Here's
a question: How does God feel most of the time? Is He bored? Worried?
Blase? Happy? Concerned? Detached? Engaged? Mad, glad or sad? It sounds
lighthearted, but it's one of the most important questions of our
entire spiritual journey.
 How does God feel when He looks at you? What
wells up in His heart when His eyes turn upon your life? I have asked
many people this question over the years, and they usually respond in
one of two ways: God is mostly mad or God is mostly sad.
And
in both cases, they think it's their fault. Many Christians believe
very strongly that God is mostly angry and grieved with each of us. In
some parts of the Body of Christ this sentiment is expressed clearly
and openly, but in most quarters it's inarticulate. It's one of those
under-the-surface, sinister opinions everybody holds, but nobody talks
about. God is viewed as distant, angry, sitting on the throne and
spending the bulk of His emotional energy being disappointed in
mankind. We picture a weeping God who beats His breast and turns His
eyes away from us in shame. But Scripture tells us the very opposite.
Our God smiles and rejoices. His emotions fall into a third category:
God is mostly glad.
That
is the only correct answer! Moses, under the prophetic anointing, made
a stunning declaration about the Lord's gladness: "The Lord your God
will make you abound in all the work of your hands...For the Lord will
again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers"
(Deut. 30:9). In this passage, God was telling Moses that at the end of
the age God will break forth with rejoicing over His people. He will
reveal Himself to them as the glad God who overflows with delight and
enjoyment. Instead of cowering at the feet of an angry God, the body of
Christ will bask in the sunshine of His gladness. This is the day we
are living in!
If
this picture of God seems impossible to you, scan the Word. Passages
about God's gladness abound throughout the Bible. For example,
Zephaniah 3:17 reveals Him as One who rejoices. "He will take great
delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over
you with singing" (NIV). Imagine that! He will sing and rejoice over
His people with gladness. He will quiet our stormy hearts with the
revelation of His love. God's songs over His people are not songs of
anger but of rejoicing and tender love. In this passage, He is not just
exhorting people to be glad, but He is promising to sing songs that
make us glad. These songs reveal His affectionate heart for us. This
isn't just dry exhortation to be glad, but the experiential
understanding of His gladness for us. That gladness is catching!
The
rest of the book of Zephaniah lays the backdrop for this divine
promise. It describes the scenes at the end of the age when everything
that can be shaken is being shaken. In that day, men will literally die
of heart attacks because of fear (Lk. 21:26). Fear will be one of the
predominant emotions worldwide. In the midst of this dramatic shaking,
God promises that He will comfort and quiet His people by releasing
songs of His affection and gladness. We will be calmed on the inside by
this revelation. Intimacy with a glad God will nourish our souls and
sustain the church in the midst of unprecedented calamity. Like a
parent with a troubled child, God will sing love songs that soothe us
and impart His delight to us.
I've
already said I believe the greatest dimension of God's glory is His
emotions, and now we begin to see that central to His emotional life is
His gladness and joy. This is what God communicated to Moses when he
longed to see God's glory. God promised to make known His glory and
goodness to him by revealing His compassion (Ex 33:18-19). Next, God
declared His glory as being "the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and
gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping
mercy for thousands" (Ex 34:6-7). Notice that when God reveals His
glory, He emphasizes the glory of His emotions. As we enter into the
reality of His happiness and joy, our hearts discover other emotions
that abound in His heart. We begin to experience His desires for us,
His beauty, and His pleasures. But we cannot skip the foundational step
of understanding His gladness. We will not easily believe that God
burns with desire for us or that He is exceedingly beautiful if we do
not first believe that He is glad. It must be the foundation of our
theology: our God is a God who smiles.
God's
heart is infinitely glad in the fellowship of the Trinity. Jesus
perpetually rejoices before the Father. He describes Himself at
Creation, saying, "Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; and I
was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Prov. 8:30). In
this passage, Jesus, who is the personification of wisdom, was at the
right hand of God the Father. In His wisdom, He possessed overflowing
delight and gladness while He created. The Scripture says God creates
not out of duty or boredom but out of His pleasure (Rev. 4:11). A great
ocean of delight resides within His personality. This is the God that
holds us in His gaze and the God we gaze upon and behold. And He is,
above all, glad.
