One of the most misunderstood concepts a Christian deals with is the way to have fun, enjoy life, and please God at the same time. An earlier blog post I wrote, called The Beauty Of Holiness, talked about some of the misconceptions that we have when it comes to describing holiness.

This misconception has spilled over into how we entertain ourselves in many Christian circles. Certain denominations and movements declare what you can’t do, while those within the denominations either go with it, do it in secret, or rebel openly against it.

What is fun? For you the reader, what activities do you consider to be fun? Has your past influenced what you do for fun now? What about your environment? Does God even CARE about whether or not you wanna have fun in life?

To even think that God wouldn’t care about whether or not we have fun is not only foreign to Him, I’d say it’s a travesty. I say this, because God created all things for His glory, and everything we enjoy in life is a living example of the complete joy we find primarily in Him.

For example, it would be extremely weird for God to make dolphins who are extremely playful, yet make humans and assume we shouldn’t have fun. Alot of Christians focus so much on what you can’t do, that they don’t see the value and fullness of what can be done, and we’re deceived into thinking that it can’t be fun unless the majority of the world promotes it as such.

There’s so many things that clamor for our attention and entertainment, and we draw influences from them. For example; if all you’ve been surrounded with when enjoying yourself is rowdy parties, when you get saved, you can be tempted to think that you left fun behind in order to please God AND THAT HE EVEN APPROVES THAT MINDSET.

There’s no way that humans can devise activities that are more creative and fun than the God who made the ‘playpen’ they run around in. God is way bigger than us as Christians only settling for derivatives of worldly fun, which aren’t wrong, but for many are corny. Look at some of the Scriptures that describes God’s people in festive situations. Others have calls for them to enjoy themselves in general, many of them even involving alcohol or strong drink. I also added one that regards worshiping God as a fun and joyous occasion:

Ecclesiastes 2:24, 3:13, 8:15
Psalms 149:3, Deuteronomy 14:26, James 1:17

The few verses in Ecclesiastes speak about enjoying the fruit of your labor, as well as enjoying your life in general because God gave it to you.

So I commended enjoyment, because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry; for this will remain with him in his labor all the days of his life which God gives him under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 8:15)

The verse in James is a favorite of mine, because it says “every good and perfect gift comes from the Father”, and it really sums up for me why God would be invested in His image bearers having a blast in life!

God being holy doesn’t remove how fun He is, therefore the life you live as a Christian doesn’t require you to stop having fun. However, it will influence how your interests in life change, because you’ll be more sensitive to His standards. This isn’t SO foreign to us, look at how much our activities change JUST because we got older? How about your thoughts on fun changing based on the people you’re constantly around.

How many times can you recall that your mind changed on things that you didn’t think you’d like, and now you wonder how you lived without it? Why wouldn’t things change once you surrender to Christ?

When you commit your life into the hands of Jesus; the Holy Spirit fills you, changes you, breathes life into you, and writes the law of Christ on your heart. This informs your conscience and transforms your sensitivity to what you engage in. Check out what this verse says about lives that used to be contrary to the ways of God but then were changed:

“For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. ⁴ But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, ⁵ not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, ⁶ whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior,..” (Titus 3:3-6)

This might not be everyone reading this, you may have grown up in the Church like I did, but no matter your background you understand how things change when Jesus is Lord of your life. It’s important to zoom in on that word pleasure specifically, because it points out how FUN it felt, regardless of whether or not God was pleased with it. Sex outside of marriage is fun and pleasing, but is still fornication. Hard partying (debauchery) and drunkenness is fun, some of you may even have fond memories with people… but it’s still displeasing. Some of you know how wild them dances at the parties get, and they were fun and made you feel GOOD after it was done.

Yet, when the grace of God impacted you, and you were saved, things changed. The things you used to do that you never considered wrong makes you go, “Hol up..chill, that’s not fun anymore”. Yet…this doesn’t always happen right away. Sometimes your friends who still do those things hit you up, and you may even think about it, even end up going to the very place with them. Yet you feel the tug of the Holy Spirit imploring you to please God in what you do, and you may even feel like you can’t have fun anymore. By now we’ve seen that’s not the case, and there are so much more things that you can do than the things you can’t do when in relationship to God.

Discover new interests with people that’ll challenge your thoughts on what you’re used to doing. For example, you can check out some jazz clubs. Do you wanna be random and learn/experience something new? Take a painting or cooking lesson! Look up group activities on sites like Pinterest, Meetup or just Google and make things happen, and by the Spirit informing your conscience, you’ll be able to make the right judgement on what to pick. Be imaginative!

You can still have a nice party WITH dancing, and depending on your convictions, alcohol without it being sexual and with drunkenness. You can play such a variety of music that feels good, and keeps God’s standard on top. There’s so many options for you to launch on discovery, and friendships that God has blessed you with to enjoy your life. You don’t have to wait for your church group to plan activities to do in order to feel saved when doing things, the world is God’s playground and He placed you in it!

We’ve all had those moments with friends or people we loved, that when our time together was done, we were SO refreshed and energized just by being present and doing something fun. Can you now see God being interested in this, and even causing it? Don’t be deceived by what you see, or even what people tell you. Sin is never more fun than life in God, and what you used to think of as fun, you realize actually sucked the life out of you. Having the standard of God as the determining factor in what you do does NOT take away things for you to do, it shows you how much you’ve been missing.

So, let’s have some fun shall we?!

This blog post has been in the works for about a year as I left it alone until I felt led to finish it, this is a post that I read this week that gave me the impetus to finish it! It’s by Randy Alcorn and is called Why We Don’t Need To Choose Between Happiness and Holiness