Living in Delight
“God delights in me? Ok…”
For the majority of my life I believed that God’s delight was dependent upon my obedience. Before I continue, let’s look at the definitions of delight. Oxford defines it as “pleasing (someone) greatly or great pleasure. Merriam-Webster defines it as “ a high degree of gratification or pleasure. Joy, extreme satisfaction, something that gives great pleasure, and the power of affording pleasure.”
There is so much we can unpack in these definitions, but since we are talking about God it is also good to look at the Hebrew definition of delight. There are two common Hebrew terms for delight: hepes [pei] “to bend towards [an object or person], and rasa “to delight or take pleasure in.” So I concluded that delight was a posture and/or position to live in and experience.
Here are the things or postures which receive God’s delight according to the bible:
Obedience over sacrifice ( I Sam.15:22).
Acquiescing to His law (in this context asking for his guidance and taking his advice as the creator of all good outcomes for his much-loved-children. Numbers 14:8; Deut. 30:9).
Mercy (Micah 7:18).
Giving Wisdom, Knowledge, Happiness (there is a beautiful and strategic reason why they are capitalized, and I will unpack these reasons in another blog. Ecclesiastes 2:26).
Kindness, justice, righteousness (these give Him GREAT delight. Jeremiah 9:23).
His people (Yup, you and me! Psalms 18:19).
I easily dismissed the last bullet point because I believed I knew He delighted in me, but not unconditionally--not without a caveat. If I was good enough then I would receive his pleasure and he would bend towards me--THEN He would bless me and all that I set my hands to do. It was easy to explain why bad things happened to me and others with this ideology. If I sin then God cannot possibly delight in me.
I am so glad I was wrong…
The Hebrew definitions challenge us to “bend towards” (to incline or be partial to a view or position) delight and it tells us that God, our Father, bends towards us in a perpetual state of pleasure. I decided the only way to truly understand was to place the action in the Word.
Psalms 147:11
“But the Lord bends towards those who revere him, he bends towards those who hope in his steadfast love”
Psalms 37:23
“The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he is inclined to His point of view”
Psalms 149:4
“ For the LORD bends towards his people; he preserves those who acquiesce to his will.
Bend towards what pleases the Lord- His law for your life (Psalms 1:2), bend towards His road map take pleasure in it-- We are to bend towards God’s law because we love it (Ps. 119:41-48), and we should allow the Lord to be the cause of our joy and bend towards his salvation (his safety, HIM--Ps.35:9).
bending towards God, delighting in him, will bring us the ultimate outcome---the desires of our heart (Ps.37:4).
“Bending towards” is not something one person does in the partnership of intimacy--both must do it in order to produce the intended outcomes. One of my favorite things to watch, when I was a child, was square dancing. The dance could not begin until the partners honored each other by bending towards one another with a bow and curtsy. God, our Father, is always delighted with us, always inclined to hear our call, always bending towards us with great pleasure, and always waiting for us to bend towards, take pleasure in, be inclined to hear his will, and delight in his unconditional and always abounding love. We bend Lord--with great wonder and joyful expectation--we bend!
