A couple times a week, the kids and I go to the YMCA. I enjoy working out by playing racquetball or lifting weights, and the kids enjoy the on-site childcare. The childcare takes place in a large room that has all kinds of different toys we don’t have at home, as well as a large-screen TV and a variety of videos. There are usually other children there for my kids to play with, too. Basically, my kids enjoy everything about going to the Y.
When we arrive, I drop the kids off in their room and go to the main building, where the fitness center is. When I’m done, I come back to get them.
And when I do, it’s one of the best moments of my day. Let me tell you why.
At this writing, Lindsey is two-and-a-half. She is completely adorable—cute, funny, quirky, and joyful. She enjoys herself in the play room, but when Mommy returns…well, for her, that’s even better.
When Lindsey sees me coming to pick them up, it’s like it’s Christmas morning for her. She grins and dances up and down, or starts running toward me, laughing with happiness.
But the reason why it’s the best moment of my day is because she’ll say to the childcare workers, as she points to me, “That’s my mommy! That’s MOMMY!”
Oh, she is so excited to see me. She’s so excited she has to tell someone about it—has to make sure someone notices that her mommy is here. Usually, she can barely contain herself long enough to point this out once or twice before she is impelled to run to me, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing with all her little-girl strength.
When she reacts to my presence like this, I can just feel the love for her welling up in my heart. I get excited, too, and I can’t wait to wrap my arms around her. Oh, the incalculable pleasure of having my child delight in my presence!
Dear sisters, do we delight in the presence of our Heavenly Father the same way? Do we bring joy to His heart by the sheer exuberance of our delight in Him?
I suspect that many times, we don’t. I know that I have been guilty of taking God for granted at times. I’ve ignored Him, or forgotten about Him at times.
Maybe you have, too.
Or maybe you have spurned Him at times. Maybe you weren’t interested in hearing from Him. Maybe you didn’t care about His presence.
Oh, friends, that’s a far cry from the joy and delight we were created to feel when our Heavenly Father is near—which is always!
The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Oh, we know we’re supposed to glorify God. But enjoy Him? We don’t think about that.
If we forget that we’re supposed to enjoy God, we develop a relationship with Him marked by long stretches of joyless obedience, punctuated with brief moments of spiritual excitement, the results of retreats, or summer camps, or maybe a particularly moving sermon.
Should we obey God without question? Absolutely. He is Almighty God, and He deserves nothing less than our immediate, unquestioning obedience. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy Him.
God is not only perfectly holy, righteous, and powerful, He is also perfectly loving, compassionate, and beautiful. We can enjoy a God like that. We can, and we must. And we will if we mediate on His attributes, immersing ourselves in contemplation of Him in all of His beauty and goodness.
It’s easy to think that if God would just show up at our homes, as I show up at the Y for Lindsey, of course we would respond in loving worship.
But friends, He already has shown up. We don’t see Him in visible form, but we know that if we have asked Him to save us, and acknowledged Him as our Lord and Savior, He lives in our hearts.
In our hearts.
That means He’s with us constantly. We don’t have to wait for Him to show up to pick us up. He is already with us, every moment of every day of our lives.
Yet instead of letting this motivate our hearts to respond in joyful delight to Him, we let it cause us to take Him for granted.
Yes, He’s here. We know that, and we become so used to that fact that sometimes, it doesn’t mean all that much to us anymore. We acknowledge with our heads that it is important, but it no longer moves our hearts.
There’s something very wrong with that. If the God of the Universe inhabits your heart, and you don’t regularly and consistently delight in His presence, there’s something very wrong with that.
Delighting in God’s presence won’t look the same for all people. If you are a person who tends not to be very emotional, then delighting in God’s presence will probably look different for you than for someone who is a very emotional person. And that’s fine.
What’s not fine is for you to fail to delight in Him.
Do you need to ask God to cause your heart to delight in Him? Before you do that, do you need to ask His forgiveness for taking Him for granted, for failing to appreciate His wondrous nature?
Think about how you feel when your child delights in your presence. Don’t you want to know that you bring the same kind of delight to God’s heart by delighting in Him?
After all, He delights in you.
Psalm 35:9—My soul will rejoice in the LORD.
Zephaniah 3:17—He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.