Our Footsteps: Enjoying God Forever

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Enjoying God Forever

"Thou wilt make known to me the path of life;
In Thy presence is fullness of joy;
In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever."
- Psalm 16:11

Q:What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever – according to The Westminster Confession of Faith Shorter Catechism.

John Piper, in his book ‘Desiring God’ states it a little differently by stating, "The chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying Him forever".

Are people, are Christian people glorifying God? Are they enjoying God? Jonathan Rauch in the May 2003 issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine coined the word ‘APATHEISM’. He defined it as ‘a disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s’. He says that apatheists ‘are neither controlled by godly passion nor concerned about the religious beliefs of others’. He goes on to say that ‘even regular church-goers can, and often do, rank high on the apatheism scale’.

What about us? Are we indifferent, middle-of-the-road, fence-straddling apathetic people or passionately awestruck and devoted, zealous lovers of God?

Take a look at the following quotes:
Dr. Sam Storms - "One Thing":
"God created you... for the heart-pounding joy and mind-bending fascination and white-hot happiness that comes from relishing and rejoicing in the beauty of Jesus Christ. To relish and rejoice in the beauty of God alone accounts for why we exist. It’s also the solution to our struggle with sin. Enjoying God is the catalyst for substantive and lasting change. And enjoying God is the soul’s sole satisfaction, with which no rival pleasure can hope to compete."

A.W. Tozer - "The Pursuit of God":
"God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole lives there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than just a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day".

Charles Spurgeon
"Delighting in God exerts a transforming power upon us and lifts us above the wrong desires of our fallen nature".

Because we were created in the image of God and created for His glory we need to respond to his great love by magnifying Him above all things. Psalm 34:3 - O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. Sam Storms draws a vivid analogy using microscopes and telescopes. Both microscopes and telescopes are designed to magnify objects. A microscope magnifies by focusing on something quite small causing it to look much larger than it really is - this is magnification by distortion. On the other hand, a telescope magnifies by focusing on something indescribably huge and massive and causing it to appear as it really is. Are we viewing God through a microscope or a telescope?

To see God (and enjoy him) through the telescope requires a few disciplines:
1). A focused heart - Philippians 4:8 - endeavor to increase your spiritual appetite by meditating on spiritual objects. This requires an intensity and exclusivity of your devotion
2). Proper posturing - endeavor to promote your spiritual appetite by laying yourself in the way of allurement – that is, exposing your soul to the things that awaken spiritual desire and deepen holy longings
3). Expressing worship - we should express our longings to God; they will increase by being expressed. Our passions often wither in silence. "...we delight to praise what we enjoy...praise not merely expresses, but completes the enjoyment" - C.S. Lewis

Knowing and enjoying God with you,
Mark

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I Believe...

1). I believe that there is one God. I believe God consists of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
2). I believe that God is holy, righteous, loving, and just.
3). I believe that mankind is separated from God by sin; that sin entered the world through Adam and death through sin.
4). I believe that, because of sin, man is condemned. Because of God’s utter hatred for sin, there is an eternal conscious punishment in hell for all those who do not come to God on His terms, dealing with their sin.
5). I believe that confessing our sins and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord is the only way to properly deal with the sin that has infected everyone. Jesus Christ paid our sin debt on the cross; reconciliation by substitution. There is nothing we can do to add to the finished work of Christ.
6). I believe in the security of the believer, that once he is truly born-again, there is nothing that would cause him to lose his salvation.
7). I believe that upon the death of a true believer in Christ, that he is ushered immediately into the presence of the Lord, where he will live in everlasting joy in Heaven, experiencing eternal fellowship with God.
8). I believe in believer’s baptism by immersion. I don’t believe baptism is necessary for salvation, but it is a beautiful outward profession of an inward possession.
9). I believe in a literal 6-day creation where God created the heavens and the earth and then rested on the seventh day.
10). I believe that the words written in the Bible are truth. I believe that the Bible is inerrant in its parts and in its whole. I believe that the 66 books that make up the canon of scripture make the Bible complete and that God inspired the words written therein. The things that were written down in the Bible are sufficient for every need we have. Not only is God’s Word sufficient, but it is far superior to any other method of handling the problems that man faces, since He has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness.