Christianity And The Pursuit Of Happiness

What If Following Jesus Was Never Meant to Make Your Life Easier?

There is a quote doing the rounds in certain Christian circles that sounds wonderful on the surface: "God doesn't just want to give you Jesus. He wants to give you abundant life." It is the kind of thing you might see on a screensaver or hear from a stage with excellent lighting. And it sounds generous, even inspiring.

But as Pete unpacks in this talk from Acts chapter 7, there is a problem with it. A significant one. Because the implication — whether intended or not — is that having "just Jesus" is somehow not enough. That Jesus needs a plus sign after his name to be worth following.

The Preach That Cost a Life

The passage in question is Acts 7:51-60, where Stephen delivers the final portion of his defence before the Sanhedrin. And it is not gentle.

"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have now betrayed and murdered."

The response was immediate. They were enraged. They ground their teeth. And then they dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death.

Stephen's last words were a prayer: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And then he died. The first Christian martyr.

"It's heavy stuff today," Pete admits. "But I promise you that I'm gonna be preaching to myself as much as I am to you."

The Disease Eating Away at Western Christianity

Pete does not mince words about what he sees happening. "This kind of statement or this brand of Christianity just would not hold water in most places around the world or throughout most of church history," he says. "I think the only reason we can get away with saying this kind of thing about following Jesus is because the cost of following Jesus in the West is so close to zero."

That is a confronting observation. When following Jesus costs you nothing — when it comes with community, social respectability, and a nice building to meet in on Sundays — it is easy to start treating him as an add-on to an already comfortable life. A spiritual supplement. A wellness strategy with eternal benefits.

But for most of church history, and for most Christians around the world today, that is not what following Jesus looks like. It looks like risk. It looks like loss. It looks like choosing faithfulness when every material incentive points the other way.

"To countless people throughout history and even today, calling King Jesus means a death sentence," Pete says. "It means being disowned. It means being stoned. It means that in every material sense, your life looks pitiable."

The Prosperity Gospel Nobody Admits To

You do not need to attend a prosperity gospel church to have absorbed its assumptions. The subtle version is everywhere. It goes something like this: come to Jesus and your relationships will improve. Come to Jesus and you will find your purpose. Come to Jesus and life will start making sense.

Pete describes it well: "Come to Jesus and you'll have a really exciting life. Things will go well with you. You'll have better relational health, and you'll get through that rough season in your life. And hey, look at this great community you can be part of. And look at the quiche."

The problem is not that these things are untrue. Community, purpose, and relational health can absolutely flow from a life lived with Jesus. The problem is what happens when they do not. When the community hurts you. When the purpose feels unclear. When life does not improve on any measurable scale.

"What happens when the quiche disappoints you," Pete asks, "or you are inevitably hurt by this community of similarly broken people? Well, if that's how it's been sold to you, I'm sorry to break it to you, but you've been shortchanged."

What Paul Actually Said About Suffering

The apostle Paul — who knew a thing or two about hardship — had a very different framework. In Romans 5, he wrote: "We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."

Notice what Paul did not say. He did not say suffering was a sign that something had gone wrong. He did not say God would remove it if you prayed hard enough. He said suffering was part of the process. A necessary part. The path to endurance, character, and hope ran directly through it.

"Paul did not view following Jesus as the best way of securing and maximising comfort and prosperity in this life," Pete says. "In fact, it was the total opposite. But he was convinced that unspeakable joy awaited him, and this was his hope, and there was nothing that he wouldn't sacrifice in order to attain it."

In Philippians 1:21, Paul made one of the most extraordinary statements in all of scripture: "For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Imagine being so consumed by the worth of knowing Jesus that death itself looked like a promotion.

The Verse We Keep Ripping From Its Context

Pete raises the example of Jeremiah 29:11 — possibly the most popular verse on Christian merchandise: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future."

It is a beautiful verse. But as Pete points out, "We tear Jeremiah 29:11 kicking and screaming from its context. We decide for ourselves what hope means. What a good plan means. We stick it on screensavers and blindly believe that the Christian life is gonna be a walk in the park and good vibes and goosebumps on a Sunday morning."

The context of Jeremiah 29 is a letter written to exiles. People who had lost everything — their land, their temple, their autonomy. God was not promising them a comfortable life. He was promising them that their suffering had a purpose and that he had not abandoned them. The hope was real, but it was forged in exile, not in ease.

Should We Feel Bad for Stephen?

Pete asks a question that cuts right to the heart of this whole issue: should we feel sorry for Stephen? Was his story a tragedy?

By every worldly measure, yes. He was young, gifted, full of faith, serving his community — and he was killed for it. His life was cut short by the very people who should have recognised what God was doing through him.

But Stephen's final moments tell a different story. Full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God. "Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God," he said. He died with a vision of Jesus that his killers could not see and a peace they could not comprehend.

Was that a tragedy? Or was it the culmination of a life so oriented towards Jesus that even death could not diminish its joy?

The Real Question About Abundant Life

The issue is not whether God gives good gifts. He does. The issue is whether we have made those gifts the main attraction and Jesus the supporting act.

As Pete puts it, "I do believe that at times we've been guilty of foregrounding all of the potential possible side benefits of walking with Jesus. And in doing so, nudged Jesus out to the periphery where we can still enjoy him on our terms, but still live our best life now."

The early church did not follow Jesus because it made their lives better in any material sense. They followed him because they had encountered someone of such surpassing worth that everything else — comfort, safety, reputation, life itself — paled in comparison.

Paul said it as clearly as it can be said: "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ."

Something to Sit With

If everything comfortable about your faith were stripped away tomorrow — the community, the building, the social respectability, the sense of purpose — would Jesus alone be enough? Not Jesus plus a good life. Not Jesus plus answered prayers. Just Jesus.

That is the question Stephen answered with his life. And it is the question the Western church may need to answer sooner than it thinks.