At the beginning of the year I wrote a Blog post based upon a particular verse of Scripture that the Lord laid on my heart. That little verse remains most precious to me even to this day:

Towards the end of last month, I halfway prepared a post of a completely different subject to share with you this month. But when I got up on Sunday morning, I did as I usually do first thing and took a look at my little perpetual calendar to see what the small portion from the Bible had to say for that day, and here’s what it said:

I couldn’t help but engage my thoughts in the Lord Jesus, and quickly linked this verse with Psalm 118: 34, as mentioned above: “We will rejoice and be glad in it.” “It” being the day He has made. “My heart shall rejoice in Him.” “Him” being God and the beloved Lord and Saviour. Of course, this changed the direction of my thoughts and subject matter for this month’s Blog!

Could there be any greater cause for rejoicing than these? Every morning when we wake up we get the opportunity to live through another day that the Lord has specifically made. So we can be confident straight away that as He made the day in which we can live and rejoice, He will be with us in it. Even in the midst of a trial or sadness, He is there and gives to the trial its purpose. He has a way of using trials to teach us things about Himself we would never have known otherwise.

And having trusted in Him for the salvation of our soul, we belong to Him, and now we get to serve the greatest of all Masters, which in itself is a joy to our hearts. It is an absolute pleasure to faithfully live out His calling on our lives. Day by day brings to us the opportunity to learn a little more about the Lord and Lover of our souls, and discover how wonderful He really is.

But then there is another joy. And this is the one from which our true joy emanates. It is the joy of the Father in His beloved Son. Just on the eve of His public ministry, and just before the close of it the Father declared from heaven His delight in this precious One:

And Peter the Apostle writes:

This joy I believe is the joy that we were created to live in the good of each day of our heaven bound journey, and finding its fulfilment when we are finally in His presence ‘in the Father’s house’.

Everything about Him is a cause for rejoicing, because He is ‘altogether lovely’ in all His ways. Not one facet of His divine character outshines another so that each compliment one another. His love does not outweigh His grace. His mercy does not outweigh His compassion. His power does not outweigh His authority. And so on.

And if the Father is ‘well pleased’ in His beloved Son, then we can be also!

I love the words of John the Baptist as He speaks of the Lord Jesus as ‘the Bridegroom’ and refers to himself as ‘the friend of the Bridegroom’. This is what he says:

It is the voice of the Bridegroom and what He is saying that was John the Baptist’s joy. And his ultimate goal in his short life was to fade away out of the limelight so that the life and Person of the Lord Jesus would increase and be clearly seen and admired by all with eyes to see.

It seems to me that the Word of God is telling us clearly that God is encouraging us all to live in joy and in the full delight of what He is focused on. Even the Lord said so before He went to the cross to atone for our sin and die as our Substitute.

To conclude this little thought for this month...