Orange Moon Monday, March 9, 2026 “More Pleasure” Part 2 - “Creator and Creature”

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe

"More Pleasure"   

Part 2 - "Creator and Creature"

"The Lord taketh pleasure in His people."

(Psalm 149:4)

     In Part 1, we proposed that God will forever find more pleasure in us than we find in Him, suggesting that His infinite emotions, sensibilities, and perceptions toward us far transcend our own toward Him.  This aligns with a corollary confirmation of our proposal, namely, the vast gulf between God as Creator, and ourselves as His creatures.

    "Know ye that the Lord, He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture" (Psalm 100:3).

    In the Lord Jesus Christ, God has drawn us far closer to Himself than we can presently imagine.  He literally dwells within us through the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 3:16).  Our Heavenly Father made us to serve as His spiritual dwelling place, a reason for being that transcends the purpose for all other created entities and things.  Indeed, in His prayer just before the cross, the Lord Jesus asked for perhaps the most wondrous of all blessings:

    "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me, for Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me.  And I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:24-26).

    Breathtaking.  Heart stilling.  Overwhelming.  Closer than seems possible, as God has literally given Himself to dwell within us through the grace of the Lord Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Our Creator dwells nearer to us than our next breath.  However, we never forget that He remains our Creator and we remain His creatures, a gulf of being and existence that cannot never be crossed.  As a dear friend often says, "God is God.  And we ain't!"  Nothing could be truer, and nothing more bears witness to how much more He finds pleasure in us than we find in Him.  "God is greater than man" declared Elihu to Job in the absolute champion of all understatements (Job 33:12).  He is, and as Creator, the Lord must always be viewed in His transcendent superiority - including His experience of relationship.  

     God knows us infinitely more than we will ever know Him. He sees into the very depths of our being.  Thus, the simplest response of our hearts to Him in faith and faithfulness through Christ glimmers as a bright and shining light that blesses Him in immeasurable measure.  Think of the Lord's term of endearment regarding Daniel, who responded to Him so beautifully through the leading and enabling of the Holy Spirit…  "O Daniel, a man greatly beloved" (Daniel 10:11).  Daniel greatly loved God.  But God's "greatly" love of His servant surpassed all devotion and pleasure in the relationship than Daniel ever knew, or ever will know. 

     As it does for all of God's sons and daughters in Christ…

     "But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:4-7).

    Let us settle it within our hearts, even as it may boggle our minds.  Our Father will never please us as we can please Him.   The greatness of His heart, mind, and capacity to experience relationship assures us of this wonder.  We do not have to completely understand the truth.  Believing it, however, will lead us in our fellowship with the Lord to new and glorious responses to Him.  Yes, if we can so please the Heart we have all so grieved, and if that pleasure cannot be measured… well, nothing more need be said, except that this moment offers the opportunity…

"I will praise Thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify Thy name for evermore."

(Psalm 86:12)

Tomorrow: The Price and the Pleasure

Weekly Memory Verse 

  I will praise Thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify Thy name for evermore.

(Psalm 86:12)

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Orange Moon Saturday, March 7, 2026 “More Pleasure” Part 1 - “His Delight”

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe

"More Pleasure"   

Part 1 - "His Delight"

     Of all the mysteries that presently astound us regarding God's desire for our fellowship, and all that doubtless await us in eternity, none more challenge our understanding than a truth that seems most unlikely.  Namely, both now and forevermore, our Heavenly Father will find more pleasure in our relating to Him than we find in His relating to us.

    "The Lord taketh pleasure in His people" (Psalm 149:4).

   I hope you reacted in reading the proposal with as much pause as I did in writing it.  How can such a thing be true?  How can creatures such as ourselves bring "more pleasure" to our glorious Creator than He brings to us?  Scripture answers the question in a number of ways we will consider over the next few days.

-1-

"Infinite"

    First, God's thoughts, emotions, and sensibilities are of infinite measure and degree, transcending our own in ways we cannot fathom.  The simplest divine thought. The seemingly least intense emotion.  The slightest sense.  All span so far beyond our capacities that we would be hopelessly overwhelmed by a mere moment of experiencing their vastness.  Thus, when we attempt to comprehend the measure and degree of God's thoughts, emotions, and senses toward us, we fall to our faces in realization that we will never begin to find pleasure in Him as He finds in us.  "The love of Christ… passeth knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19).

    Consider the simplest prayer, perhaps, a sincere "Thank You" expressed in the moment.  We may or may not feel emotion in our offering.  We can be sure, however, our Heavenly Father does in the receiving.  "The prayer of the upright is His delight" (Proverbs 15:8).  "Delight?"  An infinite God, perfectly and completely fulfilled in Himself, nevertheless delights in the utterance of imperfect and needy creatures such as ourselves?  The realization, believed and embraced, will change our understanding of prayer, and even more, our walk with God in personal fellowship.  By human comprehension, we should seemingly not matter to Him at all.  In divine thought, emotion, and sensibility, however, we matter to Him so infinitely much that He purposed the cross of Calvary to make possible the hearing of words we express to Him: "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19).

   It is easy to unintentionally view prayer more in regard to our experience than that of God.  Certainly, fellowship with Him does much and far more for us than we will ever know.  As creatures, however, we bear limited capacity to respond, especially in comparison to our Father's full attention, devotion, and response when we turn to Him.  Prayer is about us in 1% of its meaning, significance, and importance (a vast and vital 1%).  Prayer is far more about God in 99% of its glorious reality of fellowship between the Creator and the creatures that mean so much to Him.  It matters much what we experience in the communion of Heart to heart.  It matters far more what our Lord experiences of "delight" in our prayers.

   As suggested, we may initially be taken aback by such a proposal.  But then we open our Bibles and find how true it is that God takes pleasure in His people.  Or rather, an infinite, eternal God immeasurably rejoices when we turn our hearts toward Him through the grace of the Lord Jesus.  This moment offers the opportunity to please the Heart so worthy of any pleasure we can offer…

"Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord."

(Psalm 118:19)

"Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more."

(I Thessalonians 4:1)

Weekly Memory Verse 

   Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

 (I Peter 5:8)

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