Well, does God want me to be happy or does God want me to be holy? Which is the priority? Such a question is really, really important to address. This time it comes in the form of an email from a listener named Megan. Megan writes, "Hello Pastor John, I'm with you when you say that Christian hedonism says my happiness is not at odds with God's will for me.

But what about the dark seasons of trials? In those seasons it seems my happiness is not as significant as God's intent to grow my holiness. How would you describe the pains of trials in light of Christian hedonism and God's desire for my joy?" If human life, apart from Christ and salvation, consisted in zero happiness, and God's goal were to bring us from the condition of zero happiness to great happiness in God, I suspect God would not need to introduce any hardship into our lives, any discipline, in order to bring us to the experience of supreme happiness in Him.

But that's not the real world. Human life, apart from Christ and salvation, does not consist in zero happiness. It consists in a thousand experiences of God-less happiness. When Peter describes the pre-Christian life among the Gentiles in his day, he says it consists in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.

In other words, the world outside Christ abounds with what Hebrews 11:25 calls "the fleeting pleasures of sin." So when God saves us and brings us into relationship with Christ and declares us righteous, justifies us in union with Him through faith, He's not working with people who have zero happiness and need to be given some.

He's working with a person, with people who have a thousand experiences of pleasure and happiness that are not rooted in God, do not flow from a sight of God's glory, are not abounding with thanksgiving to God for His goodness, do not reflect the character of God and His holiness, which means—this is amazing, I never thought of it quite this way before—which means that through conversion, God now has in His family, in His house, children who are deeply contaminated, all of us deeply contaminated with the world from which He is saving us because we still find so much pleasure outside God and His ways and His will.

So Ephesians 4.22 says, "Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires." In other words, the process of sanctification, the process of becoming holy is the process of ceasing to have sinful desires and growing in our enjoyment of holy desires.

Or, to put it another way, holiness is the newness of the human heart that no longer finds sin and self more desirable than God and goodness. To become holy, to be sanctified, is not something different than becoming happy in God. Sanctification is precisely the divine work by which we are weaned off the pleasures of the world onto the pleasures of God.

So when Megan says—this is important— when Megan says, "In these seasons of darkness and hardship, it seems my happiness is not as significant as God's intent to grow my holiness," this shows a serious confusion about what holiness is. She is treating holiness as one thing and her happiness as another thing.

She's treating holiness as one thing which God pursues through dark seasons, and that's exactly right, and she is treating happiness as a separate thing which God seems to be neglecting in those seasons of darkness. That's not the way the Bible sees holiness and happiness. Holiness—now, this is the most important sentence—holiness is the condition of heart in which God is our greatest happiness.

That's holiness. The unholy heart is the heart that finds God boring or offensive or false. The holy heart sees God as its supreme treasure and is supremely satisfied in God, and when we're perfectly holy, we will have perfect satisfaction someday in heaven. So, when Hebrews 12 describes the discipline of God toward his children—like she conceives it, she's right—the aim is to make them holy, and it says, "God disciplines us"—this is verse 11—"God disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness.

For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Now, notice a couple things. The holiness he is pursuing through this discipline is a peaceful fruit. That means a sweet, restful, pleasant fruit.

That's the goal. And when he says the discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, he's not suggesting that the discipline doesn't hurt. It wouldn't be disciplined if the spanking didn't hurt. He's pointing to the fact that the outcome really is pleasant and not painful. That's the goal. The goal of holiness is supreme pleasure in God that breaks the back of all the fleeting pleasures of sin, severs the root of all those other pleasures so they lose their power and they don't control us anymore, and we walk in sweet obedience to Jesus because he has come to satisfy our hearts, which is why James says, "Count it all joy, brothers, when you meet various trials," because you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and why Paul says we rejoice in our sufferings.

Why? Knowing that the suffering produces endurance, and the endurance produces character, and character produces hope, which is of joyful motion. So, my answer to Megan's final question—here's her final question—how would you describe the pain of trials in light of Christian hedonism and God's desire for my joy? And here's my answer.

That the pain of all the trials in the life of God's children is indeed aimed at their holiness. Yes, that's true, because holiness consists precisely in the heart's forsaking the fleeting pleasures of sin and growing in the enjoyment of the permanent pleasures of God. That's what sanctification is. That's what God is doing in the hard seasons.

And the reason God puts such a high premium on the pleasures that we have in God, even at the cost of great pain to us in the dark seasons of our life, is that no other pleasures can satisfy us eternally, and no other pleasures can glorify God forever. Amen.

Amen. Sanctification is the divine work by which we are weaned off the pleasures of the world and onto the pleasures of God. Such a great and important line. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. You can explore all 1,200 plus of our episodes.

You can scan a list of our most popular episodes, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own. And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, you can subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite podcast app. Well, I'm your host Tony Reinke.

We'll see you back here on Friday with something. I'm not quite sure what it is, but we'll be back, and we'll see you then. Thanks for listening and sending in those great questions. Keep them coming. We'll see you next time. (end)