Enjoying God

Before we ask whether we enjoy God, there is a prior and more startling question: does God enjoy us? Scripture answers it without hedging. He will take great delight in you… he will rejoice over you with singing.ᵃ (Zephaniah 3:17)

Many of us carry a picture of God as satisfied at best — approving of our obedience the way a supervisor approves of adequate work. Under that picture, joy will always feel slightly out of place, like laughing in an office.

But the Father's first recorded words over Jesus, spoken before a single miracle, were words of pleasure: You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.ᵇ (Mark 1:9–11) Delight came before ministry. It always does.

Joy rarely departs in a single moment. It thins. And it usually thins for reasons that look, from the outside, like maturity:

• Service replaced friendship. Time with God became preparation for something.
• Vigilance replaced trust. Enough has gone wrong that gladness now feels unwise.
• Grief was never fully carried. A heart that cannot mourn eventually cannot rejoice either.
• Seriousness got mistaken for depth. Somewhere we learned that heaviness is holier.

Martha was not doing anything wrong. She was doing something good, distractedly, in the presence of the One she was doing it for.ᶜ (Luke 10:38–42) Jesus does not scold her for working. He grieves that she is missing Him.

Christian joy is not required brightness. It does not need you to pretend the year was good. Paul describes his life as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing — both at once, without either cancelling the other.ᵈ (2 Corinthians 6:8–10)

Nehemiah told a weeping people that the joy of the LORD is your strength.ᵉ (Nehemiah 8:9–10) Not their cheerfulness. His joy — a gladness that comes from outside the circumstances and steadies the ones standing inside them.

And Jesus Himself endured the cross for the joy set before him.ᶠ (Hebrews 12:1–2) Joy was not the absence of the worst suffering. It was what carried Him through it.

If your season is heavy, this thread is not asking you to perform gladness. It is only pointing out that joy is nearer to grief than we assume, and often arrives through it rather than after it.

The psalmist does not say study and conclude. He says taste and see that the LORD is good.ᵍ (Psalm 34:8) Delight is learned the way any taste is learned — slowly, through attention, by lingering somewhere longer than efficiency allows.

Most joy is missed not because it is absent but because we pass it at speed. The meal, the light on the way home, the friend's laugh, the line of Scripture that warmed you before you moved on to the next verse.

And joy in God is not separate from joy in what He has made. Every good and perfect gift is from above.ʰ (James 1:17) Gratitude for the gift and love for the Giver run along the same wire.

Try this: rather than adding a new practice, slow one that already exists. Stay one minute longer with the verse that stirred you. Eat without a screen. Walk without a podcast. Say thank you out loud, specifically.

Whatever else you give people, you also give them your atmosphere. A joyless faithfulness teaches those watching that God is a duty to be discharged well.

David danced before the ark with all his might, and was despised for it by someone watching from a window.ⁱ (2 Samuel 6:14–16) Undignified gladness has always made someone uncomfortable. It has also always been contagious.

Jesus said He told His disciples these things so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.ʲ (John 15:9–11) His joy in you — not a joy you manufacture. That is why delight belongs to formation rather than to its reward. It is fruit, not wages.