Monday, June 8, 2015

“What We Mean To Him”


    Think of the human being whose presence, relationship, and fellowship mean the most to you, and with whom time spent you consider to be a blessing beyond measure and imagining.  Then, realize that your enjoyment of that person pales - exponentially - in comparison to how much pleasure and delight your presence, relationship, and fellowship mean to God.

    "The Lord taketh pleasure in His people" (Psalm 149:4).
    "The prayer of the upright is His delight" (Proverbs 15:8). 

   When we think of the gift of communion with God given to us through the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, our natural tendencies prompt thoughts of what such a bond of love means to us.  This is as it should be.  Our Heavenly Father desires us to "rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, rejoice!" (Philippians 4:4).  The more sanctifying, God-centered thought, however, involves the wonder of what we mean to Him.  Countless Biblical paths of consideration lead us into the glory of such wonder, the most important of which escorts us to Mt. Calvary.  There, our Heavenly Father sent His Son to suffer and die so that He might thereafter send His Spirit to dwell with and within us forevermore.  Christ shed the blood of His physical body so that He might shed His Spirit upon His spiritual body, the church.  "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).

    Such Light, shining from the darkness of the cross, best illuminates the degree and measure of how much our hearts mean to God.  At Calvary, the Father smote His beloved Son with wrath so that He might bestow upon us the grace and mercy that makes possible the relationship with us that David and Solomon declare to be God's "pleasure" and "delight".  God the Father and God the Holy Spirit abandoned God the Son as He died on the cross so that a wondrous promise might grace those who trust the Lord Jesus: "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5).  This is how much our hearts mean to God, and how much He delights and finds pleasure in us.  He desires to live with and within us forevermore, and went to the furthest extreme to make possible and actual our hearts as His home.

     I don't begin to understand this.  I suspect that you share the same wonder and amazement.  This is precisely the response that should grace our hearts when considering such blessed truth.  Wonder best characterizes the proper realization of such grace, and then the grateful determination that if God finds pleasure and delight in our fellowship, then by all means let us bless His heart with our hearts!  We don't have to understand such mystery.  We just have to believe it to be true, and then seek always to maintain in our hearts the truth that we possess the capacity to bring joy to the One so worthy of it.  This moment offers such opportunity, and let us avail ourselves of wonder, the wonder that "The Lord taketh pleasure in His people" and "The prayer of the upright is His delight."

"Let Me hear thy voice, for sweet is thy voice."
(Song of Solomon 2:14)

Weekly Memory Verse
    Godliness with contentment is great gain.
(I Timothy 6:6)
    

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