How God Loves You

"The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17

We read this verse yesterday in church, and boy, did it make me smile. Especially the last line, because I was having a hard time picturing it and it almost made me laugh a little bit. Normally, it's us who does the rejoicing. We worship and praise God, and when we're in a setting of worship, it is us who delights in the presence of the Lord. It is us who rejoices by singing aloud to God. But right here in Zephaniah it says that God loves us so much, that HE takes great delight in us, and HE rejoices over us with singing. I looked up the word rejoice in the dictionary, and it says "to be glad or "to have joy or great delight".

Wow! God loves us that much that he has joy and great delight in us! And then after I read that a few times, and simply took in the thought that God delights in me, I went back to the first two lines of the verse, and I felt such encouragement. It says that The Lord my God is with me, and He is mighty to save. In all trials, in all troubles, He IS right there with me, and we will make it through the trials and the troubles. I have to admit, right now we're smack dab in the middle of a trial and a trouble, and while at the very beginning I got down and almost depressed. I decided though, that I would live by the words I read in Nehemiah, that the joy of the Lord IS my strength. It is joy that will get me through the trial.

"for the joy of the LORD is your strength." Nehemiah 8:10

And so life goes on. The trial is still there, we're still going through it, but I know that when all is said and done, when we've made it to the end of the trial, that we are going to have a grand testimony. In the meantime, I continue to seek God as we make our way through the trial. I continue to ask for His guidance and His intervention, and I have faith that everything will work out for good. Because My God, who loves me, will not give me a snake if I ask for a fish.

"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

¹¹"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? ¹²Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Luke 11:9-13