Thank God for all the good things He’s done for you.

Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. (Ps 37:4) This blessing that comes from God is not automatic. We have to do our part. We cannot give lip service to God and then expect Him to give us our hearts’ desires. We need to embrace His goodness and love Him totally and completely as the great love of our soul.

So how do you delight yourself in Him? Start with thinking about what He has done for you. Maybe you’ve been healed and delivered from pain and depression. Rejoice in that! That’s amazing. He protects you from fear so you never have to be afraid again. He gives you wisdom and understanding in areas that you give to Him. He gives you joy for sadness, peace for worry, and love for hate.

Stop and think about all that God has done and is doing for you. He is wonderful and loving and kind. Let your heart be full of His compassion and give it back to Him. Count your blessings, like the old song says. When you are truly thankful for your new life, you can delight in Him. You can stand in His presence with great joy because of who He is. Live like that, and the desires of your heart will come.

I believe that we live blinded to the real world of the spirit. It’s almost like the movie, The Matrix, where we live in a false reality, disbelieving the actual world we don’t see. The Bible describes so many things that we assume are metaphorical, when I think it is describing reality.

For instance, I love this verse in Isaiah 61:10

God cover us with salvation as a bride adorns herself with jewels.

For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

I think we are literally covered with salvation and righteousness in the spirit, and it is more beautiful than we know. God gave some serious thought to how to describe this. What is the one day that you will adorn yourself more carefully than any other day of your life?

If a girl is given the opportunity and means, she’s going to plan her wedding. She picks her earrings and shoes, and that dress is going to be amazing.

Well, think of that, times a million. That’s how God covers us with His salvation and righteousness. I can’t begin to imagine what it really looks like, but, I want to see it in the spirit.

Open your channel so you can hear God.

Does it seem to you that other people have the open channel to heaven and you never hear anything? Thinking about communicating with God as a channel is a good way to look at it. If you can’t hear Him, your channel may be closed entirely or clogged so nothing can get through.

Hearing from God is not impossible. In fact, it is the call of every believer to hear the voice of God. There are some simple steps to take to make it happen.

1. Are you a believer? Have you received salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus? If not, then that is the first step. Confess your sins to Him. Ask Him to forgive you and be Lord of your life.

2. Step one is good? Then take a long, hard look at how you see God. Is He distant and scary? Or is He near and loving. If He is distant and scary, ask Him to show you why. There may be unresolved issues in your life that you need to confess or people who you need to forgive. Those issues can block your relationship with God in significant ways.

3. Dealt with all the issues? Good. Now spend time talking to Him. Then spend time listening to Him. Listen with your heart. Listen as you read the Word. Listen as you sit in church. He will talk to you all the time.

Get your channel open and clear, because God has a lot to say.

All the blessings of heaven are waiting on you to ask.

Peter gives this wonderful salutation: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (2Pet 1:2) Grace and peace be yours in abundance. How wonderful is that? Grace, the favor and blessing of God to move on our behalf, and peace, the total lack of fear. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take than in abundance.

And that’s really the attitude that we need to get it. Peter says, in effect, I want you to have this. What do you do when someone offers you something? You have the choice to receive it or not. Just because someone offers you something does not mean that you own it, but it’s yours for the taking.

Just like all the aspects of God: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, self-control, gentleness, faith, they are all available. Available if we want them and take them.

How do you get them? Picture God standing there with His hands full of all His goodness that is available to us. He’s looking around for someone to give them to. Just ask Him. Tell Him what you want and need. He’s more than willing to give you that, and then more you haven’t asked for.

I would that you had all the gifts of God in abundance. Now receive them and be blessed!

God cares about the small things that matter to us.

God loves you. Can you stop and contemplate that for just a second. God, who made all the heavens and the universe, knows you and loves you, wildly. His is a God-sized love, bigger than you can imagine. And, amazingly, He cares about all the small thing in your life.

I know someone who went through a rough patch in life and was forced to accept free groceries from a local church. She hated to do it because of her pride, but it was necessary and kind of the church to make the offer.

On her way home from picking up her free food, she complained to God about how unfair life was being. As she carried the bag of groceries into the house, she noticed a jar of peanut butter in it. She rolled her eyes and told God, “If you really love me, that will be crunchy peanut butter.” She felt that in her situation, God was completely ignoring her.

