delight

When did we let someone run away with this weighty word and drown it in hedonism?
When did we start using it to describe cupcakes and shallow conversations and crude innuendos?

It’s a bit of a fight today, so I’ve got delight on my brain… swimming around there and trying to evade my desperate fingers. I believe, I believe, I believe. Help my unbelief, Lord – that delight is impossible and evasive and illusive and less than rapturous.

I’m stealing it back and believing it means pleasure and enjoyment and rapture. My soul is waking up to pleasure and enjoyment and rapture in the moments where it feels illusive because I am believing delight is more than what we’ve made it. 

I believe God wrote the definition of delight. And He wants it to define my life.

Referencing 2 Corinthians 4:6 in “Future Grace,” John Piper says that, “saving faith in the promises of God must include spiritual delight in the God of the promises. … Delight in the glory of God is not the whole of what faith is. But I think that without it, faith is dead.” And later he explains,

“It is not merely the security of the promises that frees us from motives to sin; but also the sweetness of the beauty of God in the promises. It is the spiritual nature of the things promised. When we apprehend the spiritual beauty or sweetness of what is promised, and delight in it, not only are we freed from the insecurity of greed and fear that motivate so much sin, but we are also shaped in our values by what we cherish in the promise (see 1 John 3:3). If we cherish the beauty of Christ in the gospel, we will cherish behavior – even painful sacrificial behavior – that reflects that beauty.” (p. 203)

But, who is John Piper? Does Scripture really say we should be delighting in the spiritual beauty of what is promised and the One who promises?

Christians often (maybe too quickly) grasp promises and make them ‘givens’ – the kind of phrases you run to when you’re worried the IRS will knock on your door or when you’re afraid of getting fired. “But, God is good and He promises to be good to me!” we might say to ourselves.

Though it is true that God is good, Piper helps us understand how delighting in His promises is different than assuming the benefit of His promises. Our delighting in His promises is freedom – moment by moment – from believing the lies that threaten to entangle us in this world. This delighting in the promises is never an end, but a great catalyst as we delight in the beauty of the One who promises.

Delight pours out delight and the well is infinitely deep!

I’m testing the depths today, but I have not yet found the floor. For every desperate moment I reach deeper, and there I find a delight that frees me from worry and fear. It’s not just my job that needs this deep well of delight – it’s my thoughts, my free time, my Tuesday nights, my phone calls, my lunch hours, my relationships, my family – it’s everything that needs redeemed.

If Christ is my greatest treasure, then everything (ev-er-y-thing) else is a secondary variable. No matter how convinced I am that my day could be ruined with one email, phone call, encounter, fight, bill – there is one most important trump card called Christ. If I dive in to delight in His promises, reveling in the security and weight of them, I will stay swimming in the delight of God’s beauty, that He would promise anything at all.

Are you overwhelmed yet?

Steal the word delight back today
and let LOVE fly like cRaZy

You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
(Psalm 16:11 ESV)

Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
(Psalm 37:4 ESV)

Rejoice in the Lord always,
and again I say rejoice!
(Philippians 4:4)

Also, see this helpful devotional that sparked my thoughts from David Matthis over at Desiring God, “He Wants You Happy.”