The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
(Zephaniah 3:17)
I was delighted to wake up at my usual time so that I can make much of this Saturday morning with Father. I had no idea the wonders he had in store for me.
First: it was the enjoyment of being honest with God about what’s going on in my life. It seems that age matures faith (if we are using it) so that a feeling of realness becomes… more REAL(!)… as our relationship with God grows stronger.[1]
Second: this led into the contemplation of what it will be like to enter the divine presence that is fullness of joy, and see the pleasures that are at God’s right hand forevermore,[2] and know that I am not overwhelming anyone with my own unrestricted love and joy and affection and attachment to God as he wipes away the flood of tears and lets me feel what my heart has constantly longed for in this time away from home.[3]
Third: I suddenly found myself in this viewpoint along the trail where I could see by faith that my heavenly Father is happy in loving me. Loving me makes God happy!
It was like the expression, “God is love,” tells me WHO he is, while joy tells me how he feels in loving.[4] He is never not loving me, but my responses leave much to be desired. So, the pictures of the lost sheep causing joy because it is found, and the lost coin causing joy because it is found, and the lost son causing joy because he is found, all tell me that it causes God joy when I am found.[5]
As weird as it sounds and feels, if God gets joy out of loving me, then I must see all his disciplines, and all the prophets calling God’s people to repentance, and the letters to the seven churches where God will let his churches sever relationship with him rather than carry on in pretense, as showing me how God has to get my heart home to him so he can rejoice over me discovering the joyful realness of his rejoicing love.
I hate the seasons of my loved ones running away from home. I know the Beatitudinal Valley is necessary for us all.[6] God is using the prophecy of Zephaniah to comfort me that God’s kindness is leading our people to repentance so he can forgive them.[7] And he is telling me how the story ends so I will have hope in the present journey through attachment-pain.[8]
But today, the voice of Father, impossible to imagine, is singing over me about a time when I will hear him singing over me in absolute realness and perfection. This morning, I am going to surrender to the honesty of being where I’m at in my growing up so I can feel the realness of God being happy to love me as he leads me to be more like Jesus Christ from yesterday’s degree of glory to today’s.[9]
And I smile with the thought that this does not mean he will
love me more, but that he will increase my joy as I delight in his joy. As Jesus
said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and
that your joy may be full.”[10] I
rest in this, and long for its greatest experience, knowing I will one day be
satisfied in absolute perfection, and God will be so happy for me that, “then
I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”[11]
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
[1]
Paul’s description of a maturing church in Ephesians 4:1-16 is saturated with
hope!
[2]
Psalm 16:11
[3]
II Corinthians 6:11-13; Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 7:17; 21:4; Peter refers to us
as “sojourners and exiles” who are in a battle while away from home (I
Peter 2:11), but we “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with
glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (I
Peter 1:8-9 in context of I Peter 1:1-9).
[4]
I John 4:8, 16; all the Scriptures about God’s joy.
[5]
Luke 15 with the three parables of the joy God feels when the lost are found
(restored to love-relationship).
[6]
Matthew 5:1-12
[7]
Romans 2:4; I John 1:9; this is in the context of my belief that God does not
forgive us when we are unrepentant, but kindly works to bring us to repentance
so he can forgive us. I believe this is borne out throughout the Scriptures with
not one example of God or any of his representatives ever forgiving people
while they are unrepentant, but always forgiving them when they are repentant. He
wants me to see his kindness while I am being naughty not as an immature grampa
winking at his grandkids sins, but as a loving Father leading his children to
repentance so love-relationship can be restored and return to joy can be
shared.
[8]
The three chapters of Zephaniah tell the story, with 3:17 being the end of the
journey, to live forever in God’s rejoicing love. It is also seen in the Book
of Revelation where God shows all the things we will go through, culminating in
him finally having the new heavens and the new earth where he will be with us
and us with him forever.
[9]
II Corinthians 3:18
[10]
John 15:11 (in context of John 15:1-17; in context of John 13:1-17:26).
[11]
I Corinthians 13:12
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