The Hard Work of Enjoying God
Lets face it, enjoying God is hard work! Its easier to enjoy TV and movies and steak, than it is to enjoy God. The problem is, you cant reduce it to a list of rules to obey or steps to follow. If someone asked me how I enjoy my wife I don't think I could give them steps on how I do it! But Christians nonetheless should make it their aim to enjoy God over all things in life. So what are some things we can do, not steps or rules to be sure, but at least some ways we can view the world and ourselves that will help us better enjoy God? Here are a few:
1. Use Feasting Language
The Bible often describes worship of God as a feast (Isaiah 55:1-7). If we would see ourselves as starving beggars who have been invited to sit at the table of the richest Person in the world, we might use different language. We might use words like; taste, savor, delight, thirst, pant, yearn, long, crave, hunger. These are feasting words, so use them, pray them, think them, speak them. They might help ingrain in us a worldview where feasting on God is our greatest passion.
2. Make Every Pleasure Acknowledge God
There are good things in this world (1 Timothy 4:4-6). Its OK to admit that you enjoy things in this life. The problem however is that the good things in life want to glorify themselves. Food, sex, children, weightlifting, golf, swimming, sunsets all fight for their own glory and deceive us into thinking they are ends in themselves. They are not! They are simply means to reflect and point to the infinite glory and greatness and creativity and goodness of God. So don't let them steal God's glory! He is the author of all good pleasures and they are to submit to Him. So let every pleasure take you to God; every sensation, every good story, every good song, every good movie (and it doesn't have to be Christian), every good affection and emotion should point us to our great God and King. Do this so if/when God takes the good things away, your life will not crumble.
3. Make It Your Aim To Enjoy God
Wake up with this in mind for your day. Set the tone of each day by deciding to enjoy God. If you are not intentional about this, something else will grab your affections and you will find yourself uninterested with God and amazed at something else which will eventually lead to a life of empty religion. This is why many Christians are bored with God and enthralled in other things.
4. Mortify and Vivify
Those are Puritan words. What I mean here is that we are to mortify what steals our affections for God and vivify what enhances our affections for God. So whatever stirs you up for Christ fill your life with it and whatever makes you forget Him and lose sight of Him, kill it.
Fighting To Enjoy Him,
GB
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