Delight yourself in the Lord , and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4
Once you see it, the enjoyment of God permeates the scripture. To know Christ and enjoy Him is the very essence of our lives. Now don’t misunderstand, I am not talking about enjoying His blessings and benefits, I am talking about the sheer pleasure that comes from intimacy with the Lord. This may be a forgotten theme in many Christian circles today but it was the very substance of many great Christians that have gone before us. The great man of prayer, George Muller, said it like this.
“I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.”
John Owen, the great English theologian, said that pleasure in God was the very substance of the scripture.
“The design of the whole of Scripture, and all the parts of it, hath an impress on it of divine wisdom and authority: and hereof there are two parts: first, To reveal God unto men; and, secondly, To direct men to come unto the enjoyment of God.”
Stop and think about what Owen was getting at, scripture exists to reveal Christ to us and from that we find the source of all joy. Owen goes on to stress the importance of pressing beyond just the beliefs that we gain from scripture, to press on to know the reality of God
“If we satisfy ourselves in mere notions and speculations about the glory of Christ as doctrinally revealed unto us, we shall find no transforming power or efficacy communicated unto us thereby. . . . Where light leaves the affections behind, it ends in formality or atheism; and where affections outrun light, they sink in the bog of superstition, doting on images and pictures, or the like.”
Finally we come to Charles Spurgeon. He teaches us that reading and studying scripture is important. He points us to the reality that pleasure in God is wrapped up in the scriptures. We become like miners, mining for gold as we search the scriptures.
‘Certainly, the benefit of reading must come to the soul by the way of the understanding. . . . The mind must have illumination before the affections can properly rise towards their divine object. . . . There must be knowledge of God before there can be love to God: there must be a knowledge of divine things, as they are revealed, before there can be an enjoyment of them.’
So go ahead and dig in to God’s word. There are pleasures evermore waiting for you there.
1 thought on “ENJOY”
I believe that in all of this that God has set before man, that there is a path or road if you will, that we all must traverse, with check points along the way. The destination is God Himself, (what a destination) Those who cannot be satisfied with “notions and speculations” and “must” have more, are less likely to be satisfied with the distance their travels have taken them. I know that this blog is not about lifting up my pastor, but I must stop and say, you have been an awesome example and shepherd guiding me down this road towards God. I must add a very heart felt thank you.