What Controls Your Happiness?

I read this brief comment by Seth Godin this morning and found it very interesting and true:

A journalist asked me, Most people have a better standard of living today than Louis XIV did in his day. So why are so many people unhappy?

What you have doesn't make you unhappy. What you want does.

And want is created by us, the marketers.

Marketers trying to grow market share will always work to make their non-customers unhappy...

Unfortunately, this is far too true for Christians - those who have surrendered their wills to the Son of God, who by the Spirit is transforming our wants.

We need to beware of the worldliness of marketers who effect our wants and continually provoke our hearts to be discontent. The real evil that gets us, however, is not from the marketers but is found deep inside our sinful hearts. Our heart wants to find treasure in things that are really no treasure at all.

Matthew 6:19-24 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, (20) but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. (21) For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (22) "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, (23) but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (24) "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.