Enjoying God

By T.M. Moore

Daniel’s prayer in chapter 9 of his prophecy is one of most poignant and moving passages in the Old Testament. It brings me to tears every time I read it. In it he confesses the sins of Israel and calls on God to forgive and return His favor to His people, and to carry out His promises on their behalf.

Now we recall that Daniel was a godly man, a man the likes of whom rarely appears anywhere in Scripture. He is the “Daniel” we “dare” to be when courage, purity, and forthrightness are required. Yet in this prayer we see what might seem to be a very different Daniel – a man weeping for sin, desperate for forgiveness, terrified of judgment, and urgently pleading with God for mercy.

In fact, it is just these qualities, rarely glimpsed in the private, devotional life of Daniel, that made this Old Testament prophet the great and fearless servant of God he was. Daniel was fully engaged with God in all aspects of his being, life, and times. And when Daniel read the Word of God – as we see him doing in chapter 9 – he was fully engaged with Scripture as well.

In his book, On Christian Doctrine, Augustine taught that we will love to read and meditate in Scripture when we have learned to enjoy God Whom we meet there. The greater our enjoyment of God, as He reveals Himself in glory in His Word, the more we will enjoy reading His Word and love to immerse ourselves in it.

But this will only happen when we are “all-in” toward God – when we have learned to love Him and to come before Him with every aspect of our being. Augustine explains, “This is the divinely instituted rule of love: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ He said, and, ‘Thou shalt love God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.’ Thus all your thoughts and all your understanding should be turned toward Him from whom you receive these powers.”

Enjoying God is not merely an intellectual exercise, as Augustine explains elsewhere. If we approach the Word of God merely with our minds, that is, to learn some new truth, enlarge our understanding, or gain some new insight, while we may fulfill that intellectual quest, it’s doubtless this will lead us to the enjoyment of God which Scripture provides. Augustine continues, “[God] did not leave any part of life which should be free and find itself room to desire the enjoyment of something else.” We love God when we love Him all-in, when we are fully engaged in our hearts, minds, priorities, words, and deeds with the great adventure of reading Scripture to meet God in His glory. If we do not bring our entire selves to meet with God in Scripture, then we are distracted from Him in at least some part of our being. And, frankly, if He does not command our entire being, He will not be likely to engage us with His.

But let us not be mistaken about what we mean by “enjoying God.” In his prayer in Daniel 9, Daniel reveals a wide range of powerful emotions. He is deeply sorrowful, to the point of fasting in prayer and ashes (v. 3). He is lifted up in worship, envisioning God in all His greatness, power, and severity (vv. 4-9). He confesses his sin and that of the nation (v. 5).  Daniel is overcome with humiliation and shame (vv. 6, 7), clings to hope in God alone (vv. 9, 13, 2tc.), surveys the sad state of the people of God in his day (v. 11), remembers both God’s faithfulness and Israel’s disobedience (vv. 11-13), dreads the judgment of God (v. 14), and urgently pleads for mercy, forgiveness, and the favor of the Lord (vv. 17-19).

Here is a man who was thoroughly enjoying the presence of God. Enjoyment, you see, should not be equated with “fun.” Fun is cheap, easy, and fleeting; enjoyment is hard work, and only comes when joy in the Lord is deeply embedded in every sector of the soul, and persistent, regardless of circumstances. Daniel enjoyed his prayer to the Lord because he was enjoying the presence of God, the sense of His looming, weighty glory and unchangeable righteousness, His unfailing promises and deeply penetrating Word. Daniel wept and pled with God as only one can who truly knows how to enjoy His presence and lean on His love.

And how was this possible? How was Daniel so able to enjoy God like this – “all-in” – when most of us rarely if ever know an encounter with God that even remotely compares with what we see here?

Because Daniel was “all-in” – heart, soul, mind, and strength – with his reading of Jeremiah 25:11, 12. He brought himself, entirely engaged, to reading and meditating on that text, and, after 70 years of being a captive in Babylon, Jeremiah’s words uncorked Daniel’s memory, ignited his affections, summoned his values and priorities, and commanded the next steps he sought from the Lord for that day’s service. When we come to the Scripture “all-in” like this, God will meet us “all-in”, and we will know the joy of His presence, and love the time we have with Him in His Word.

for more by T.M. Moore, please visit ColsonCenter.org

Duty or Delight

- by T.M. Moore

I want to insist that you are reading the Scriptures wrong if you’re not reading them daily and comprehensively. You need a plan to help you develop the discipline of setting aside time each day to read, meditate in, and study the Word of God, and to do so in a way that takes you through the whole of Scripture, over and over again.

Perhaps this sounds a bit “legalistic” to you? I’ve been told as much by pastors and church leaders who believe that, if they “wed” themselves to such a “rigid discipline”, as they see it, they’ll just become like the Pharisees of old, doing their duty and checking off their list of good works to prove their righteousness.

Is daily, comprehensive reading of the life-giving, glory-revealing, power-wielding Word of God a mere duty? Are we being “legalistic” by insisting that we’re only reading Scripture right when we read it this way?

It depends… Certainly, Bible reading can become a work of legalism by which we try to prove our “righteousness” and flaunt our “piety.” But just because it can be this doesn’t mean that it must or that God intends it should. What if, rather than being a mere duty, daily and comprehensive reading of God’s Word could become a great delight? This, after all, was how the prophet Jeremiah saw his time in the Scriptures. He wrote, “Your words were found and I did eat them, and Your Word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart!” (Jer. 15:16). Job, the greatest man of his day, said that he valued his time in the Word of God more than the meals he took three times a day (Job 23:12). Jesus acknowledged that depending on Scripture is more important than our bodily nutritional needs, as important as these truly are (Matt. 4:4); at any rate, He seems to have taken great delight in all the counsel of God in Scripture.

So it depends on how we approach reading, meditating in, and studying the Word of God. If we approach it as a duty, something we “have” to do, then that’s what it will be. And as a “duty” our discipline of reading will not yield the fruit of transforming grace God intends. Instead, it will only make us smug and self-righteous.

On the other hand, if we learn to delight in the Word and to cherish the time we have to read it, we’re likely to find, like Jeremiah and Job and Jesus, that these moments in the Word of God are the most important, most enjoyable moments of our day.

So how do we get to that mindset?

Seek the Lord!

God is the Lord of the heart; He is able to shape our attitudes and affections when it comes to daily reading in His Word. If we will seek the Lord daily as we come to the Scriptures, looking to Him to help us delight in His Word, we can expect that He will do so, for this is His will for every one of us.

for more by T.M. Moore, visit ColsonCenter.org

Eat and Drink Life

Wisdom has built her house;

she has hewn her seven pillars.

She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine;

she has also set her table.

She has sent out her young women to call

from the highest places in the town,

“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”

 To him who lacks sense she says,

“Come, eat of my bread

and drink of the wine I have mixed.

Leave your simple ways, and live,

and walk in the way of insight.”

  - Proverbs 9: 1-6

When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 

Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 

Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 

So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat. ’” 

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 

They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

...No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God. ’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

  - John 6: 25-40, 44-59

And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 

And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God. ’”

In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.

When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. 

And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded:‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent. ’”

And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.

...Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 

Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded:‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. ’” 

And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” 

As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan.

  - Leviticus 16: 10-18, 31-35