The Lord your God is in your midst, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. -Zephaniah 3:17
In the beginning, God created the heavens & the earth, the plants & the trees, the creepy crawly things & the livestock & the birds of the air, & man & woman. And on the sixth day He looked over all that He had created & declared that it was very good (Genesis Ch 1). You are His creation, created by Him, for His family, & God loves you & calls you very good!
God delights in you. The One Who created all the beauty & wonder of this great universe, takes great joy in YOU. The original Hebrew text of this verse uses the word “yasis”- he will rejoice. The root of yasis is “sus” or “sis,” which means to exult, delight, rejoice greatly, be glad, make mirth. He GREATLY rejoices over you; He is excited about you! He cares about every little detail of your life (Psalm 37:23). He walks with you, provided salvation for you, takes away all fear, sings praises over YOU! We don’t just love & praise Him, He loves & praises us- not only that, He loved & praised us first, before we even knew Him! I don’t know about you, but the knowledge of this one thing alone, puts a huge smile on my face.
Look at this verse again, & notice that not only does He delight in you, but He will no longer rebuke you. The amplified version says “making no mention of your past sins.” Think about it, do you discipline your children for wrongdoings & sing praises over them at the same time? That’s impossible, right? How then, could a loving heavenly Father, rebuke you for your past sins, when He is busy taking delight in you & rejoicing over you?
When you are in Christ, your past sins no longer exist. As Corrie Ten Boom once said, when you accepted Christ, God took all of your sins, past, present, & future, & threw them in a lake.. Then He put up a “No Fishing” sign. There is no fear of punishment here, only His grace & love. And because He loves us so much, & rejoices over us, we delight in Him, living with the goal not to take advantage of His grace, but to please Him in our words & actions.
Seeking Him Ministries 
Makes me think about how God’s rejoicing vs us human beings rejoicing.
For example when you go to a concert and everyone is clapping, screaming, singing along? The energy that is felt? It’s pretty amazing.
And then there’s God. And I can only imagine how powerful it must be to be in the midst of THAT kind of energy. We’d probably literally explode! There’s only so much of his power a human body could handle.
I think there’s actually a scripture around that.
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Yes! As I wrote this I thought about how children get giddy & excited about things, & how much more pure joy there is when the Lord gets excited about us- which is all the time! And yes, there is scripture about His glory being too much for the human body- when Moses went up on Mount Sinai, the Israelites didn’t want to go, they were afraid of the Glory!
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