Let Delight Fill Your Heart

Key Scripture – “Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalm 37:4

“Key Thought  – “Jesus’ delight in us is now our delight in him. “

In recognising what God has done for us we must accept that other people are more likely to pursue God out of a sense of approval rather than a delight in him. Therefore, the great challenge is help people discover the infinite desire of God’s love and live from the heart of delight God has birthed in us. David, famously declared this in Psalms: –

“Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalm 37:4

God designed and created you for beauty. He redeemed you for beauty.  You were the delight of his heart, the raging fire of his desire and the eternal joy that ravished his plans. He designed the universe for your benefit, so you could marvel at his vastness, desire his goodness, be captivated by his kindness and bask in his beauty.

Jesus Christ was the glory of God revealed to mankind. He was the delight of God’s desire. Everything that was in God was found in Christ and Christ is the first born of every believer. We have been united into the fullness of Christ; his life is now the life that is alive in our veins.

And just as Jesus was the delight of God, we are now the delight of the Father. You now are covered in beauty eternal, cemented in love, clothed in the glory of God, intertwined with him in union down in the innermost depths of your heart; you exist in love, for love has made its kingdom in your heart.

For the servant came to free us from the lies of the enemy that enslaved, confused and trapped mankind. The lies that took away our value, degraded our beauty and trapped us into a prison of shame. He came to demonstrate the goodness of God, to act in the mercy of God and to touch us with the compassion of God.

The promise of God’s delight is the overflowing grace of God demonstrated to us, that while we were lost he entered our world and revealed the love of God to us in Jesus.

I am going to revisit the story in the Bible of Jesus visiting the home of a man he had raised from the dead and spend a few moments viewing it from a different perspective.

“Six days before the Passover celebration began, Jesus arrived in Bethany, the home of Lazarus—the man he had raised from the dead. A dinner was prepared in Jesus’ honour. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who ate with him. 3 Then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance. But Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would soon betray him, said, “That perfume was worth a year’s wages. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.”  Not that he cared for the poor—he was a thief, and since he was in charge of the disciples’ money, he often stole some for himself. Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” – John 12:1-8 (NLT)
Here Mary in an act of selflessness took her most treasured and expensive perfume and poured it over the feet of Jesus.  And then with her hair wiped his feet clean.  The aroma of the perfume filled the house with a fragrance of gratitude and love.

One of the men in the room immediately objected to this extravagant display and speaking his mind he forcefully let everyone know of his displeasure with the act.  But knowing the motives of his heart, Jesus instructed that the infinite worth of love is far more precious that the measurable value of earthly possessions.

For God is boundless in his love to us.  Mary although she probably did not know it, demonstrated in this selfless act the true heart of God. A God that stoops down and loves his creation. An act of unlimited wealth as she poured out her most treasured possession. An act of self-sacrifice that transcended logic, convention, dignity and worldly values.

For God desires us to break free of the patterns of the world and embrace his abundant life.

This simple act of devotion had eternal consequences for bound in the broken alabaster flask was the sweet aroma of heaven and in the same way Noah offered up his sacrifice of thanking for his deliverance from the ark, Jesus offered himself up at the cross to be our pleasing sacrifice to God.

Paul captured the essence of this life of thanksgiving when he wrote to the Ephesians :-

“Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.” – Ephesians 5:2
Jesus was the fragrance offered to God, the sweet perfume of heaven, the infinite delight of God’s heart. His sacrifice was the final sacrifice, with his one act at the cross all sacrifices were wrapped up in his death. His offering was the perfect fragrance that satisfied and pleased for all time the desire of the Father.

And with the Father’s satisfaction comes the Father’s delight. Because God is satisfied with Christ, He is delighted with his finished work and we are now united in Christ in the delight of the father. God is eternally pleased with us because he is eternally pleased with Christ. The overflow of our heart is the delight God has in his son.

