Zephaniah 3:17
The Lord your God is with you; He is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you; He will quiet you with His love;
He will rejoice over you with singing.
Delight is a word that isn’t used very often. Delight is one of those words with deep meaning. I looked it up so we could know more fully how God feels about us and this is what I found:
DELIGHT
1) A Feeling of extreme pleasure or satisfaction; JOY
2) To please greatly
3) Something or someone that provides a source of happiness.
Growing up I can’t say that ‘delight’ was in my vocabulary. Aside from a few pictures, the emotion of ‘delight’ was foreign to me. So the thought that my Heavenly Father took delight in my existence was a little hard to grasp. I have always been a “thinker”. When I have questions about random, everyday stuff I ‘google’ it. My head is full of trivial information that I don’t even know where it came from. When I have BIG questions I go to “The Source”. I ask God, himself, to give me the answers to my hearts questions. As a result, my heart is full of TRUTH and I DO know where I got it; My Father! Check out Luke 11:9: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Not only does He want us to ask, He wants us to KEEP asking. Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8, “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find (what you are looking for). Keep on Knocking and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds and everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Did you catch that promise directly from your Father? So when we have questions and need answers we are to ask him and He promises to give us whatever we have asked for. So if that is true – why don’t we know everything and have everything we need? In James 4:2-3, we find the answer to that question (you see how I did that? I took you back to the Source).
James said, “…You have NOT because you ASKED NOT.” As a mom, there is nothing that gives me more joy, more delight, than to give my daughters something I know they really, really, REALLY want. Most of the time, what my daughters want is not monetary. They desire my time, my touch, my ears to listen to their hearts. Sometimes I can show them I have really listened to them by remembering to do something nice for them. I want to be the one who provides this very basic need for my daughters. If it makes me that happy to please my daughters, how much more happy, joyous, delighted – must God the Father be to know that He provides for us exactly what we want and need? Because we are God’s daughters, he wants to provide for us.
In Psalms 37:4 it says, “Take delight in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Because God created us, HE KNOWS US. We may go through life feeling unloved, without friends, lonely, and well, UN-known. But our heavenly father knows what we need and gives us a very specific example in the way He acknowledged Jesus on the day he was baptized.
Let’s look at that day in Jesus’ life. He was about 30 years old, he knew what his purpose was on this earth and he knew it was time to begin the work. I imagine the human side of Jesus was nervous to get started, anxious about what was in his future, and a bit overwhelmed at the sheer size of his job. He had come TO SAVE THE WORLD! Where do you start? Who do you start with?
Jesus started at the beginning. He decided to do the job he came to this earth for. The first public act of his obedience was to be baptized, so he went to see his cousin, John. (You should really go read that story. It’s awesomely cool)
Matthew 3:16-17 takes us to the next part of Jesus’ story.
16) After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. 17) And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.”
God gave Jesus the 3 things everyone needs to hear:
1) God claimed Jesus as His own son. “This is my SON.”
2) God proclaimed His love for Jesus. “Whom I love.”
3) God exclaimed His Joy, Delight, and Extreme Pleasure with his Son. “I am very pleased with him.”
I imagine that Jesus needed to know who he belonged to; who loved him and who was pleased with him to be able to begin the job God sent him to do. If Jesus needed it, so do we. It’s OK to admit that we need to belong, be loved and be delighted in.
That’s how God made us!!!!!
“Realizing God’s delight in your existence is a wonderful ego booster. Your Creator, the Father of everything, is always happy to hang out with you.” (page 18, A Daughter’s Worth) God delights in our delighting in Him. God values our valuing Him. Who can tell me where the verse is in the BIBLE where it says, “We love him because He first loved us”? (Trivia Contest – Leave the answer in the comment section) 🙂
God already has claimed us as his daughters. He has already proven he loves us. He gives us the desires of our hearts because it brings Him joy and pleasure. Now it’s up to us ….
Let Us Pray:
Heavenly Father, I thank you for being my dad, my papa, my ABBA. Thank you for loving me, for telling the world that you love me and for providing everything that I need. I am honored to be your daughter. I accept the place you have reserved for me in your family. My earthly family doesn’t always look or feel very loving and secure, but I know your love for me never fails.
Father, continue to change my heart as I draw closer to you. I love you daddy. AMEN
<3 Teresa Bolme
VIDEO Mighty To Save sung by Laura Story (scripture taken from Zephaniah 3:17
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