When she got inside, she reached in and pulled out the jar. It was Extra Crunchy. She immediately recognized God’s message that, she was, in fact, greatly loved. It broke her and she had to admit that God was still being good to her.

God loves us so much more than we can comprehend, and He cares about what matters to us, even the small things.

God chose one man to be friends with and change history forever.

I love that God is personal with us. It’s sad that so many believed for so long that God was impersonal, barely even a person, who lived in the far, far distance and only associated with people when He was angry. That is a perverse description of Him.

In fact, God loves us so much, that He came to live with us. He knows all about our aches and pains because He got tired and hungry just like we do. He is personally, intimately close to us. He cares about the things that we care about. Many of those things He put in us in the first place.

I find it amazing that our entire culture of faith came from God picking out one man named Abram. One man, out of who knows how many million that lived. God got personal with one man and a culture was born to change our relationship with Him forever.

God cared about Abram, how he lived, what he thought, what he would pass on. He was chosen, and not by a random drawing. He was chosen because God knew him. He has always been close to us and always will be. He is a personal God because He knows you and He knows me, as a person. That’s the way it is between friends.

You are God’s delight.

The next time you primp in the mirror, stop for a second and think about this: you are God’s delight. How amazing is that? God says in His word: Rejoicing in His inhabited world, and my delight was with the sons of men. (Prov 8:31)

His delight! You are created to be delightful to God. It’s odd to think that when you look back at yourself in the mirror, but it’s true. He loves you. He dotes on you. He thinks about you constantly. Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. (Ps 40:5)

He is a proud father, because He sees you as His perfect creation. He looks at you through the blood of Christ, so He doesn’t see what you see. You just have to get used to seeing yourself the way He does. You are perfect before Him, with a promise and destiny that He have given you.

Never feel badly about yourself, because God doesn’t feel badly about you. He loves you wildly. You are His adorable child, and it’s ok to feel good about that.

Delight yourself completely in God.

Do this: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

And then do this: But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

And He will do this: Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

See how that works?  Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. (Philippians 2:12) You have to work out what loving God with all your heart means. It’s down to you. No one can do it for you. You decide how much you will love-honor-like God. Do you love Him? Do you love Him with your entire heart, holding nothing back? Do you love Him more than anyone or anything? If not, then you have an idol in your life, and you need to deal with it.

If you can say that you love God wholeheartedly, then God promises to bless you. He promises to take care of all your needs. And He promises to give you the desires of your heart.

Do you delight in God? Is He your highest joy? You really are His.

God will transform you from the inside.

Our relationship with God is not a spectator sport. We’re not to pray to a distant God in hopes that in His gracious benevolence He will answer, someday. Salvation is supposed to bring you into the relationship with Him that we were born for.

Emmanuel, God With Us, means exactly that. God comes to live in our hearts. And with His presence comes a unique development—we become transformed to look like Him. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2Cor 3:18)

We’re changed not on the outside, but on the inside. All the bad stuff that we had in us goes away as we allow God to convict our hearts. It is replaced by the good things of God. Little by little, with ever increasing glory, we begin to reflect our Father from the inside.

If you are not being transformed in your heart, then take a look at your relationship with God. Do you have one? Or is yours a long distance relationship? Turn to Him now, ask Him to be with you, and start the transformation.

God is the source of all good things.

All good things come from God. Jesus said, Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. (Mat 19:17) Whether we realized it or not, all goodness comes from God, because He is the source.

Did something good happen today? It’s because God is good. Did you actively seek His help? Probably not, but it was His presence that you felt. He is good whether we acknowledge Him or not. Most of the time we don’t. Most of the time, we enjoy when good things happen and take for granted that it was God who caused it.

There is great blessing in realizing that we owe so much to God for being good. When we acknowledge Him and give Him our praise because He deserves it, we’re more aware of what He is up to. We get in on His secret and He shows us the things what He is actively doing for us. It’s fun.

When we look at the world, so full of anger and death, it’s amazing to realize how good God is. Without His presence here, our lives would be bleak beyond description. But when we plug into  His goodness, we are filled with blessing beyond description, in a great way. And it’s good.

**************************************************************************The Key of David, by Diana Symons                                                                                             A story that’s been told for thousands of years…  The Bible’s Book 1 Samuel tells the story of David’s life – from an obscure family to an unlikely king, from shepherd to warrior, from champion to king-maker. What does it mean for a man to love God and be loved by Him? This book explores what it means to be human in the light of the Kingdom.