God’s way provides joy here and now, not just hereafter

God intends for us to have joy here, not just hereafter.¹ This life is an opportunity for us to learn and live what is necessary to be happy forever.² Life features a myriad of challenges that are useful to help us see aspects of who we are that are inadequate to yield eternal happiness. Unfortunately, most people manage to cope with the parts of reality that they do not like or cannot handle by ignoring or escaping from them. This human tendency pervades common Christianity, where the desire to avoid reality dominates the willingness to overcome it. It is easy to ignore aspects of your life that rob you of joy through using synthetic sources of pleasure: drugs, entertainment, work, exercise, social activities, and relationships, but they will not help you become a better person or any happier hereafter. Whatever has power to make you miserable here will also have power to make you miserable hereafter,³ and while you can make use of dishonest distractions here, none of them will work there. This life is given as an opportunity to learn and live principles that will bring you greater joy forever.⁴ Any principles that have the power to bring you joy after this life will also bring you joy in this life.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a means or reason to ignore or avoid problems, but a means and reason to overcome them.⁵ The Lord overcame all things, and it is only through learning and living his character that you can do the same. The mechanism for joy hereafter is learning and living the character of God while you are here.⁶ To the extent you seek happiness that can endure any circumstance in life, you seek the character of Christ, and to the extent you obtain the character of Christ, you will find happiness that can endure any circumstance in life.

As you learn and live the character of Christ, you will experience an increasing intensity and duration of joy here and now. You will find yourself overcoming more of the things that take away your joy and obtaining more of the things that provide it. Those who learn more about Jesus and live more like him will find that increasingly greater opposition is required to disrupt their joy and that they are able to hold onto greater joy for longer.

Growing more like Jesus does not mean that life’s trials will stop flowing through your life, or that your life will be free from any unpleasantness, challenges, or sorrows. In fact, as you grow more like the Lord, who faced all possible mortal challenges, you will find that trials come with increased occurrence and intensity,⁷ but you will likewise learn and live what he did to overcome them.⁸ All good things carry a price, and that price is typically required to be paid up front. The paths that yield the greatest lasting joy frequently begin with willful suffering—sometimes for a prolonged period—but they always pay dividends that far outweigh the cost. The key indication that you are on the Lord’s path is progress. Those learning more about and living like Christ will grow in their ability to experience greater joy and hold onto it for longer, in the face of greater challenges than before.⁹