what if we have faith and know the joy of God’s love, yet the sadness we feel does not go away?
Sometimes, as Christians, we fall into a false belief that knowing God through Christ will fix all our problems. We expect faith to bring us fortune and peace in the here and now. But that’s just not how it works.
You see, our world is sick with sin. Sin is a disease that has worked its way into every aspect of our lives. It’s not just something we do. Sin is also an active force attacking our bodies and our minds. We can feel it physically in things like cancer or even the common cold, but we also may feel it mentally in things like depression, anxiety or fear.
These attacks on our minds can be embarrassing or even crippling, but they are rarely rooted in truth. Often, at the core of our problems, we find a lie—a false belief about ourselves or others that runs contrary to the Word of God.
When we identify the lie, we are one step closer to the truth, and as Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.”
The truth is that we are broken people, but we belong to a God who has paid the price for our failures—our brokenness. We are forgiven and loved beyond measure. That is true, whether we feel it or not.