Happiness is vitally important to the human experience, but in spite of our culture’s conviction of the primacy of happiness, and in spite of our culture’s current ability to easily acquire those items and experiences we all are convinced have the ability to make us happy, we now find ourselves in the position of being profoundly and chronically unhappy.
The problem, from the Christian viewpoint, is that God has created us to be happy only in him, and that all attempts to find happiness outside of him are doomed to failure. However, by locating our ultimate value – our ultimate source of happiness – in God we will find happiness in him and in all the things he’s given us.
In other words, if we pursue God instead of happiness we will have God and be happy, but if we pursue happiness over God we’ll get neither.