Hi everyone, and thanks so much for joining me on today's weekday podcast, where I want to talk about this little verse in the book Zephaniah in chapter 3 and in verse 17.
When you read this little verse, I mean, it has some pretty significant impact on our life.
Just imagine you're walking through your day weighed down by expectations, by the noise and the chaos, by the relentless pressure to prove yourself. Maybe you feel invisible. Maybe you wonder if you matter at all. And then in the middle of all that, you hear these words from Zephaniah 3:17.
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. Now let's just stop. Just breathe for a minute and take that in. For the Lord, your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior, he is. Will take delight in you with gladness. With his love. He will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
I. I think there are several things inside of this that blow my mind. The first one is that God is here right now, wherever you're at.
This isn't a distant God. This isn't a God who stands far off, arms folded, waiting for you to get your junk together.
This is a God who is living among us, right here, right now, in our mess, in our questions, in our doubts, maybe in our anger and in our dreams. He is a mighty savior. Not just a savior for someone else, but for you.
Did you hear that? He's a mighty savior for you, friend, for your story, for your struggle.
So what do we take from that? Well, the first thing is that we can delight and we don't have to live in disappointment. And here's the thing that totally undoes me. He will take delight in you with gladness. Not disappointment, not frustration, not regret. Delight, gladness. God doesn't just tolerate you, friend. He delights in you. He sees you and his heart leaps with gladness over you.
How many of us, including myself, walk through life believing the opposite at times, that if God thinks of us at all, it's with a sigh like, oh, there he goes again, a shake of the head. But Zephaniah says, no, no, no. God's posture toward you, my Friend, right now is joy.
It's not just delight, not disappointment. It is love that's there to calm our fear. With his love, he will calm all of our fears. There's a love so deep, so real, that can quiet the storm inside of you. The anxiety, the insecurity, the fear that you're not enough. God's love is not just an idea. It's an experience.
It's the voice that says, you are safe, you are held, you are loved.
You know what else it tells us? Not just delight instead of disappointment, not just love that calms fear. But think about this.
The God of all creation sings over you. You know, when. When we sing, there's something joyful happening within us.
Did you read what he said? Or hear what I read?
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. Just imagine that. The God who created the universe singing over you not because you've earned it, but because you've.
You're loved. Not because you performed well, but because you're His. Because you matter.
What if today you let that be true? What if you let yourself believe, even for this moment, that God is not against you, but radically for you, that his love is the song that drowns out every voice of shame, every whisper or unworthiness.
That's how we live with delight.
I mean, think about that. When you know you are delighted in, you live differently. You create, you risk, you love, you forgive. You become the person you were always meant to be. Not out of fear, but out of freedom. How stinking awesome is that?
So wherever you are, whatever you're facing, hear this, friend. You are not alone.
You are not invisible. You are delighted in. You are loved. And right now, God is singing over you.
May you have the courage to believe it, friend.
May you have the faith to receive it. And may you live today from the deep, unshakable joy of being loved by God.
Go in grace and live in peace. And thanks so much for joining me on today's weekday podcast.