If
at the center of your theology is a God who smiles, then it's not hard
to understand this next truth about Him: He is smiling at you as you
respond to Him in willing obedience. His infinite smile extends over
His creation. He is delighted in Himself and in the overflow of that
delight, but He especially enjoys humans who respond to the grace He
offered freely in Christ Jesus. This applies to each of us individually
and uniquely. God has affection and enjoyment for you even at your
weakest point. "For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will
beautify the humble with salvation" (Ps. 149:4).
He
actually enjoys you! What a powerful concept! Not only does He smile,
but He smiles when He looks at you! Most people struggle to imagine
this because they never quite grasp the first premise: that He is a
smiling God. They only perceive a God who frowns with disappointment
most of the time. When they hear that He is smiling and rejoicing over
them, it's like the words mean nothing to them. The truth goes right
over their heads. They can't reconcile this with their picture of a
dour Deity who turns His eyes on them and scowls.
In
Proverbs 8:31 Jesus describes Himself as One rejoicing in the inhabited
world and experiencing delight in the sons of men. Though His delight
in us is so clearly stated in Scripture, we find ourselves like the
prodigal son who was confused by his father's overwhelming delight: we
stand at a distance, not knowing how to receive it. It's more logical
and comfortable for us to bring our list of failures and then plead for
a low position in His kingdom. Yet instead of negotiating with us, He
embraces us with unabashed affection and covers us with the royal robe
of righteousness. He celebrates you or me as His child and throws a
party in our honor. This is the God we serve. This is who He is
regardless of what we do.
Throne of Gladness and Pleasure
Around
the throne of God is an atmosphere saturated with gladness and
rejoicing. The closer you get to the Person of God, the more gladness
you experience. King David, the great theologian of the pleasure of
God, described this joyful environment around God's Throne in one of
his songs. "Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and gladness are
in His place" (1 Chron. 16:27). He testified first of God's majesty and
power and then of the gladness that surrounds the throne. In His
presence is fullness of joy. Happiness prevails everywhere in heaven.
Jesus referred to this joy as being His at creation (Prov. 8:30). David
had this incredible revelation that the atmosphere around the throne of
God was full of gladness. His heart overflowed when he cried, "In Your
presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures
forevermore" (Ps. 16:11). He was exclaiming, "Let me tell you about the
God I love. He overflows with gladness!"
The
One seated on the throne is glad, and all those that stand near Him are
swept up in joyful contagion of His gladness. The closer we get to His
throne in heaven, the happier we become. Job said that when God was
creating the world, the angels, referred to as "the sons of God," were
filled with happiness as they sang. They were over-the-top exhilarated
(Job 38:7). God even created angels with a capacity for happiness - a
phenomenal reality!
In
my imagination I can see the Father looking at the Son with a big grin
as they planned Creation. I see Jesus smiling and asking, "Well,
Father, what kind of servants should we create for My bride?" The
Father replies, "Happy servants." So God placed the capacity for
happiness in their very design. In Luke 2, these very angels appeared
in the heavens to tell people that God had supplied a remedy - a Savior
- to bring us back into fellowship with Him. The choirs of heaven and
the angels appeared and were almost unable to contain their glee. They
said it loud and long, "Hosanna, Glory to God in the highest!" They
trumpeted the good news that God was removing the barriers so people
could come into one-heart fellowship with Him. This wasn't a one-time
celebration but a lifestyle of heaven being revealed for a moment to
citizens of Earth. Jesus tells us there is joy in the presence of the
angels when one sinner repents (Luke 15:10). They shout, "This is
wonderful! Another one! Let's celebrate." And this type of joy goes on
and on, and will continue forever.
What
kind of God would put happiness at the very core of the servants of the
house? Only a God who is happy Himself. If God were always angry,
surely His servants would always be angry. If God were vengeful, surely
His servants would be a vengeful army, not a singing choir that
suddenly appears in the heavens. Angels have happy hearts because God
has a happy heart.
And
the angels aren't the only ones. In my mind's eye I can see the elders
who sit before Him falling to worship as they are caught up in awe with
gladness before God's throne (Rev. 11:16). I imagine that one day I'll
get to approach one of them and inquire, "Excuse me, I know you are
worshiping, but I want to know one thing: how are you feeling?" I
imagine he will rise and respond, "The closer we get to the throne, the
more joy we feel! The more we see of Him, the more delight we
experience! It's fantastic! I can't get enough."
