Delight
Delight. Merriam-Webster defines delight as, “a strong feeling of happiness; great pleasure or satisfaction.” As I read this definition I really struggled with the first line, “a strong feeling of happiness.” All to often I find myself trapped inside of my feelings, with expectations that they are just going to be happy, or be better. And if I’m being honest over the past six months or so, it’s been extremely hard to say “I feel happy.” Although this is difficult to verbalize, I think it is a place we allow ourselves to get stuck all too often.
Our feelings are strong indicators of deeply rooted thoughts and emotions we experience. One of my favorite quotes by Lysa Terkeurst states, “feelings are indicators, not dictators.” When circumstances seem overwhelming, when you look at where your life is and it’s nowhere near where you expected it to be; it is so easy to “feel” defeated. But this is when we have to choose to realize that we have a choice in this moment. This feeling of defeat is a choice, even when it feels like your reality. We have a choice in this moment to choose to delight ourselves in someone so much greater than our feelings. The Lord sees us in the midst of our circumstances, He doesn’t leave us alone. He is simply waiting on us to choose to delight in Him. Choosing to delight in Him, may not always “feel better,” but I guarantee that it has the potential to completely shift your perspective.
We had a conversation in my life group last night about suffering. The question was asked, “What is our suffering meant to confirm in us?” Whenever the question was posed, my mind immediately went to this current season I have been walking through. I don’t know if I would consider it a season of suffering, I’m still processing that, but what I do know is that I have had to struggle to choose. Choose things that bring me temporary comfort or choose the one who brings peace to my soul. Choose to stay stuck in an addiction or choose to surrender my desires to the Lord. Choose to keep my mind focused on my circumstance or shift my mind to a greater purpose in my struggle, that maybe the Lord is teaching me something through this process, that maybe He is doing something so much greater than I could ever ask or imagine. In these moments, the Lord is already in the middle. He’s there in the mess, even when we are choosing to believe that He has left us or that He doesn’t care. We must choose to delight ourselves in Him, to make the deliberate choice to say “I may not feel this overwhelming feeling of happiness right now, but I will choose to delight myself in the One who brings joy uncontainable.”
In Romans 7, Paul empathizes with our struggle to choose Jesus in the middle of our hard time. In chapter 7 verses 21-25 he writes,
“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
It is our natural tendency and desire to choose sin, to choose to rest in our feelings of defeat, but Paul’s writing gives us hope. Jesus rescued us from this trap of defeat, He gives us another option. We can choose to delight in Him.
I don’t know where you are today, what season of life you may find yourself in, but I do know that even though you may be struggling to choose to delight in Jesus, that He delights in you. He chooses you. He sees you. He’s just waiting for you to make the choice that is Him.
There is a song that has been my anthem recently that I want to leave you with today. There is one line in particular that states, “You set a table in the middle of my war, You knew the outcome of it all.” Ladies, Jesus is literally sitting in the middle of your mess and by making the choice to delight in Him rather than the choice to wallow in your struggle, you are choosing to put your hope and faith in someone who can already see the end of your struggle. God is so so good y’all.
