As I watched a close-scoring college basketball game, the camera zoomed in on a scene that transported my mind from March Madness to the mysteries of life instantly. At the center of the screen a very good basketball player stood sideways with his left arm showing from his elbow up, along with a frustrating look that comes with having fouled out of the game. I wish I had a picture of his left arm. In the middle of his bicep the name Sharee was tattooed in a scripted font. While that was not unusual, it was the X that went through it that intrigued me. But, what left me pondering the issues of life was actually two inches below that where the name Katie was tattooed. Evidently, Katie was current because she had no X. This player was so infatuated with Sharee that he chose to put his affections for her on public display using a mostly permanent application. It never dawned on him that he might not always feel that way. That was a couple of years ago. By now, names may be down to his wrist.

While a few of you reading this undoubtedly have a tattoo, I’m assuming most of you do not. It doesn’t matter, really. You likely carry the mindset of someone who does, whether it is on your skin or not. I ended up reading an article shortly after this that introduced me to a field of research called affective forecasting (Jon Gertner, The Futile Pursuit of Happiness), leading me to a deeper study. As with any subject containing a measure of truth, I find that the Bible had said the same thing another way already. While the Bible is the definitive authority on the subject, where current studies and research come in handy is illustrating timeless truth, however unintentionally, through the lens of the world we live in. As a pastor committed to making sure people see God’s Word to be as relevant today as the day it was written, these types of fields and studies are often a goldmine. I found affective forecasting to be that type of application, and it explained the tattoos on the basketball player to a T.

How? And what does it have to do with tattoos and you? Affective forecasting says that “when it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong.” It studies how accurately people believe something will make them feel versus the feelings they actually encounter. It’s the difference between how you think you’ll feel when your favorite college football team wins the national championship, and how you actually feel a few days later. It is measuring how you think that new car will make you feel, then taking account of how accurate you were a month after signing the loan. As it turns out, most of our actions are based on our assessment of what we think the emotional consequences will be. And more times than not, we’re wrong. Have you ever noticed how a child answers the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” They come up with some crazy things sometimes. The reason is because they can only answer the question, “What do you want to be now?” They can’t answer for later because they do not understand later.

Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard, is taking the lead in this study and wrote the book Stumbling on Happiness detailing what he has discovered with the help of three other distinguished colleagues from prestigious universities. Consider some of Gilbert’s findings that Gertner quotes in his article, and see if you don’t agree that he is onto something. We tend to overestimate the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions to future events. They are usually less exciting than we imagined, nor do they last as long as we estimated. Both good and bad events proved less intense and more transient than was predicted. We’re generally unable to recognize that we adapt to new circumstances and therefore fail to incorporate that into our decisions. People who lost a limb determined that their lives would basically be over, yet underestimated how well they would adapt to the challenge and enjoy a measure of happiness they didn’t think possible.

I noticed this in my family a few years ago. Upon moving back to Stillwater to pastor Bible Baptist Church, we purchased some property where we planned to build a house one day. After a few years living next to the church, we moved into a very cheap well-worn mobile home on our property. My famous words to my dear wife were, “Honey, it will only be a year while I build the house!” For the next three years, she homeschooled three kids in three different grades within an 800-square-foot living space for five people. Hosting guests was always a challenge. We dreamed of the day the house would be done and we would have more space to host people and the kids could have their own bedrooms. Now, our wraparound porch alone could hold three of those trailers. We have everything we want and longed for, but I have noticed that the happiness factor hasn’t changed. While we wanted more space, we had a very happy family in some very cramped quarters. We still have a very happy family. What we dreamed would make such a difference did, but not in the areas we thought nor to the extent that we imagined. So now, the same level of happiness is simply costing a lot more money!

Besides in my own life and family, I have watched this lived out in others whom I pastor. When looking at the prospects of having a disadvantaged child, parents can look at the future as bleak and destitute of the happiness that “normal” families enjoy. Yet, they find that their fears did not produce near as dire a circumstance as they imagined. In fact, I’ve noticed their happiness sometimes goes deeper than that of those so-called “normal” families, even while the challenges proved real and weariness still came. I’ve noticed marriages where mates became convinced that they would be so much happier separated than trying to work it out yet again. More times than not, it simply didn’t pan out like they thought it would.

In our college town we see young men and women constantly enamored with the happiness a college degree and ensuing career will provide them, only to find out that they miscalculated the true satisfaction they imagined. Families succumb to the prediction that another job with a significant raise will take them to the next level of happiness, then move from a place where God was working mightily, only to find they overestimated the fulfillment of an additional $20,000 a year and lost their children in the process. Many youth dream of being out of the house and running their own lives so that they can maximize their pleasure and happiness, then discover they weren’t so good at gauging what would be truly satisfying. The applications are endless.

One of the things Gilbert’s research does is illustrate what God already said millenniums ago. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9 One illustration of this is how Elijah learned the problems of affective forecasting under a juniper tree. He had just gone through one of the most exciting scenes in scripture as God rained down fire upon his altar, while leaving the prophets of Baal with an altar void of even the slightest spark. Then, after the destruction of those prophets, the rain Jeremiah had halted much earlier came back in abundance. But, then a messenger revealed to him that Jezebel planned to revenge the prophets’ death on him by that same time the next day. His emotions informed him that he had had enough and he requested God to take his life, instead of Jezebel killing him. He estimated the result to be unbearable and that there was no way he could survive it. He couldn’t imagine going on another step. But, Elijah was looking at later through the lens of now, which simply wasn’t accurate. He looked down the road through the discouraged lens he wore at the time and thought he knew how it would be. He missed it because the dire consequences he assumed were coming never transpired since God had a greater plan.

One of the reasons you need God’s Word in the form of preaching, your own study, and counsel from the wisest around you is because it helps minimize the effects of affective forecasting. It grounds you back to what is real and to a God who sees your current circumstance and mood through a much more accurate lens. The scripture helps you sort out what brings true satisfaction. Some messages you hear from the pulpit might seem bent on stealing your fun, but maybe they’re actually doing you a big favor by bringing you down to realistic expectations for your next big thing. Some of you might have a problem looming big on the horizon. You can only imagine the damage it is going to do and the difficulty of going through it. Yet, saints of all ages have testified what Daniel Gilbert is just now discovering—for some reason it wasn’t as tragic and lasting as they assumed. The grace of God is unexplainable in its ability to bring joy from trouble and trial. Nor will He ever allow any temporal object or fleeting circumstance to bring the joy that only His best gifts can.