Enjoying God Audaciously

April 24, 2020April 24, 2020

God is so much better, and so much closer, than we can think or imagine. We may assume that we’ve got a handle on his remarkable goodness, kindness, and all round glory, we may think we understand his radical mercy and forgiveness, that we can perceive his expansive beauty, but there is always so much more to discover. Our limited human brains struggle to comprehend it all. The extent to which he loves us is mind-blowingly preposterous when we really stop and think about it: he’s abounding in love! We may run out of words to describe him but there is never any end or limit to his goodness and love. Indeed he went to the Cross because he loves us so much.

The Psalmists do their best to express in mere words the full extent of divine love:

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.  (Psalm 103:11-12)

John puts it like this in his letters:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  (1 John 3:1)

His name is Immanuel – God with us. And this Glorious One, the God of the incarnation, has promised to be with us forever. Right now he’s closer to you than you can possibly imagine. Regardless of how you are feeling, regardless of whether or not you can sense his presence, even in the middle of a really crap day (and in the midst of a global pandemic), he’s next to you and his eyes are shining with pure love.

Many of us have a hard time enjoying God. Which is strange, considering how spectacularly good he is. But we get bogged down in all those “shoulds” and “oughts” and we end up being so busy trying to please God that we forget that we’re actually created to enjoy him.

The Westminster Catechism gets it about right when it states that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And I believe that a key element of how we glorify God is by enjoying him. In the face of just how staggeringly glorious he is, if we’re not enjoying him then we are somehow denying or playing down the reality of his nature.

One of the fundamental prophetic tasks of the church is to carry the revelation of the goodness and nearness of the Lord: to proclaim and demonstrate to a broken world that there is a perfect Father who loves them passionately and is within easy reach of every single person on the earth.

If that’s our prophetic message then we need to fully live into it: to be a people who truly, deeply enjoy God.

Now, this is not about being happy-clappy, head-in-the-sand Christians who refuse to engage with any kind of negativity. Scripture is clear that grief and lament are part of our walk with God. Indeed the prophetic church absolutely must occupy that place of tension where it is able to fully lament the brokenness and pain at the same time as being energized by radical hope and joy.

And so, in this strangest of all seasons, we sit and mourn with those who are weeping. We face the agony of the mounting global death toll and the desperate poverty that many are experiencing due to lockdown. But we can still enjoy God. In fact we choose to audaciously enjoy God in the midst of the storm. Because no matter what is going on, he is good and he is here to be enjoyed.

This is so important that Paul makes a point of repeating his exhortation:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! (Philippians 4:4)

So, friends, my encouragement to you today is to pause a moment and ask yourself whether you are enjoying the pleasure of God’s company. You are already in his presence. He’s closer than you think. Whether it’s through quiet contemplative prayer or passionate praise and worship God is to be thoroughly enjoyed. And by choosing to enjoy him in days like these the church is being radically prophetic, because to enjoy God is to prophesy his goodness and nearness to all who need it.

Posted in: Teaching, Values | Tagged: god is good, god is love, presence of God, prophetic church, prophetic culture

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