Delight-Full

Delight:  noun – a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment; joy; rapture; something that gives great pleasure

verb – to give great pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment to; please highly

What delights you?  What fills you with a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment?  When’s the last time you felt rapture?? (I don’t think I have ever used the word “rapture” pertaining to anything in my life.)  Rapture means ecstatic joy.  Ecstasy means overpowering emotion.

Ok, enough with the dictionary.  You get my point, or rather my question – What delights you?  Maybe the better question is “what delights do you pursue?”.  When we have something in our lives that gives us overpowering emotions of joy and pleasure, we usually don’t just wait around hoping that one day it will happen again by chance.  We think about it and work it out, if possible, to have that experience as often as possible.

One of the things in my life that delights me is a granddaughter that lives nearby.  She doesn’t have to “do” anything for me to find great joy in her.  My joy is there because she exists.  From the moment of her birth I have had this intense, word-defying love for her.  I know that humanly she is not perfect.  But she is to me.  I am aware she makes mistakes, and sometimes I am the one that must correct her.  However, this has absolutely nothing to do with my view of her “perfectness”.  It remains intact.

From the moment of her birth, she has loved me back.  She has desired to spend time with me allowing me to lavish my love on her, dry a few tears, comfort a few bumps and bruises.  We giggle and laugh and play.  We find great delight in each other and we make plans to be together as often as possible.

I also have another, younger granddaughter that lives nearby.  A beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed toddler.  She doesn’t like me. We don’t see her as often as we would like and I think she’s a little scared of me; this relationship is a work in progress.  Surely if she would get to know me she would recognize all the love I long to lavish on her!  I am confident that we will be friends one day, but she will decide when that time is right.  Until then, I will look at that beautiful face and adore her from afar.

Do you know what brings God delight, an overpowering emotion of joy?  Do you know what gives Him pleasure?  The fact that you exist. He delights in you.  He created you for the sole purpose of lavishing His love on you, giving you great delight in Him.  When we get a revelation of this fact, we plan and work out time to be with Him and we find delight – a overpowering emotion of joy – for ourselves!

1 Samuel 13:14 says that the Lord sought out David to be King because he was “a man after His own heart”.  David knew that God loved Him, and David sought God.  David spent much of his time in praise and worship.  He was far from perfect.  But he wrote “By this I know that You favor and delight in me, because my enemy does not triumph over me” Psalm 41:11 and “The steps of a good man are directed and established by the Lord when He delights in his way – and He busies Himself with his every step.” Psalm 37:23.  David knew that God delighted in Him so much that God was busy planning his steps!!

I don’t believe that we can truly “delight ourselves in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4) until we first grasp that He delights in us.  Just as we are.  How can a perfect, holy God find great joy in us when we are so imperfect?  Jesus.  Jesus took all our imperfections, all our sin, on Himself so that we could be presented before God blameless.  God looks at us through Jesus and sees us as perfect!  I don’t know about you, but this brings me great delight!  Jesus said “I have told you these things, that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy and gladness may be of full measure and complete and overflowing.”  (John 15:11)  He made the way for us to be delight-full!

So today, which child are you?  The one who takes the love offered no matter how imperfect you see yourself?  Or are you His child that He is loving from afar because you won’t get close?  He’s waiting…..