(upbeat music) - Randy Alcorn joins us one final time this week on the Ask Pastor John podcast, and Pastor John will be back with us on Monday. Randy, of course, is the author of the new book, Happiness, a really excellent book, and Randy, you wrote the best-selling book, Heaven, and now you've written the book, Happiness.

So how will joy in eternity be similar or be different from the joy that we can experience right now? - Well, I think joy in eternity will be the same sort of thing we know as joy and happiness and delight right now, but it will be purified and absolute in the sense that, as Paul says, we're sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

We live in a world under the curse, and so there's always, even as we rejoice, even as we rejoice with those who rejoice, we weep with those who weep, and that's right, and it should be. We don't just paste on a smiley face as we look at a world of tremendous need, of children suffering, and you've got sex trafficking, you've got all of these different things.

So right now, our happiness in Christ is something that can and should be very real, but at the same time, we recognize that I can't be absolutely happy all the time. In fact, it would be inappropriate if I was given the condition of the world. So what will happen in eternity is we enter into our master's happiness.

I just love that it doesn't, you know, that the master doesn't say to his servant, muster up your own happiness and bring it here, and it's your duty to make yourself happy all the time. It's that he says, enter into my happiness, and the very place of heaven, which is what makes heaven such a desirable and wonderful place, is that it is permeated by the person of God.

It's where God is. You know, we shouldn't want to be in a heaven without God. First of all, it wouldn't be heaven truly, but God is the one who brings his nature to it. All of his attributes, including his happiness. So I think what happens is in this life, here and now, we do get foretaste of the complete and total bliss, the utter happiness of heaven.

And we can, even in the midst of great difficulty, do what "Valley of Vision," the book of Puritan prayers, is full of words, the word happiness and its synonyms, and yet it's just so deep with the burdens and realities of a sin-defiled world, but always with the sense of hope, a blood-bought hope, a hope with substance and expectation that one day God is gonna wipe away the tears from every eye as Revelation 21, four says.

There will be no more suffering, no more pain. There will be no more separation. We will experience all of the realities of who God is and every day will be better than the one before. The old fairy tale ending, happy ever after, that's not a fairy tale. That's God's unfolding drama of redemption, the greatest story ever told, the ultimate redemptive story, and he promises us we'll never pass our peaks and we will live happily ever after in his presence, to his glory and for our good.

And that magnificence should permeate our lives and our thinking today. We should not wait until we die to discover a taste of all that. We should be experiencing it daily, even now. - Amen, yes, Randy Alcorn, thank you for joining us this week on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

- It's been a pleasure, great to be with you, Tony. - Be sure to check out Randy's new book, Happiness, and we're gonna break for the weekend. If you missed any episodes with Randy Alcorn on happiness, be sure to check out the Ask Pastor John app online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

Pastor John returns Monday to answer an important question from a listener who is a seeker who asks, when do I know when it's time to believe in Christ? No matter where you're at spiritually, you won't wanna miss this episode. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend and I will see you on Monday.

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