(upbeat music) Well, we seem to be hardwired to root our happiness in our circumstances. It just comes naturally to us. We are the happiest when things are going well. We are the saddest when things are going badly. Our mood is determined by the up and down roller coaster of life's ever-changing circumstances.

We do it at age four, we do it at age 24, we do it at age 44, and we do it at age 14. Today I want you to meet Tessa. She's a 14-year-old listener to the podcast who writes into us. Tessa writes this, "Dear Pastor Jon, hello. "Thank you so much for this podcast "and for the Ministry of Desiring God.

"All of it has been a huge blessing in my life. "Recently, I have been feeling more and more "that my happiness depends on the circumstances around me. "Will you please offer me biblical guidance "on how I can root my joy in Jesus instead?" - Well, I feel so thankful for this from a 14-year-old.

My, my, my. When I think back on the things that I struggled with when I was 14, I don't think I posed the question the way I should have. So let me just encourage you that your very way of asking this question is a sign of significant, growing spiritual life and maturity for your age especially.

So take heart. From where I sit, it looks to me like God is at work in your life, and that is always a wonderful miracle. Before I give you some suggestions from the Bible for how you can shift your circumstance-dependent happiness onto Jesus-dependent happiness, let me also say that this battle that you feel right now, you will be fighting 60 years from now if you're still alive and Jesus hasn't come back because that's how old I am.

Actually, I'm one year older than that. 75, not 74. And I have to address this issue of where my joy is rooted every day, every morning in battle against the devil and the world and the flesh, rather than letting the old nature that the Bible calls the flesh lure me away from Jesus to earthly things as more valuable.

Every stage in life, a 14-year-old stage and a 75-year-old stage has its unique allurements away from Jesus-dependent happiness to world-dependent happiness. It does, so you're going to have to fight this all the way to the end, so it's good to get a good start now and learn your battle strategy.

So let me make four suggestions for how to root your joy in Jesus and not in circumstances. Number one, get to know God's purpose for the troubles in your life. God is much more committed to building godly joy, happiness into his children than we are committed to finding it.

And one of his ways of doing this is by seeing to it that we walk through enough trouble to make us give up on finding our joy in a trouble-free life. Get to know the passages in the Bible that teach this. For example, Romans 5:3, "We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us." In other words, the joy of hope is intensified when our faith endures through trouble.

Or 2 Corinthians 1:8, Paul says, "We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself, but that was to make us," this was God's purpose, in other words, "that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead." In other words, the joy of complete reliance upon Jesus is God's purpose when he brings us to the very brink of death.

So, suggestion number one, get to know this biblical teaching for the rest of your life. It will serve you very well. Number two, it's a little unusual. Think it through with me. I suggest that you take all the natural pleasures that God gives you, which are not sinful, and make the conscious effort to see and to savor, or taste, God himself in and behind those pleasures.

In other words, the best way to keep a God-given pleasure from becoming your God is to push into the pleasure and through the pleasure to the giver of the pleasure who is trying to show you something about himself and how satisfying he is. So, for example, the Bible says that God's word is sweeter than honey.

And the Bible says that Jesus is the light of the world. And the Bible says that he's like living water. So, when you taste anything that is really delicious, or when you pass out of a scary darkness into some beautiful light and brightness, or when you really, really, really are thirsty and you drink a glass of cold water, at every one of those points, say to yourself that Jesus is sweeter than honey, and he wants me to taste him in the gift of honey.

Say to yourself that Jesus is brighter than this beautiful light, and he wants me to enjoy him in his brightness. And say to yourself that Jesus is more satisfying than this great thirst-quenching water, and he wants me to be satisfied in him like I feel right now with this water, only better.

In other words, form the habit of finding God everywhere that there is goodness in this world. This will keep you from treating the goodness as God, and it will keep you from scorning the goodness of God by rejecting the gifts. All God's good gifts are meant not for idolatry.

They are meant to give us a taste of the one who created them and show us something of himself. And I find it helpful to add this. Since I'm a sinner and deserve nothing from God but judgment, therefore, every good thing that comes to me as a child of God was purchased for me by the blood of Jesus, without which I would only be condemned.

I would base all that on Romans 8:32. Therefore, every good thing not only points me to the goodness of the giver, but it points me to the infinite price that was paid by Jesus so that I could have the gift. And the giver, this helps me love him as I ought.

I hope it does you too. Number three, make your Bible reading every day very personal. Don't just think about learning how to live from guidelines in the Bible, which are important, but every day, think about what you can know of Jesus, the son of God, and God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit, what you can know about them as persons.

In other words, read the Bible to get to know the person of God. Always think, I love a person. I love a person. God is admirable. God is strong. God is wise. God is kind. God is patient. God is just. God is merciful. And as you see these traits in God, love him because of them.

Find the person himself to be your treasure. Make Bible reading personal. And finally, number four, even though you're only 14, keep death regularly in your mind. Not all the time, just regularly return to the thought that you're gonna die. And the point of this is not to make you scared.

It's not to make you sad. It's not to make you morose, just the opposite. Everybody is going to die unless Jesus comes back first. Might happen when you're 15, might happen when you're 95, but it is gonna happen. And when that time comes, everything but Jesus will lose its comforting power.

All our possessions, all our accomplishments, all our personal looks and intellect, all our family and friends, all of them will fail as a foundation for hope and joy in our dying. But if you know Jesus personally, the day of your death will not be a day of just leaving things behind that you're familiar with, but it will be a day of stepping into the presence of the one that we care about most.

So thank you for asking such a very good question at age 14. I'm really excited about what God is gonna do in your life between now and when you're 24. - Yeah, amen. Tessa, thank you for the question at age 14. And Pastor John, thank you for these insights from age 75.

Very helpful. Thank you for joining us today. You can ask a question of your own and search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast. You can do all that at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, speaking of circumstances, we're going to pick up on this theme next time and look at the story in John 11 about Lazarus and look at the circumstances around his life and his death.

This story will jolt your brain and heart in a good way as we try to understand what does it mean to know that God loves me? John 11 is where we will be next time. Feel free to read it ahead of time, the whole chapter. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

We'll see you back here on Wednesday. See you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)