Soul-Sight and True Happiness

God has planted the grace of faith in us, that our souls might be carried to himself, and not rely upon earthly things, which are only as good as we do not trust in them. If we trust in friends, or estates, more than God, we make them idols. There is still left in man's fallen nature a desire for pleasure, profit, and whatever the natural self esteems as good. Because the soul is infected with a contrary state, the desire of gracious comforts and heavenly delights is altogether lost. Man has a soul capable of excellency, and desirous of it, and the Spirit of God in and by the word reveals where true excellency is to be had; but man's fallen nature has left God and seeks its satisfaction elsewhere, in carnal friendship and the like. The soul goes against its own God-given desires, until the Spirit of God reveals where these things are to be truly had. By grace God turns the stream of a man's soul into its right current and man's nature is brought to its right frame again. Grace and sinful nature seek the same general object of comfort, only the sinful nature seeks comfort in broken cisterns, and grace in the fountain. The beginning of our true happiness is in the discovery of true and false objects, and as the soul clearly sees what is best and safest, and steadfastly relies upon it. For the soul is as that which it relies upon; if on vanity, it becomes vain; if upon God and Christ, it becomes a spiritual and heavenly soul. It is no small privilege which the Lord grants to some, when he crosses their greedy appetites after earthly comforts, so that he may refresh them with pleasures of a higher nature. Alas! What is the delight that we have in friends or children and the like, compared to the joy of God's presence and the pleasures at his right hand forevermore.= (Psa. 16:11)?

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
Experience Triumphing, Works, vol. 7, pp. 409-10
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