Christians are often portrayed as downcast and dour, as people who are trapped in a system of beliefs that robs them of joy and life. And with a bit of honest self-examination, we can probably think of times when we have fit the cliché.
Yet any fault in this is ours, for as Charles Spurgeon says so well, true faith is meant to be inseparable from deep delight, “as interwoven as root and flower, as indivisible as truth and certainty.” God’s desire for us is not to live in captivity to a set of rules or to go through religious motions in order to impress him or others.
Rather, God’s desire is that his love for us, and ours for him, would generate a deep and lasting joy that would make worship a pleasure more than an obligation and make obedience a delight more than a duty. For in coming to know God, we have come to know the most delightful Being there is—the one from whom all true delights flow in an endless fountain. To know God is to find in him great joy and lasting satisfaction.
