DELIGHT in the LORD.

Psalm 35:27:  Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, "Great is the LORD, who delights in the welfare of his servant!"

Who can deny that delighting in the LORD is our heritage?

What else is there to delight in; our own self sufficiency? Our heritage in conforming to that which our great God has decreed and prescribed for us?

We must realize that to DELIGHT in the LORD is to be thoroughly swept up in all that HE is, not our preconceptions of who and what He is, nor our emotions of that which He describes in His holy Scriptures.

Certainly, this has to do with both our perception of who He is, and what He has done - and indeed, from our finite perspective, what He is doing - regarding redemptive history; however, that is not the point of this Psalm. The point is that we are to have the greatest thoughts and emotions of favor towards our God because of - to put it as simply as possible - who He IS, not those thoughts or emotions of what we think or preconceive Him to be.

There is nothing in the life of each saint that can give valid expression of this thought: DELIGHT YOURSELF IN THE LORD!

Who can give valid expression to these thoughts and emotions?

Yet that is EXACTLY what we are prescriptively commanded to do here, and how far do we fall short of expressing just these very things?

We have the atheists and the deists and all manner of others who decry to us that we cannot fully comprehend or fully express the substance of that which is our understanding of God, and little do they know, they are actually speaking truth in this instance (though it be in the wisdom of men who are without God), for we fail, so often, to do just that which is prescribed.

How sad, that we could be in agreement with those who know not God, in this greatest of all the commandments (Mark 12:30). How it shows in the manner in which we fail to treat those created in the Imago Dei - that we still seek to "bite and devour one another," when to express our highest concept from Scripture is to see our brethren as representing the infinite perfection of our Creator and Redeemer in them (1 Corinthians 2:2; Romans 4:25).

How little attention we pay to that which God has done in not only redeeming our brethren, but in implementing the New Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15).

If we do not see this in our brethren, how, then, can we expect to actually delight ourselves in our great God and Savior?

Dare we claim that we actually see and desire and pursue such in our God, when we actually live according to preconceptions based in our former manner and view of life regarding the brethren (Ephesians 2:1-3)?

Do you, then, think you DELIGHT YOURSELF IN THE LORD,  when, in fact, you deny HIM in HIS body?

I believe this truth needs rethinking, by the grace of God through the working of His Holy Spirit, amongst those who claim to be His, for to truly do this, we need to remember where He is expressing Himself in these days (1 Corinthians 3:17;1 Peter 2:4-5).

So then, here is the crux of the matter: If you think you are honoring God as Holy, delighting in all that He is, as He has revealed Himself in Scripture through our Lord Jesus Christ, and yet denigrate your brethren based upon false presuppositions based in your former fleshly life, you are simply lying to yourself, and your profession of allegiance to, honoring of, and delighting in God as to His righteousness and holiness, is a LIE to which you subject yourself - the deception is yours; however, God is able to break even this deception.

He has willed to reveal Himself most fully in the local body, amongst your brethren, who are are a reflection and emanation of our Lord most Holy crucified and glorified; do not partake of the wiles of the world and the flesh and think you actually are delighting in God while you do so, for such is most certainly NOT the case.

If you are truly delighting in all the holiness and glory and righteousness of who God is, you will certainly be seeing Him in your fellow saints - or your profession is but a shallow shell of His truth.

SDG - Bill