Psalm 37:4  Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

It's not just God's words that are a delicious delight, but the Divine Person - God's presence, God's personality, God's delight in us - and we are invited to taste, and savor, and relish and enjoy God. In fact, to delight yourself in the Lord is to receive from God the desires of your heart.

In this case, the word desire has to do with a request or petition; I am asking for this because I want it. Approaching God, treating the very presence of the Almighty as something delectable and delicious - results in the granting of your requests and petitions, the fulfillment of the desire of your heart.

In other words, if you let your taste buds become enthralled with the flavor of the presence of the Great I Am, then what you long for most will begin to shift toward what God has been wanting to give you all along. Your desire will shift to what Jesus is giving you, as Jesus gives you himself.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Psalm 119:103  How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

God's Word, when we chew on it and ponder it and meditate on it, brings with it a special variety of delight. Receiving and internalizing God's Word is like eating food that not only sustains and nourishes, but food that delights!

As Jesus feeds and nourishes and delights you with the Word, he also feeds and nourishes and delights you with his very self. Delicious delight is not just an image of savoring God's Word, it's an image of savoring the very presence of the Almighty God.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

John 14:6 I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

"Many roads go up the mountain, but they all get to the top." "All religions are essentially the same." "One religion is as good as another."

Weird statements, right? The funny thing is, often the same people who make these statements select their doctor very carefully!

These commonly heard views summarize what is known as "universalism," the myth that ultimately all people will be saved regardless of what they believe or what religion they follow.

But the "gospel in a nutshell" says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

There is universal salvation. God offers salvation to all people but only through belief in Jesus Christ. And that atonement, grasped by our Spirit-empowered faith, effects our justification: We are declared righteous, forgive, by God. We are saved, that is, rescued from our sins, and made God's children and heirs of eternal life through the death and resurrection of His Son.

This is why it's so important to get the Good News about Christ out to everyone in the world as quickly as possible. And we must not forget to be faithful witnesses to Him in our own backyards.

We thank God daily for the salvation He offers to all believers. We pray that all humanity may come to know and believe in Jesus Christ, the only way to the Father and eternal life.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Isaiah 42:1  Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.

The Hebrew word for delight comes with the connotation of understanding and acceptance. God can understand and accept your offerings; when they are done the right way, with the right heart, God delights in them and accepts them. Parents can also delight in their children; that is, approve of them, accept them, understand them, and delight in them. Proverbs 3:12 is a good example; "The Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in."

In the Bible, Jesus is the ultimate Servant of the Lord, the Son in whom the Father delights. So when Matthew tells us about Jesus, Matthew says the preaching and healing ministry of Jesus is intended to fulfill Isaiah 42.

God accepts, approves of, is pleased with, delights in, thinks well of this Jesus, the Chosen Servant and Beloved Son on whom God has placed the Spirit, so that Jesus can proclaim God's righteousness to the nations. But it doesn't stop there.

As a baptized follower of Jesus, you live out your life in the present, fallen world not under the weight of your sin and shame, but under a verdict of delight. God accepts you. God approves of you. God is pleased with, delights in, and thinsk well of us.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Psalm 119:14  In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.

In other words, knowing God's ways is like winning the lottery! Or at least, like the feeling you get when you win the lottery; or the feeling you get when you are offered the job you really wanted, or when you have your bid accepted on the house of your dreams, or when your crush says yes to a date - and you jump up and spin around in joy, and you start singing and laughing!

The Psalmist says, "Knowing your way, God - your testimonies, commans, blessings, promises - when I know from your Word what you are up to in my life, it's like striking it rich! I delight in your way as much as I would in all riches! The net worth of the world's richest person is about $154 billion. Knowing Jesus is priceless!!!
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Zephaniah 3:17  The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.

I love that image. God's delight in you is so overwhelming, that the Mighty Warrior finds himself singing for joy! His is a multifaceted emotional response that gets expressed in very physical ways. Notice that we are dealing with "great delight" in this context. As Justin Rossow puts it: "we're actually getting a Hebraic 'buy one, get one free' deal, where you double down on vocabulary words to express the strength of the concept."

This is a joyful delight so strong that even the Mighty Warrior has to jump up, spin around, and start singing!

That's what God thinks of you!
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Matthew 1:1  The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

When most readers today see that the New Testament opens with a genealogy, they yawn. Not so for Matthew's original readers. This was an epic revelation. Jesus, son of Mary, is a direct descendant of David and Abraham. The patriarch, who promised a descendant through whom the entire world would be blessed; David, who was promised a son who would sit on his throne forever; Jesus is that descendent and that son. Every branch of the family tree of the old covenant has led to the baby in Mary's arms.

His birth proclaims the faithfulness of God. Many centuries before, he had made the promise. His people waited and waited. But they didn't wait forever. The Christ Child is the embodiment of all the Father's promises. He is the Yes to everything God wants us to have. In his tiny baby body, no more than a few pounds, is the immeasurable weight of the Lord's love for us.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,