COV LIFE BLOG

Psalm 100 – CLC Mission: Delighting in God

Joy in God matters profoundly because more than any other human response or experience, joy clearly and thoroughly reveals the worth, value, and splendor of whatever it is that evokes it. In other words, enjoyment or delight is the single most effective means for glorifying and magnifying God. Deep, durable delight in God is how he is most glorified and honored in you. God is most glorified in us when we are most pleased, satisfied, fascinated, and enthralled with the splendor of his beauty that can be seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

How is God most glorified in us? Where and in what way is God’s glory most clearly revealed? God is most glorified in us when our knowledge and experience of him ignite a forest fire of joy that consumes all competing pleasures and he alone becomes the treasure that we prize.

Passionate and joyful admiration of God, and not merely intellectual apprehension, is the aim of our existence and thus the essence of true spirituality. If God is to be supremely glorified in us, it’s critically essential that we be supremely glad in him and in what he has done for us in Jesus. This is why we exist; to relish and rejoice in the revelation of divine beauty so that Christ becomes our all-consuming passion and sin turns sour in our souls.

The joy for which we are eternally destined is a state of soul in which we experience and express optimum ecstasy in God. Joy (happiness) is the whole soul resting in God and rejoicing that so beautiful and glorious a Being is ours. We are talking about the ineffable and unending pleasure of blissful union with and the joyful celebration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a joy of such transcendent quality that no persecution or pain or deprivation can diminish, nor wealth or success or prosperity can enhance (see Phil. 4:11).

God created us to glorify himself by enriching us with the joy that flows from a saving encounter with the splendor of his Son. So the goal of our creation was not simply that we might be happy, but happy in beholding God’s own eternal excellencies. Not in beholding our own accomplishments. Not in the enjoyment of our own sensual appetites. Not in the development of a healthy self-esteem or in the acquisition of a four-bedroom home with a three-car garage. God “is the fountain of all felicity” and bids us come and drink!

Sam Storms

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SCRIPTURES FOR THIS WEEK
Read Psalm 100 and consider the beauty of delighting in God. How would you evaluate yourself in delighting in God amidst all the other things that would draw your heart’s attention? How can you grow in this area?

SONG FOR THIS WEEK
All People That On Earth Do Dwell by Keith Getty