ENTERING INTO THE LORD'S DELIGHT

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.

Great is our Lord and mighty in power; His understanding has no limit.

The Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground.

Sing to the Lord with grateful praise; make music to our God on the harp.

He covers the sky with clouds; He supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills. He provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they call. His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior; the Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.

Psalm 147:1-11

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

We all have things we delight in, things we enjoy in life, things that are pleasing to us.

For me, there are two things in particular.

First, I love sports, especially when it involves any team from Pittsburgh as I grew up just north of there or Manchester United, my favorite soccer (or football if you call it that) team. I enjoy watching games on television and occasionally live when I get a chance to go.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know my other passion is the Lord and just because this is the second item mentioned, don’t think that sports somehow are ahead of the Lord in my life. That could be no further from the truth.

I delight in the Lord and in all the service He calls me to do whether it is singing solo or with the choir, teaching adult Sunday School, Middle School Youth, or Pee Wee Church, getting to preach on occasion as I have had the privilege to do a dozen or so times, or writing The Christian Walk blog each day. I also delight in talking to others about the Lord as well as listening to others speak about Him, whether that is a sermon preached by a pastor or a testimony from someone who the Lord has blessed in some way.

That’s me. So what do you delight in? I hope you’ll take a moment to leave a comment at the end of this devotion and tell about it. The Lord did this for us already in the Bible, making sure we knew what He delighted in. We should take some time to know what pleases Him, don’t you think? Look at these words from the 147th Psalm:

The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.

Here we find two things that we can do that will bring the Lord joy.

First, He enjoys people who fear Him, those who respect His power and authority. The Lord does not accept being slighted or ever being placed second. He demands and deserves our complete devotion just as He completely and perfectly devotes Himself to us.

Secondly, He enjoys those who place their hope in Him and His unfailing love.

I love the word unfailing. It’s hard if not impossible to find anything in our life experience that doesn’t fail us in some way or another. It’s a comfort that the Almighty God of all things never fails us. Never.

He is always with us, always ready to help us, and He always does it out of love, a love that never fails that was no more expressed than when God gave His only Son Jesus for us to pay the price for our sins and offer a way to salvation for those who would believe in Jesus as Savior.

These truths are the foundation of our hope as we live life day by day. The truth about Jesus is the foundation of our hope that lasts forever.

And so we enter into the Lord’s delight by respecting and revering Him as well as placing our hope in Him and His everlasting love. But the scriptures still have much more to say about what the Lord delights in. Consider the following:

1. I will praise God’s name in song and glorify Him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hooves. Psalm 69:30-31

The Lord loves it when we worship Him, lifting our voices to Him in praise and magnifying and glorifying Him above all things. When we consider all He has done, all He is currently doing, and the glorious future we have through His salvation promise, how can we not be buoyed up in thanksgiving unto Him?

2. I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship. Romans 12:1

We need to understand that when we choose to follow the Lord in our lives, we are enlisting ourselves to His service. He wants us to labor for Him, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, giving Him our all just as He gave His all in Jesus. When we do offer ourselves fully to carry out His will, asking Him to use us in whatever way He desires to further His kingdom, then we will live in a way that is pleasing in His eyes.

3. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God. Romans 14:17-18

Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8:8

Jesus said this in Matthew, Chapter 6, verse 24:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

We have a choice to make in life. We can choose to serve ourselves (sometimes referred to in the scriptures as the flesh) or we can serve the Lord. One way (the flesh) is self serving and the other is self sacrificing. One leads to sin (the flesh) while the other leads to righteousness and holiness. And only one of the two pleases God and it’s not the flesh.

So which master have you decided to serve in your life?

My hope is that it is the righteousness, peace, and joy found in the Holy Spirit, the Counselor and Comforter that Jesus promised would be with us in life. For if we serve the Lord in Spirit, then we will serve Him in truth, and in turn, He will live in such a way that is pleasing in His sight.

4. And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6

One thing I like about the Bible and proclamations about the Lord is that there are great absolutes given, statements that leave no room for debate. This passage qualifies as one of those because we are told that it is impossible to please God without having faith. He expects us to place our trust in Him and Him alone. Although we don’t see the Lord, we know He is with us through faith and we believe that he is going to fulfill every promise He made, even when we’re in circumstances that we don’t understand.

It makes sense doesn’t it? I mean, why would the Lord delight in someone who didn’t have any faith in Him? Would it be pleasing to you if someone acted as if they had no faith in you? It has never pleased me when I have experienced it. And as God’s word tells us, it doesn’t please the Lord either.

So there you have it. A whole litany of things that we can do to bring the Lord delight. He has told us how to please Him. Now all we have to do is:

Surrender ourselves to Him, place our faith and hope in Him, and see Him as the Master of our lives. When we do all these things, we will be well on our way to always finding ourselves in His favor.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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