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.