God, thank You for rejoicing over me with love and joyful songs. Help me to truly believe that I am worth delighting in, not because of what I’ve done, but because of who You are. Teach me to see others through that same lens of love and celebration. Let Your rejoicing love be the way I see myself and share love today.
Welcome back everybody. This is Pastor Chuck Allen and I want to thank you for listening in to today's weekday podcast. We've been in the series what Only God can do and today I want to continue you through the thought of only God can love perfectly. On Monday I explored God's faithful love. Today I want to dive into another dimension of his perfect love. What we call rejoicing Love. I've been thinking a lot about joy lately. I'm not sure what it is the time of season. Maybe it's Holy week. Whatever the concept is, I've been there a lot. Not happiness which comes from, you know, just coming and going is based on my circumstances, but that deep seated joy. I mean the kind of thing that remains even in challenging times. In my many conversations with people week after week, I've noticed something troubling. Many of us don't believe we're worthy of celebration. I hear people all the time with kind of negative self talk. I mean even myself, I do it a lot. And we, we often think we need to fix ourselves before anyone or anything else, including God. I mean we think if we, if we could just fix ourselves then maybe God could love us. Or maybe if we could make ourselves better, anybody else might could delight in us. This reminds me of research done by Kristen Neff on self compassion. Her studies show that most people find it easier to be kind to others than to themselves. We're often our own harshest critics, worst enemies and believing the lie that we're not enough or that our flaws disqualify us from love. But what if I were to tell you that God doesn't just tolerate you? What if God actually celebrates you? What if God sings over you with joy? That brings us to today's scripture. Zephaniah, chapter three, verse 17. You don't hear Zephaniah a lot on the podcast, but straight out of the new living test translation, here's what it says. For the Lord, your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. The first time that I really sat with that verse, I mean I, I teared up a little bit the Image of God rejoicing over me with singing is almost too much to wrap my head around. I kept thinking, does God really feel this way about me, or is that just like biblical stuff? Even knowing all my failures and all my flaws, it is biblical stuff. It's even so much biblical that I can take it at face value. The prophet Zephaniah was writing to people who had completely messed up their lives badly. They turned away from God. They'd worshiped other gods, and they'd forgotten who they were. But in the midst of that broken relationship, God promised not just to forgive, but to celebrate. Not just to accept, but to delight in them. This is what I'd love to refer to as God's rejoicing love. It's a love that doesn't just tolerate or endure. It celebrates, it sings. It delights. I mean, I was working with a couple, I don't know, maybe three years ago or so. It was right after Covid. The husband had betrayed the wife's trust in a significant way. And during counseling, I asked the wife what she wanted most from her husband as they worked toward healing. I thought she'd say faithfulness or honesty. But she said something that absolutely rocked me. She said, I want him to delight in me again. Oh, man, just think about that. I want him to delight in me again. Her words stuck with me. We don't just want to be tolerated in our relationships. We want to be delighted in. We want to be celebrated, not just endured. And that's precisely what God offers us. Here's what's remarkable about God's rejoicing. Love. It's not based on our performance. God doesn't sing over us because we've earned it. God sings because that's who God is. A loving dad who delights in his children. In my own personal journey, I've had to confront the ways I've projected my conditional love onto God. I've imagined God as disappointed, arms crossed, waiting for me to get my junk together. But Zephaniah, he paints a radically different picture of God. God as a joyful father singing lullabies over a beloved child. I think that's what Brene Brown means when she talks about wholehearted living. When we truly believe we're worthy of love and belonging not because we've earned it, but because we're inherently valuable to God. We can live from a place of worthiness rather than with shame. So today I invite you to sit with this image. God rejoicing over you with gladness, calming your fears, with love, singing over you with joy. Let it sink deep in your soul. Friend, this is not just a nice sentiment. It's the bedrock truth of who God truly is and how God truly feels about you. And here's my challenge. When you're just where, think about this. Just where in your life can you practice this kind of rejoicing? Love who needs to be celebrated, not just tolerated? Who needs to know that they bring you joy, not just that they put up with you?
Or maybe who needs to know that they bring you joy, not just that you put up with them? Tomorrow, we'll conclude this week long process, or actually Friday we will, by looking at what perfect love really means according to First Corinthians 13 that Pastor Bobby preached on the other day. Until then, this is Pastor Chuck reminding you that you're not just loved by God. You're celebrated, you're delighted, and you're sung over with joy. God bless you, friend. Thanks for joining me on today's weekday podcast.
