God's will is the ‘key’ to all the treasures of delight.
Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, despised the shame (Hebrews 12:2).
Painful fact: - I caused His shame.
Awesome mystery: - I can bring Him joy.
I remember waking in the very early hours of that morning and instantly these words were in my mind, "I delight to do Thy will O God" (Psalms 40:8). Then the Holy Spirit began to give me deeper insight, understanding and personal application into familiar Truth. No wonder we feel troubled and upset when we choose to be defensive, irritable, self-protective, insisting on proving ourselves right, etc., etc. By such choices we slam the door shut on delight. How wrong we can be to view the will of God as grievous or hurtful. God's will is the key to all the treasures of delight.
What freedom, what exhilaration, what delight to know that we do not have to sin!
I'm not sure whether or not it was L.E.Maxwell who said it, but it is the guarantee for success.
"Of all the plans ensuring success,
the most certain is Christ's own plan -
by becoming a corn of wheat and
falling into the ground and dying."
Dying and delight are intricately woven together in the pattern of Christian victory. Christ living in me must be accompanied by a happy, deliberate "yet not I" (Galatians 2:20).
It is good to remind ourselves that the disciples were not called "followers" after Pentecost. Now we no longer try to follow His footsteps. By the outliving of His indwelling Resurrection Life, Jesus walks in our shoes.
Then I thought of all the stark tragedies and mammoth events happening all over the world and I trembled at the colossal wonder that the Sovereign Lord of all the universe comes personally to me to explain, to teach, to guide --- to love!
I want to enter fully into the liberating delight of daily dying.
With love & prayers,