The Dangerous Delight of God

I call it "dangerous" delight, because as soon as anyone begins to understand God's delight in His children, and then apply that understanding personally, both to themselves, and their relationships....eyebrows begin to raise. As freeing and exciting as the revelation is, as soon as you or I begin to take what we see of the love of God and believe it and walk in it, some will suddenly become concerned about "balance".

I can see why that is. After all, the love of God is a very UNbalanced force. It took the scales of justice, and balanced them, once and for all, in the person of Jesus Christ. No effort on my behalf, except to believe, was expended. But then, in addition to God taking upon Himself the task of my justification, He chose to heap my side of those then-balanced scales with blessing upon blessing, according to John 1: And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

My friends...those scales are now entirely, gloriously unbalanced. If it makes me unbalanced to believe it, then I'll gladly be a bit off-kilter. Crazy-good news tends to do that to people - it makes them laugh and sing and dance and hug their grumpy neighbor.

This unbalanced message of a God who loved us while we were yet sinners, who no longer counts the sins of the believer against them, (all sins - past, present, and future), this message of a God who "rejoices over us with joy" (which, by the way, is "joy squared." Joy times joy. Dangerous delight.)...this message is the gospel message. This is the message we are to continue in, every day. This is the message that will lead you to repentence. It is what you will find in God's word, from Genesis to Revelation - some form of this message is to be discovered.

The love of God for you and I (our sons and our daughters, our friends and our brethren) is not an angsting love. It is not a worried love. It is a love that is best thought of as delight. The Lord rests in His love. He knows that He has saved us to the uttermost...we who come to God through the prescribed door of Jesus Christ. Do we know we are utterly saved? Do we live, thus loved?

Zep 3:17 The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.