What Makes You Happy Bible Study Participant's Guide: It's Not What You'd Expect

By Andy Stanley

Everybody wants to be happy. Everybody is on a happiness quest. For many, happiness is measured in moments. Experiences. It's elusive. Unsustainable. What about you? What makes you happy? Something comes to mind for each of us.

In this six-session video Bible study, pastor Andy Stanley examines the ways in which we tend to define happiness and explains how that definition influences the way we pursue it. He reveals that happiness is about who, not what, and that happy people are at peace with God, with others, and with themselves. He also shows how sin undermines peace because it separates us from God, others, and ourselves by substituting pleasure for fulfillment, things for people, images for intimacy, and self-expression for self-control.

We are often tempted to believe that happiness comes from acquiring things, but happiness is actually an outcome of what we sow in our lives. We can’t acquire, consume, or exercise our way to happiness, but we may be able to serve and volunteer our way there. In the end, we find that if we live as if it’s all about us, we will never be happy.

Sessions include:

1. Nothing
2. Plan for It
3. Peace with God
4. Happy Money
5. Shoes
6. You’re Not Enough

Designed for use with the What Makes You Happy DVD (sold separately).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Jan 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9780310085003

Andy Stanley

Communicator, author, and pastor Andy Stanley founded Atlanta-based North Point Ministries (NPM) in 1995. Today, NPM consists of eight churches in the Atlanta area and a network of 180 churches around the globe that collectively serve over 200,000 people weekly. As host of Your Move with Andy Stanley, which delivers over 10.5 million messages each month through television, digital platforms, and podcasts, and author of more than 20 books, including Irresistible; Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets; and Deep & Wide, Andy is considered one of the most influential pastors in America.

Book preview

[USING THE PARTICIPANT’S GUIDE ]

[BEFORE SESSION ONE]

1. Read through pages 7–9 to gain an overview of the study.

2. Read through A Typical Group Meeting on page 80 to gain an understanding of the flow of this study.

3. Read through the content in Session One on pages 11–16.

[DURING EACH GROUP MEETING]

1. Turn to the Video Notes page, and watch the video segment.

2. Use the Discussion Questions to have a conversation about the video content.

3. Read the Think About It section aloud.

4. Review the Before the Next Session homework at the end of the chapter.

[INTRODUCTION]

We all want to be happy. But let’s face it: great art and literature throughout history have been based on the premise that an awful lot of people—maybe even most people—go through life with a deep sense of yearning. There’s something inside them that feels empty. No matter how much they achieve or acquire, that emptiness doesn’t go away. It’s as if they can catch a glimpse of happiness, but they can’t quite ever get hold of it. And once they’ve chased after the false promise of happiness for long enough, they begin to suspect that happiness doesn’t even exist. They lose hope. They give up.

Here’s the good news: it is possible to be happy. It is possible to fill that empty space inside.

The title of this study could be a question—What makes you happy?—but it could also be a statement. It might even be a promise. Over the next six sessions, we’re going to tell you what makes you happy. The reason we’ll tell you what makes you happy is that you may not know. The idea that you don’t know what makes you happy may be surprising. It may even be offensive. After all, no one knows you better than you, right?

There’s one way to tell if you know what makes you happy. If you keep chasing after happiness, but you’re not happy, there’s a good chance it’s because you don’t know what makes you happy. Imagine that.

If you think it’s strange for someone who doesn’t know you to promise to tell you what makes you happy, just remember that every time you open a magazine, listen to the radio, go on the Internet, or watch television, people you’ve never met in places you’ve never visited create shows, movies, books, and ads that tell you what will make you happy. Every single one of us has fallen for someone’s promise of the secret of happiness at least once or twice . . . if not 100 times.

As we’ll discover over the course of this study, it’s impossible to market and sell true happiness. Quick-fix happiness can be marketed and sold, but not the real stuff—not lasting happiness. The path to true happiness is simple to understand but challenging to follow. It requires living with intentionality. It demands letting go of some of our most deeply held cultural assumptions. It means looking at the world around us through an entirely new set of lenses.

Few people in our culture are talking about what really makes us happy. So for the next few weeks, we’re going to do just that. We’re going to tell you what makes you happy.

SESSION ONE

[NOTHING]

If only I had . . . if only I drove . . . if only I wore . . . if only I knew . . . if only I won . . . then I would feel better about myself. Then I would be happy.

You’ve had thoughts like that, right? We all have. You spend a lot of time and money chasing after happiness, but it always feels just out of reach. No matter what you do, no matter what you achieve, no matter how much you acquire, you’re still not happy.

Here’s what you need to understand: happiness is more about who than what. We learn this lesson early in life, but we tend to forget it as we grow older. We learned it in the backyard when we were playing with a bunch of