When God looks at Christ he sees him as perfect, holy, righteous, glorious, magnificent, conquering, and victorious, and that is exactly how God views you in Christ.

The fragrance of your heart is the presence of Christ and his delight in you is the aroma that captivates your soul.  It is the delight of God that embraces our senses and enraptures the father with our lives; –

“Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God.  This fragrance is perceived by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing.” – 2 Corinthians 2:15
For Jesus’ delight in us is now our delight in him.

The more we dive in to the delight of God we realise our delight in loving him. For the essence of our relationship with God is a heart of delight in his goodness and grace. To live each moment with a heart bursting with love and a tangible affection that is satisfied with his love. The sacrifice of Christ is the satisfaction of our hearts, it accomplished all the purposes of the Father, it fulfilled all God’s plans and it restored our hearts into the intimacy that we had always wanted.

Delighting in God is the root that reaches into the desire of God and draws from the streams of God’s righteousness. Our heart’s hunger to experience the intimate love of our Father. We long to be connected into an oasis of righteousness.

And what does this hunger and thirst for righteousness look like? It means a vibrant, unhindered, perfect fellowship and union with God. A heart that is no longer guilty, condemned, feeling shameful or tormented with doubt, but is secure in God’s love, is peaceful and is in harmony with the presence of God.

For when delight fills our hearts we realise our perfect union with him and God’s presence seeps through our emotions

The Magnitude of God's Goodness

Key Scripture – “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—  to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3 : 17-19)

Key Thought  – “it is one thing to hear a promise but it is another thing completely transforming when we experience the promise.”

The magnitude of God’s goodness is something that God desperately tried to make his children understand.  His interaction with us was always to demonstrate to us the importance of connecting with him in body, soul and spirit.  This is evident in dramatic intervention in the life of Abraham.  In Genesis God had promised Abraham the land of Canaan for his home. Abraham gave Lot his nephew a choice of this land and Lot chose the best land, or more precisely, the land that was more pleasing to his eyes.  Abraham was left with remainder of the land and God then told Abraham to do something quite extraordinary:

“And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him: “Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are—northward, southward, eastward, and westward;  for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered.  Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you.” – Genesis 3:14 – 17 (NKJV)

At first it is easy to over look over the importance of these verses, but within this passage is one of the keys to understanding Abraham’s confidence in God’s word to him.  For God knew that if Abraham experienced the promise it would fully persuade his mind and his heart that he would keep his word.

The advice to “Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width” is unlocking the door of faith into a heart centred trust in all God has promised. Because it is one thing to hear a promise but it is another thing completely transforming when we experience the promise.

Abraham needed to cement the promise of God into his heart and so with every step he took little by little the promise became reality. He was able to feel the soil beneath his feet, he could smell the sweet aroma of the flowers, touch the rich grass, run each grain of sand through his fingers. He could pick, eat and taste the ripe fruit hanging from the trees; he could see the rich abundance of the land and look from mountain tops and marvel at God’s goodness.  With each step his soul would have been captivated and assured that God was faithful and completely trustworthy.

To put it this way, the experience was so powerful to Abraham that when he shut his eyes he could recall and picture the wonder and beauty of the Promised Land. How did he know the fruit of the land was good? Is it because he was told it? Partly, but it was because he ate it, he could close his eyes and imagine its sweet taste.

In real life it is important to mix our response to God’s promises with the realisation in our lives of all he has given us.  Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus understood this, and his prayer was a heartfelt conviction that every believer need to know and experience the love of God.

“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—  to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3  : 17-19)

In these remarkable lines, we hear the desire of God; we start to understand the purpose of creation, that we would be able to comprehend the width, length, depth and height of the love of God. That our experience of the love of God would mirror Abraham’s experience of the Promised Land and that we like him would know in our hearts the cosmic transforming love of the father.

The realisation of God’s love is the acknowledgement in our hearts of God’s commitment to us and our loving response to his embrace.