In
God's presence, around His throne is the fullness of joy, and one day
we will witness it for ourselves! The angels in His presence are full
of joy. The elders are overcome with bliss. Jesus, at the right hand of
the Father, brims and overflows with happiness. The Father loves His
kingdom, His angels, and His people! He is a happy God!
And
- wonder of wonders - God calls us to partake of this joy. In Psalm
36:8 David says to God the Father, "You give them drink from the river
of Your pleasures." By giving us drink, David means God shares the
pleasure of His Being with us. There is simply no greater pleasure than
when God reveals God to the human spirit. It happens now on Earth to a
certain degree, for those of us who are His children, and it will
happen in heaven in exponentially greater measure. When we see Him face
to face we will voluntarily rejoice.
It's
not as if we will enter heaven and receive an injection of laughing
gas. That's not how it works. Smiling in heaven is not required - it's
inevitable. There are no happy robots. Happiness is the province of
people who choose of their own free will to enter into it. We'll see
something (and Someone) that makes us extraordinarily glad. We will
marvel at the streets of gold, the incredible opulence of our
surroundings in that heavenly city. We will feel things that far
surpass what we have felt before. If you and I could be instantly
transported to the throne of God, we would be shocked by the happiness
that would overcome us. We would experience a combination of
overwhelming terror of God's majesty and an overflowing happiness. We
would cry, "More! But I can't take more! Too much! Never enough! It's
so intense, I can't stand it! Oh, but I want more!"
Responding to the God of Gladness
This doctrine of God's gladness isn't a theological curiosity meant to
entertain us. It is foundational to helping our hearts grow into
spiritual maturity. Deuteronomy 28:47-48 says, "Because you did not
serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the
abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies."
When
we enter into God's joy and gladness, the door to much of Satan's
activity slams shut in our lives. The joy of serving God keeps us from
compromise. A glad heart is a strong heart. The Bible says the joy of
the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10). And don't get the wrong idea
about the above verse from Deuteronomy. God is not acting out of spite.
He's not pouting and saying, "I was glad and you would not enter into
My gladness, so forget it. You're going to serve your enemies. Now
you're really going to hurt." Rather, He is laying out the only two
options that exist. Either we enter into His gladness with whole
hearts, or we will eventually come under the influence of the enemy,
giving in to his accusations, becoming offended at God.
As
the dominos fall after we are offended, we end up serving the lies of
the enemy instead of living beneath the truths of God. We see God as
different than He is. We imbibe false notions about Him. We give ear to
the whispers of the devil that malign His character. If we continue to
agree with the enemy, he easily leads us into compromise and darkness.
It happens to believers and nonbelievers alike.
The
antidote is to live in the reality of God's joy and gladness. That's
how the End-Time Church will be empowered, set apart, and strong. Psalm
2:11 illustrates this principle with a wonderful picture. In the time
of the End-Time judgments, God says, "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry,
and you perish in the way." If we don't kiss the Son, meaning enter
into intimacy with Him, we will eventually fall prey to an accusing
spirit against God because of His judgments. Don't you see the enemy's
tactic? He tries to align us with himself and bring us into opposition
to the Lord by unleashing accusations against Him. If we accept the
enemy's logic, it brings God's wrath upon us. Intimacy with God is the
only divine plan we have for avoiding this. God does not give us the
option to live in the gray zone. We will be people who are lovesick and
glad before our God, or we will become angry with Him, especially in
light of the intensity of His End-Time judgments. There will not be a
middle ground.
Unfortunately,
accusation against the character of God is lodged in the hearts of
people within the body of Christ all over the earth. We believe a
network of lies about God's personality. We have drunk Satan's
accusations and slander against God and drawn a false picture of God.
We approach the Father feeling that He is deeply grieved or angry with
us because of our immaturity. We believe this because, contrary to
Scripture, we think He possesses no gladness in His being. This false
view of God will lead us directly into the enemy's camp. But God has
gone out of His way to rescue us. The blood of Christ is our free pass
into the gladness of God. Jesus died not out of anger or exasperation,
but to make a way for us to enter into the Father's gladness. The Lord
wants to dislodge every false accusation in our hearts against the
truth of His personality.
He would have us experience His happy heart so our hearts might be realigned, transformed, strengthened, matured and renewed.
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