Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes' Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness

by Bobby Jamieson

WINNER OF THE CHRISTIANITY TODAY BOOK AWARD AND THE GOSPEL COALITION BOOK AWARD • How can you be happy? Who can show you the path to happiness? Pastor Bobby Jamieson shatters our illusions of what will make us happy and blazes a surprisingly simple trail to resilient joy.

“Bobby Jamieson brings an ancient text to bear on the challenge of living fully. The result is fresh, direct, and enlivening.”—Matthew B. Crawford, New York Times bestselling author of Shop Class as Soul Craft

Does it feel like you should be happy, and want to be happy, and try to be happy, but somehow you just can’t be happy? One way to be unhappy is not getting what you most want. Another way is to get all you could possibly want…only to discover that everything is not enough.

The writer of Ecclesiastes did it all. He had money, education, possessions, sex, and power—everything the modern world promises will bring joy—and yet he was never satisfied. And from his discontent, we benefit and find a surprisingly simple trail to lasting joy.

In this thoughtful exploration of Ecclesiastes, which speaks to all of us who feel restless and unfulfilled, Pastor Bobby

• teaches us how placing life on an eternal horizon empowers us to experience joy no matter our circumstances
• puts Ecclesiastes into dialogue with profoundly insightful critics of modernity to show that life in the modern West is a conveyor belt toward burnout
• helps us dismantle our false hopes one by one, clearing ground for true satisfaction

Poetic yet straightforward, philosophical yet accessible, Everything Is Never Enough frees us to stop grasping at broken promises and start receiving life as a gift of God’s grace.

291 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 22, 2025

About the author

Bobby Jamieson is a Ph.D. student in New Testament and affiliated lecturer in New Testament Greek at the University of Cambridge. He and his wife are members of Eden Baptist Church, and they live in Cambridge with their three children. Bobby previously served as assistant editor for 9Marks.

See also R.B. Jamieson

Reviews

[Brandon Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book of the year.
My wife and I tried to do a study in Ecclesiastes a few years back but the book we were working through (although by a great pastor and writer) wasn't working for us. As we head into working through Ecclesiastes next year as a church I needed to dive into it again. Jamieson nails it. I can't recommend it more. Truthful, theological, pastoral and best of all encouraging, particularly in a busy and hard season where being happy is less common than just "being".

A couple of the conclusions:

"Happiness comes from knowing God, submitting to God and living for God. One day for all who trust in Jesus, happiness will come from living not just for God but with God, in a world perfectly remade by God."

"Everything is never enough. Learning that truth keeps you from trying to make anything in this life enough to fill your heart, and it aims your heart at the God alone who is enough and more than enough to satisfy you forever."

[Robert Danforth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent overview of Ecclesiastes. The author’s analogy of three levels is very helpful. This is a deep but not too deep book.

[Zak Schmoll · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a useful commentary on Ecclesiastes, a book that people sometimes have a hard time with. In terms of absolute word count, it provides a lot more questions than answers, but that is kind of the point. The author points out that people still search for meaning in a variety of ways, just like they always have and like they will continue to do into the future. The main question is how do we handle the absurdity of what happens in our world and make it fit within some type of meaningful framework. It is not really a Christmas book, but also, this is the time of year when people do wonder about what makes for a good life and what their purpose is. I enjoyed this very much