If you would find happiness and peace in all you do, you must do everything in reference to the glory of God. If you would have peace in your hearts, you must seek earnestly to imitate the life of Christ. Then there will be no need of affecting cheerfulness or of your seeking for pleasure in the indulgence of pride and the frivolities of the world. You will have a serenity and happiness in rightdoing that you can never realize in a course of wrong. Jesus took human nature, passing through infancy, childhood, and youth, that He might know how to sympathize with all and leave an example for all children and youth. He is acquainted with the temptations and weaknesses of children. He has, in His love, opened a fountain of pleasure and joy for the soul that trusts in Him. By seeking to honor Christ and to follow His example, children and youth can be truly happy. They may feel their accountability to labor with Jesus Christ in the great plan of saving souls. If youth will feel their responsibility before God, they will be elevated above everything that is mean, selfish, and impure. Life to such will be full of importance. They will realize that they have something great and glorious to live for. This will have an influence upon youth to make them earnest, cheerful, and strong under all the burdens, discouragements, and difficulties of life, as was their divine Pattern. . . . I entreat of you to ever cultivate thoughtful responsibility to God. The consciousness that you are doing those things which God can approve, will make you strong in His strength; and by copying the Pattern, you may, like Him, increase in wisdom and in favor with God and man."
Those who in everything make God first and last and best are the happiest people in the world. ML 161
If the Saviour of men, the Son of God, felt the need of prayer, how much more should feeble, sinful mortals feel the necessity of fervent, constant prayer. Pr 73
Happy are the people who are in such a state; Happy are the people whose God is the LORD! Psalm 144:15 (New King James Version)