Jesus Sings
For the LORD your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs." Zephaniah 3:17 NLT
Take a few minutes this morning and consider the amazing truth of this verse.
First, these are generalizations, right? Zephaniah is speaking generally here.
No, dear one, this is personal. Intensely personal. God loves you. He sings over you.
He is always with you and will never leave you. When you go places that you shouldn’t go, in your car or in your mind, He goes with you. Bad choices may lead you away, but He will always be right there – mighty to save.
To save means to rescue, and He will rescue you, most times from yourself. But as savior He also makes you whole and well. For to be saved also means to be made whole. Sometimes you don’t feel very whole, though, do you? Not to well, either, with aches and pain and sickness or disease that can’t be wished away.
But realize this, He has made you alive who once was dead in trespass and sin (Ephesians 2:1-3) Once, not long ago, you were dead in sin, and Jesus reached to you and pulled you out of darkness and into His glorious light. He made you new, transformed you, made you whole and beautiful and right with God. Live in that reality, not the one where your bowels won’t move or your wrist hurts or your diagnosis is terminal. You are alive forevermore. Saved and whole. Rest in His eternal care.
My mother, who battled heart disease from her early forties till she moved to her eternal home, always had this look on her face of serene peace and security. She knew she was fine even if her physical body was deteriorating prematurely and rapidly. She had a countenance of faith and God, as we are told here, delighted in her with gladness.
And He delights in you, dear one, when you live by faith, when you live in the reality of what Christ has already done, and you move through this blessed life without complaint, because you have truly found the Pearl of Great Price. Knowing this amazing love will calm all your fears.
There is a lot to fear these days, not the least of which is not knowing what the future holds and what kind of world our children and grandchildren are going to find in twenty, thirty, forty years. But God’s love calms these fears. How? Because of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He conquered sin, death and the grave, effectively removing the need to fear anything. Ever. And He did it out of love for you, for your kids and theirs.
And so He sings. He rejoices over you with singing. I don’t understand this, but I love it. I don’t know what God would sing over me but I know it is good. In moments like this, when my heart is calm and my wits are clear I can almost hear Him singing. And He is singing over you. Rejoicing and singing something beautiful and eternal. The sound rings throughout the heavens and over each of His children, personally, individually, and uniquely, as Jesus sings.
Sincerely,
Ed
