I became a slave to chasing happiness. So elusive, I spent every effort and cent to get or maintain it. My brain and body suffered until I finally came to the same conclusion as a famous king – that life was meaningless…<\/p>\n
From someone who studied philosophy and had more wisdom than most:<\/p>\n
\nFor then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.<\/em>
\u201cEverything is meaningless,\u201d says the Teacher, \u201ccompletely meaningless.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Ecclesiastes 12:7-8 (NLT)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThankfully I was missing information…and in fact, I wasn’t really alive.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until I met and submitted to the One who Created life, the One who said He was the only<\/em> One to make things right with God, the One who said\u00a0He is the Way the Truth and the Life that I discovered love, peace, joy<\/em><\/span> and meaning.<\/p>\n
\nAnd wow! How powerful these things were compared to the \u2018happiness’ I gave up so much for.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I am thankful today that joy<\/em><\/span> doesn’t cost a cent, that peace<\/span><\/em> is available and that meaning<\/span><\/em> is far deeper than I ever imagined.<\/p>\n
Above all I am thankful that love<\/span><\/em> is available and able to be experienced from the One that loves beyond measure.<\/p>\n
Everything changes when the soul receives true love. He knows what you go through, He knows what you’ve done – He loves you anyway and willingly died for you: so you can live\u2026and experience joy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don’t trade happiness for joy: one lasts, the other eludes, traps, enslaves<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[175,176],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-thought","tag-happiness","tag-joy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pasDCW-eL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":916,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}