I was in the process of beating myself up over something when an email from a friend arrived with the following verse: “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).
Wait a minute. God is taking great delight in me and I am beating myself up? What’s wrong with this picture? Obviously I do not have God’s view of myself. I have a warped view and I am going against God’s plan when I give into it. If we were all honest, I think we would find that this view is pretty typical. We continually feel like we are falling way short of what is expected of us spiritually, and to be perfectly honest, most of us probably think God is administering a good share of the beating. That is where we are all wrong about God.
Think about it like this: Why would God heap guilt and punishment on someone he went to such great lengths to save? Doesn’t make sense, does it? And yet we love to engage in this “woe is me” way of thinking. We love to punish ourselves as if we could pay for our own sins. Well God’s got other things in mind for us. He wants to delight in us. This is what life is all about, after all. God created us because it was his pleasure to do so. He made us so he could delight in us and we could delight in him. God gets joy out of every inch of his universe, but nothing like the joy he has over you and me.
Why is it so hard for us to believe this? Probably because it’s so rare in our human experience to have anyone experience sheer delight over someone else. We are so careful and guarded with our praise lest we unknowingly reward some wrong behavior. But God has already gathered up all our wrong doings and put them away on the cross, leaving him free to delight in us, and so he does.
Think about who we could be and what we could do if we really started believing this.
John Fischer The Catch 
I, too, am guilty of this more times than not. This is especially true since Friday when I received the your contract is not being renewed for teaching here next year. Now, if I had had an explanation or some inkling as to this happening, I probably would not have been so shocked and bewildered. I received an outstanding evaluation for the two years I have been there. I have continually received praise, verbally and in writing, from my principal. But because of the ill planned bills of our current governor and legislators in Florida, along with severe budget cuts, my Spanish teaching position was eliminated. You would think an english/Spanish teacher would have more security. After 16 years in 4 different states, being 61, and the economy, my deepest concern is actually finding a job that will hire me. The older we get, the slimmer the job offers and employment. Financially we haven’t been doing too bad. We have been paying off bills, and managed to pay monthly costs on time. However, we have never been able to save for a rainy day, so a loss of income definitely will be crippling. I have definitely been beating myself up, asking myself questions, and being a doubting Thomas. Since this happens a lot in Florida, I have experienced this before, and it has always been because of budget cuts. When will the government learn our students cannot compete without a solid educational background?
So sorry for you, and for the kids. But God is with you.
Unless, of course, we have sins for which we are unrepentant. 🙂
I experienced this “beating up vs God’s delight” this past week. I was beating myself up over how I handled one of the boys in my 6th grade discipleship group the previous Sunday. Then one of the moms in my Bible study group told me not to worry about it. She said, “You make a lot of mistakes with boys. You just have to learn from them” (i.e., the mistakes). As it turned out, the boy came in the next week repentant of how he had acted and very apologetic. I apologized for the way I had dealt with his misbehavior. Then we had one of the best Sundays together we’ve ever had. You never know what God is up to. You just can’t go by your feelings.
On the other hand, someone once said that Christianity is a mixture of joy and sorrow: joy over what God has done for us in Christ; sorrow for our own sin and the sins of the world. I don’t think you can walk through life with just joy unless you’re a Pollyanna and totally naive to what is going on in your own heart and the rest of the world. Life is meant to be bitter-sweet because we live in a fallen world. Once we’re in Christ’s final Kingdom, the New Heavens and Earth, THEN we will experience boundless, unending joy.
Thanks for the post.
Great post–Great response. I often agonize over many things–nice to be reminded, and comforted.
First, a quick comment to the comment above — of course God wants sincere repentance when we need to give it. What I think you, John, are talking about are those times when wanting to repent goes over the line into beating ourselves up for sins both real and imagined, and for being imperfect humans, which we are, 24/7. Of course life isn’t always a fountain of joy! It surely should be other than a fountain of self-criticism and recrimination.
John, I needed to read these words more than I can have the words to describe. Your column today gives me a huge gift at the precise moment it’s dearly and deeply needed. Thank you for being a channel of God’s love and Good Shepard warmth.
I needed to read this. Actually I had just read in the Word that God delights me this morning. I asked Him, Do you delight in me God? I just have no idea why He does. It humbles me. We’ve had some giant financial issues for the last year and I know that I know that I know I need to keep believing no matter what even though I know I must look like a fool to many watching. God loves me. He really does. That’s pretty incredible.