Delighting in Him

“In Your presence there is fullness of joy.” – Psalm 16:11

“Delight yourself in the Lord.” – Psalm 37:5

The Bible continually speaks about delighting and rejoicing in God and a joy that emanates from His presence. I think we sometimes under-emphasise the joy that can be experienced by merely being with God. We become burdened by the cares and troubles of this world. We are quite adept at bringing our pain and sorrow to God, and this is good and necessary. Yet I sometimes feel that we forget to just enjoy God the way we enjoy our friends. Instead of only coming to Jesus in times of need, we should spend time with Him for Him- for the pleasure of His company- and not for what He can give us. And merely being with Him will fill us with a joy and peace that we will not find elsewhere.

I think that at the essence of this joy we can find in Jesus, or simply by spending time with Him, is what John Piper calls “treasuring Jesus above life’s gifts”. If we truly value God, we will delight and rejoice in Him; we will experience “fullness of joy” in His presence because we are with the One our hearts love above all else. As Piper points out in his book Don’t Waste Your Life, by treasuring God and delighting in Him, we show the world how valuable He is and thus glorify Him.

Driven to Distraction

As a new semester begins to take shape before me, I know that I will soon be overwhelmed with busyness and too many distractions. Thus my rather ambitious goal for the remainder of the year is to learn to fully focus on God amidst distraction. As I am swept up with academics, friends and church, I often stop spending enough quality time with God. My quiet times never stop but they shorten and I am so often thinking of all the things I need to do or am stressed about. I so often catch myself thinking “When my life is less busy, I’ll spend more time with God”. You know, when exams are over, as soon as my tests and assignments are finished, when people are not occupying my time as much, when I am no longer studying, when I am on holiday, when… Yet the truth is that life will always be busy and will probably gain momentum as the years pass. There will always be something to distract us from Who is most important. I need to make God a priority and as I do, I will always have time for Him. And I do not mean just the time I set aside in the morning but a life filled with His Presence, with constant communion and communication with Him; a life that is walking in the Spirit. In my everyday life and even in my mundane decisions, I want to seek Him and His will. Like Mary, we should choose to sit at His feet and spend time with Him, instead of being like Martha, anxious and distracted by many things. If you are like me, swamped with busyness and distraction, I want to encourage you to slow and make time for our King. It will be more than worth it.

Be Present

 I have always had dreams of doing something that would impact the world, even if by “the world” I mean the part of the world I inhabit. My desire has always been to make a difference; to live a life that counts for something bigger than myself. Yet these dreams and desires so often cause anxiety for me. I worry that I am wasting my life because I am not currently doing something big that’s going to radically change humanity. When I think of my future, I worry that I will end up leading an ordinary, insignificant life. Dreams and desires to make a difference are good and essential but I realised that, in my case, they were stopping me from seeing the difference I can make today in the small things. Instead of focusing on the amazing things I will do someday in the future, I should look at what God has given me now and be faithful with what He has put in my hands. 

Some of these realisations or ponderings were triggered by the line “Be present”, which I heard in a rather ludicrous movie, as well as the following quote I heard awhile back: “Wherever you are, be all there” (Jim Elliot). I was lying in bed the other night, with these words playing in my head, when I had an epiphany of sorts. The solution to the anxiety of wasting my life is to live each present day fully, instead of being distracted by the future. If we live each day by walking with God, submitting to Him and being faithful with what He has entrusted to our care, we will not waste our lives. I want to encourage you to live each day with courage and obedience and to remember that God loves to use the little things in the world to make a significant difference.