Why Don't We Enjoy Life?

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, October 8th.

King Solomon, well known for his unparalleled wisdom and grand achievements, ultimately felt that all was futile and empty. Today's podcast explores common pitfalls that get in the way of finding fulfillment and satisfaction. Now, I want to just start right in to these seven reasons why we don't enjoy life.

Now, let me tell you something. The only way in the world for us to change any area of our life is to be honest. And to be honest, you've got to be willing to open your heart and open your mind and just take a real honest look at yourself, which is very difficult for most people. Once you're able to look at your life in any given area, it makes it easier for you to turn the page and look in some other area.

But as long as you keep it closed up, and you're trying to impress the world with something that is not real, I want to tell you, my friends, you're going to cave in on the inside one of these days. There are, I believe, seven major reasons we don't enjoy life. And the first one is this. And that is the pursuit of unfulfilling goals in life. The pursuit of unfulfilling goals or objectives in life.

One of the primary reasons that people don't enjoy life is that they spend their life pursuing goals and objectives, and trying to achieve things that do not bring fulfillment and contentment. I want you to notice here in this second chapter, the Ecclesiastes, exactly what Solomon's saying. So I just want to brief you and divide the chapter up in two or three ways here. Verses one through three, here's what he's saying. He says, I said in my heart, go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure, and behold, this is all vanity. I said of laughter, it's mad of mirth, I sought in my heart to give myself and to whine, quainting my heart with the wisdom to lay a hole in folly, that I might see what that good was, and so forth. The first thing he pursued was the indulgence of his life. That is what, you name it, and he was going to enjoy it.

And you see, Solomon at this point in his life, he had the authority and the money to do it. Whatever mine eyes desired, I kept it not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor.

This was my portion. But when he says, when I got it all, I realized that it was all empty. One of the primary reasons people don't enjoy life is they do just what Solomon did. That is, they move in this direction, this is their goal. Well, they get that and that doesn't work. Then they set a new goal, they get that and that doesn't bring joy. They set a new sense of achievement and they finally achieve that and they're still empty.

And they just go through life doing everything they possibly can, trying to enjoy life because you see, here's the trick about life. The trick of life is the next plateau, that's where it is. Haven't you heard people say, man, that's where it is, where is it? Well, it's on the next plateau, so you get up there and you say, well, man, it's not here. Well, where is it? It's around the next corner.

So what do you do? You just go all around the next corner. It's not over there. You say, well, man, you haven't reached the right level, so you get to the right level and it's not up there. Because you see, the enjoyment of life is never found in the pursuit of the wrong goals and objectives in life. And there's not one single verse in the scripture that says when a man achieves a certain level in life that he's going to be able to enjoy life. You know why? Because God intends for us to enjoy life all life long and it's not built on either fame, possessions, achievements or indulgence or the gratifying of every desire in the heart of man.

None of those things bring about the enjoyment of life. But what do they do? They just ensnare us and trick us.

And what do they do? They just drive us to go a little bit higher, a little bit faster, reach a little bit higher because the devil will do everything in his power to keep us, listen, to keep us directed towards some particular objective lest we get our eyes on the one goal that makes it possible for a person to enjoy life. The second reason we don't enjoy life is this, and that is the pace we keep. Every time I read the Gospels, I get under conviction about Jesus because not one time did he ever say to his apostles, we've got to hurry to Bethany. We've got to hurry up to Samaria.

Besides, Mary and Martha have lunch cooked for us and we can't be late because Martha will be all stirred up if we're late. He never said that. What did he do? He just made his way, never got in the hurry. He never got anxious about that. And you see, he had to walk everywhere he went. The only time I remember that he wrote anything, he wrote a donkey into Jerusalem.

Jesus walked. And we think if we don't drive 55, 65, 75, we're going to be late and we'll never get it done. And you know what's happened to us? We've missed so many of the best things in life. You know why? Because their pace is not God's pace, it's man's pace. That one of our greatest excuses we offer God for not growing in our spiritual life and giving him the time on our knees in prayer and Bible studies, we ought. You know what our greatest excuse is?

What is it? I don't have time. And you see, you can't enjoy life out of fellowship with Jesus Christ.

There is no way to do it. And you see, one of the reasons we don't enjoy life is we're in too big a hurry trying to enjoy it in the future. We don't take time to enjoy it right now.

