Hello, everyone! We get to hear from Rebekah Hawk this week, one of our regular writers. If you’ve not already done so, check her out on the contributor’s page.

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

Yesterday morning, I asked my three children, “Does God want you to be happy?” And they all agreed, yes, He does. The kids and I have been reading John 15:1-11 every morning in conjunction with our homeschool botany unit. 

The familiar “I am the vine, you are the branches” goes along with learning all about plants rather wonderfully, and each morning, I try to pick out a word or two to discuss after the reading. 

“Every branch in Me [Jesus] that does not bear fruit He [The Father] takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

I asked if they remembered learning about how farmers prune the branches of the fruit trees to make sure the fruit trees produce as much fruit as possible. I explained that pruning the trees meant that parts of the tree must be cut off and then asked if they thought being cut sounded painful. 

I was immediately treated to a chorus of “I don’t want to be cut,” “I have a cut on my finger,” and “cuts hurt!”  “It’s like that when God prunes us sometimes,” I told them. “Having bad things cut out of your life sometimes hurts very much, but God cuts those things out of us so that we can grow more fruit for Him.” 

I had them right where I wanted them. You see, like many grown-ups, my children suffer from the impression that God wants them to be happy. Without entering a long discussion on the various shades of meaning for the word happy, I know quite plainly that God is primarily concerned with His Own glory. 

His Almighty plan and purposes supersede human satisfaction; yet shockingly, we often excuse our sins by claiming that God doesn’t mind because He just wants us to be happy. I need my children to understand how opposed that mindset is to submitting to the pruning process of becoming more like Christ.

I slyly asked my children, “So, if pruning usually hurts, does God really want you to be happy? What if He takes something out of your life that you really wanted or that you’ll really miss?”

My son’s mind was racing—I knew he was ready to demand, “So God wants me to be sad?” 

Smiling, I invited them to look again at verse 11. “You see,” I said, “God wants you to have HIS joy, and He wants you to be overflowing with it! He doesn’t want us to be happy with all the things we want for ourselves, but He desires us to be filled with the joy that comes from being close to (abiding in!) Him. 

He cuts out the things in our lives that keep us from being close to Him.” I loved the dawn of comprehension on their faces as I concluded, “We left out part of what we needed to say earlier: God wants us to be happy in Him.”