Glad You're Here: A 5-Day Study by Craig Cooper and Walker HayesPrimjer

Maybe you wonder, like I have, if your life is making any difference in the world around you—any positive impact on others’ lives.

Maybe you’re struggling to find meaning in the midst of all the mundane, everyday stuff of your ordinary life.

I can relate.

If that’s you, please let me encourage you. You may not see it now, but your life is making a difference to the world around you. And more importantly, God is rejoicing over you. I think a lot of people, even heartfelt believers in Christ, don’t truly feel loved or accepted by God. We can often picture God as a disinterested father, cross with us, mildly irritated, maybe even rolling His eyes in our direction. If we don’t see Him as agitated, we can think of Him as merely tolerating us, but certainly not rejoicing over us. How could He, with all the baggage we bring?

Yet the Bible portrays God as singing over us with gladness.

“The LORD your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

he will rejoice over you with gladness;

he will quiet you by his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV)

There’s no compulsion here. It is His joy. God quiets us with His love and exults over us with singing.

You and I can be much more aware of our own faults and failures than we are of the faithfulness of God and His expressed feelings of delight in us. That’s why we need a biblical view of Jesus, one where He already knows everything about us and yet He still rejoices in us. That’s the true heart of Christ, and that’s the heart Jesus wants us to have with our friends.

The posture of Jesus is one of open arms.

Warmth. Empathy. Welcome. Joy.

Jesus’ love is a love that sings over us with rejoicing.

Dear believer, you don’t have to be perfect to be loved by God or used by God. You don’t have to walk on water or be able to turn it Napa Valley red—if you know and are known by the One who did; if you draw near to Him and simply open yourself up to receive and reflect His love, there’s no telling what God can do in and through you.

He delights in you and wants you to feel and know His great love, and then out of the overflow of His great love, share that love with your friends.

“Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come… and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1:4–6, ESV)

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