Day 7: You were planned for God’s pleasure

You created everything, and it is for your pleasure
that they exist and were created.
Revelation 4:11

The Lord takes pleasure in his people.
Psalm 149: 4a

You were planned for God’s pleasure.
The moment you were born into the world, God was there as an unseen witness, smiling at your birth. He wanted you alive, and your arrival gave him great pleasure. God did not need to create you, but he chose to create you for his own enjoyment. You exist for his benefit, his glory, his purpose, and his delight.

Bringing enjoyment to God, living for his pleasure, is the first purpose of your life. If you are that important to God, and he considers you valuable enough to keep with him for eternity, what greater significance could you have? You are a child of God, and you bring pleasure to God like nothing else he has ever created. The bible says, “Because of his love God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his children-this was his pleasure and purpose.

One of the greatest gifts God had given you is the ability to enjoy pleasure. He wired you with five senses and emotions so you can experience it. He wants you to enjoy life, not just endure it. The reason you are able to enjoy pleasure is that God made you in his image.

We often forget that God has emotion, too. He feels things very deeply. The bible tells us that God grieves, get jealous and angry, and feels compassion, pity, sorrow, and sympathy as well as happiness, gladness, and satisfaction. God loves, delights, gets pleasure, rejoices, enjoys, and even laughs!

Bringing pleasure to God is called “worship.” The Bible says, “The Lord is pleased only with those worship him and trust his love.” (Psalm 147:11) Anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship. Like a diamond, worship is multifaceted. It would take volumes to cover all there is to understand about worship. Anthropologists have noted that worship is a universal urge, hard-wired by God into a very fiber of our being-an inbuilt need to connect with God. Worship is a natural as eating or breathing. If we fail to worship God, we always find a substitute, even if it ends up being ourselves. The reason God made us with this desire is that he desires worshippers! Jesus said, “The Father seeks worshippers.” (John 4:23)

Depending on your religious background, you may need to expand your understanding of “worship.” You may thing of church services/liturgies with singing, praying, and listening to a sermon. Or you may think of ceremonies, candles, and communion. Or you may think of healing, miracles, and ecstatic experiences. Worship can include these elements, but worship is far more than expressions.
Worship is a lifestyle.

Rick Warren, one of the author listed as voted “Book of the Decade” entitled “The Purpose-driven life”, wrote: "Worship is not just for your benefit. We worship for God’s benefit. We don’t worship to please ourselves. Our motive is to bring glory and pleasure for our Creator."

Worship is not part of your life; it is your life. In the Bible people praised God at work, at home, in battle, in jail, and even in bed! Every activity can be transformed into an act of worship when we do it for the praise, glory, and pleasure for God. “What ever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”(Colossian 3:23). This is the secret to a lifestyle of worship-doing everything as if you were doing it for God. Works becomes worship when you dedicate it to God and perform it with an awareness of his presence.

Day 7,
Thinking about my purpose
Point to ponder: I was planned for God’s pleasure.
Verse to remember: The Lord takes pleasure in his people.” Psalm 149:4a
Question to consider: What common task could I start doing as if I were doing it directly for God?
Note: read and reflect more, see Day 1-6 as posted previously