Don’t you love it when you read something God inspired another brother or sister in Christ to write hundreds or thousands of years ago in which they share the current state of your heart? I sure do!
This morning, I was reading Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening and couldn’t help but rejoice in God my Savior as my brother Charles did nearly 200 years ago! Here’s an excerpt of my reading this morning based on Psalm 37:4:
“The life of the believer is here described as a delight in God, and we are thus certified of the great fact that true religion overflows with happiness and joy. Ungodly persons and mere professors never look upon religion as a joyful thing; to them it is service, duty, or necessity, but never pleasure or delight. If they attend to religion at all, it is either that they may gain thereby, or else because they dare not do otherwise. The thought of delight in religion is so strange to most men, that no two words in their language stand further apart than ‘holiness’ and ‘delight’. But believers who know Christ, understand that delight and faith are so blessedly united, that the gates of hell cannot prevail to separate them. They who love God with all their hearts, find that His ways are ways of pleasantness, and all His paths are peace. Such joys, such brimful delights, such overflowing blessednesses, do the saints discover in their Lord, that so far from serving Him from custom, His name as evil. We fear not God because of any compulsion; our faith is no fetter, our profession is no bondage, we are not dragged to holiness, nor driven to duty. No, our piety is our pleasure, our hope is our happiness, our duty is our delight.”
I cannot contain my gratitude for God’s gracious and merciful gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, our gracious Redeemer, who’s pure and holy blood alone can purify us from all unrighteousness!
The unfathomable fact that I, a despicable sinner can (through Jesus Christ) approach the Maker of all creation, the righteous Judge, the Great I Am, overwhelms me. I don’t increase God and I don’t make Heaven better. But my Father God delighted to save me from my sins, by giving me Himself so that I might know Him and engage in an intimate, holy relationship with Him. Oh how great the sacrifice, how high the cost, to redeem the rebellious, to save the lost!
Therefore, I delight in God alone. I delight in His law, His precepts and all His ways. For the law of God is perfect (Psalm 19:7), His precepts are right and trustworthy (Psalm 19:8, 111:7-8), and His ways are just (Deuteronomy 32:4, Daniel 4:37).
I dare not diminish the greatness of my God by delighting in Him because of what He can give me, do for me, or how He can make me feel. I delight in my glorious Redeemer because He Is.
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