He delights in me

I have been reading Wayne Jacobsen’s book “He Loves Me!” recently and have been greatly helped by the following:


“The Lord your God is with you. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17 Except for fleeting moments, I couldn’t imagine that this was the way God felt about me. Regular moments of insecurity would drive me to my knees in repentance and make me redouble my efforts to be more committed to God, but I never had any certainty that the things I was doing were enough to cause him to be delighted with me. I thought I had to put something forward that would prove to him how serious I was about following him.

During this time I experienced incredible moments of fellowship with God. I saw him intervene in ways that I knew only he could… But the more I gave him the more it seemed he wanted, and the best I could do at any moment was to break even with him.

I’ll never forget when that all changed. A few years ago, through a painful betrayal and a fresh insight into God’s work for us on the cross, I began to see how much my Father loved me and to understand how much delight he took in his children. This realization radically transformed my life…

God doesn’t need us to serve him as a means to attain his love or affection. He wants us to serve him out of the love and affection he already holds in his heart. If you have never tasted that reality, you cannot imagine the freedom that lies ahead of you. My Father brought me to the place where I realized that even if I never preached another sermon, never counselled another person, never led someone to Christ again, he would still delight in me as his child.

That doesn’t mean he approves of everything I do, but he has freed me to know that he loves me – absolutely and completely. It is not the fear of losing God’s favour that takes us to the depth of fellowship with him and transforms our lives with his holiness. It is our certainty of knowing his unrelenting love for us even in the midst of our weakness and failure that leads us to the fullness of his life. Fear had never taken me to the depths of his life or his transforming power; discovering his delight has. I now know that the key to God’s favour doesn’t rest on what I give him but on what he already has given to me.

He delights in you, too. Can you see him that way, exulting and dancing with joy over you?

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