There's a third thing. And that is the pressures we allow ourselves to live under. You see, we set goals for ourselves that oftentimes are not realistic. We want to achieve things that deep down inside, we wonder if we can achieve them. And we set those goals out there and then what do we do? In order to reach the goals, we increase our pace. We pick up the pressure and oftentimes we say, but you know, living under pressure is good.

It helps us to accomplish a great deal. But you know what happens? Sometimes that's an excuse. Pressure sometimes is the result of procrastination. Sometimes it is the result of taking upon ourselves things God never intended for us to take upon ourselves. And so we get them the pressure and the load of things and then we wonder, why can't we enjoy life? Because we are bearing what God never intended for us to bear. And when you look at the life of Jesus Christ, he didn't walk around under great pressure.

He wasn't always speeding up, but he was always walking in the balanced will of his Father. And I wonder tonight, listen, are there pressures in your life that nobody put there but you? Are there things that you've set to achieve for yourself that maybe God doesn't really want you to attempt to achieve in life? Are there burdens that are causing you to feel the pressure? And you see, here's the difficulty. When you look at your life and you look, say, a few weeks ahead or a few months or even a few years and you see pressures there that you think, I don't know how I'm going to get out of under this.

I don't know how I'm going to live through this, friend. That's when it begins to take its awesome toll in a person's life. You know, we say I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. That's true if it's his will. But if it's self-imposed pressures, all the wisdom and strength of God is not going to come rushing into your life to do something that God never will to begin with. Listen, when you're doing the wrong thing, it doesn't make any difference what your motive is.

The consequences on you is just the same. God couldn't afford to let us get by with doing what is not of him. So what does he do? He just lets the pressure increase, increase, increase and increase. And what is he doing?

He's just letting us come to the place where we have to stop and say, Oh God, what are you trying to say? He's trying to say a person who's living their life without enjoyment is no testimony to God. What kind of person are you attracted to? What kind of person is the world attracted to?

Somebody who's happy living the Christian life. So I have to ask you, because I've been there, are there pressures in your life that you've got there? Have you got relationships going on that's putting pressure in your life and you don't want to give it up? Is there something you've got going on in your business that's putting pressure in your life and you don't want to surrender it?

I want to tell you something. You can't ever enjoy life with a divided mind. Whatever the pressures are, I want to challenge you, my friend, to face them and to begin to deal with them one at a time. All right, the fourth thing is a preoccupation with work. One of the reasons many people don't enjoy life is they become so preoccupied with work. Now somebody has said, Americans worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship. And isn't that just like us? You know, we're consumed by our work. We almost worship that. Now this nation could stand some folks who love their work, who enjoy their work, and who give their best to it, but not to worship it, not to consume it.

And more than likely, many, many marriages, you and I know this is true, fall apart, separation, divorce because of man. That's what he gets absolutely consumed and he begins to worship. And before long, he is possessed by the very thing he started out doing as a vocation and as a pleasure in his life, he wanted to work. It can happen to anybody regardless of who they are, because you see, whatever comes between God and myself and whichever, I exercise the most attention, the most devotion, the most love, and the most of my inner thoughts and desires where the greatest sense of achievement is that becomes my God. And you see, to a lot of people, they're so preoccupied with work, what happens? There's no place for God in their life. And you see in the New Testament, you look at the people in the New Testament, read the book of Acts and what happens? You know what the first responsibility of those people was? To know God, to know Jesus Christ, to pursue him, to love him, and work was almost a side issue. You say, well, but that's not natural.

Now, wait a minute. Let's look at it from God's point of view. Why did God create you and me to glorify him? What did he say he predestinated that you and I would be conformed to his likeness? Now, he says we're created in Christ Jesus under good works, that's true. Let me ask you, in God's eyes, what is first?

Knowing him or doing a good job in your vocation. Whenever that takes the priority in your life, then something happens to your relationship because you see, both of those can't be priority. Next thing, and that is our perspective, our perspective of leisure. Now, when we think about leisure, here's what we think about. We think about playing, games, recreation. But you look in the dictionary for leisure, you find out what the synonyms of leisure are, and you're going to find rest, opportunity, freedom, quietude, peace.

These are the words that best describe what leisure is. You see, most people feel like to do nothing is a sin. All of us have heard, the idle mind is the devil's workshop. So what do you do? You got to keep it in high gear all the time to keep them sinning, right? And you know what? You throw it in high gear and you sin in a way.

So that's not a solution. A lot of little things we've heard all of our life that trip us up that are not real. And you see, Solomon said in this book, all of these things that he pursued, he always found that they were full of emptiness.

They never seemed to somehow fill his life. What do you do for leisure? What do you do to really relax? I mean, quietness. Did you know, I honestly believe that when you're praying, that not all praying, because sometimes it is agonizing, depends upon what God's trying to teach you. But I believe that one of the aspects of prayer is that prayer ought to be leisure. That is when you just get on your face before God and just tell him that you don't want anything.

You just came to be quiet and think about him. One of my favorite verses, and I just have to keep coming back to it all the time. And especially when I feel a little bit of that tiredness and know that I don't have but a few minutes maybe to get rest. There's one verse of Scripture that can absolutely calm and quiet you.

I don't care what you've been doing and how long you've been doing it. There's one verse of Scripture, if you'll just lie down for one minute and just quote it to God, it is amazing what happens to the mind, the emotions, and the human body. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, mount up their wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary.

They shall walk and not faint. God re-energizes us if we'll stop. But listen, do you think God intends for us to live all of our lives tired? No. He intends for us to live it, enjoying life, and you can't enjoy your life being tired.

Okay, I must hustle through here. The next one is this, and that is personal relationships. You'll never enjoy life until you learn to relate to other people. And listen, God didn't make us as an island.

He made us to live together, fellowship, love each other, respond to each other, be grateful toward each other. Listen, you will never enjoy life until you learn to show gratitude. I don't know of anybody that I've ever met who is enjoying life who didn't know how to show gratitude, who didn't know how to express appreciation and to take the time to say, thanks, you did a super job, or I really appreciate you thinking about me.

Appreciate this, appreciate that. Then one last thing, and that is paralyzing attitudes that you and I have keep us from enjoying life. Now, what are some of those? One of them is a sense of dependency.

Now watch this carefully. There are a lot of people who are not enjoying life and they don't know why, and I want to tell you one of the major reasons that is hidden right beneath the surface, and they can't figure out why. Listen, God doesn't want us living emotionally, and watch this, emotionally dependent upon anybody but him. There is interdependence between husbands and wives, parents and children, and friendships. There is interdependence, but an unwholesome dependence upon someone else. You can't possibly enjoy life if you're emotionally always leaning on someone else, because if they fall, you're a god.

And you see, oftentimes they do fall. A second attitude, I think, that keeps us from enjoying life is a sense of guilt. Guilt, listen, how many, in fact, I've never talked to anybody who felt guilty who is enjoying life. You can't. You can just mark that down. You cannot enjoy life feeling guilty.

Why? For the simple reason, guilt divides the mind, and what happens? As long as the person does not have a right relationship with God, they can't enjoy life. Oh, they're going to have spasmodic moments of thrills, but I mean to enjoy life. You can't enjoy life feeling guilty, which says you cannot enjoy life sinning against God. So the persons who are running at you to involve themselves in this and indulge in that and gratify themselves, these things, in order to enjoy life, what they don't realize, the very thing they're grasping for themselves is destroying their capacity to enjoy life. These are paralyzing, penalizing attitudes. Dependency, guilt, perfectionism.

Listen, you spot one of those a mile off. It's got to be just right. It cannot be any other way but perfect, and you know what happens? A person who is obsessed with perfectionism, what happens? They make everybody around them miserable. You see, a person, if you live with somebody like that, a person who's a perfectionist, or you work with someone like that, you know what I'm talking about.

You do your very dead level best, and it's never good enough. A perfectionist is miserable, and the trouble is they make everybody around them equally, if not more so, miserable. A dependency spirit creates problems. Guilt creates problems.

A perfectionist attitude, and then of course, a rebellious spirit. Listen, you can't live happily with a rebellious spirit. It makes no difference who you rebellious to it, and you see, if you've got a rebellious spirit, you know what you're going to do with a rebellious spirit?

You're going to spew it out on folks all over you, just like bitterness. How can you be happy and enjoy life being bitter and rebellious and going to have it your way? You see, I could list a whole lot of things, and you know all about fear and anxiety and all that kind of stuff, but I'm just saying dependency and rebelliousness and guilt, and these are the kind of things, attitudes we carry that penalize and paralyze us from enjoying life, and I just want you to stop and ask God tonight, Lord, is there something out there you want me to see that I'm not seeing and I'm not enjoying life, and I'm looking for somebody else to blame while I'm not enjoying my life, when the real truth is I've not stopped long enough to see it. The first step to enjoying it is accepting Jesus Christ. Listen, as Savior, as way of life. Thank you for listening to today's podcast titled, Why Don't We Enjoy Life? If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.