Do you know what Eden means? In the original language it means pleasure. Do you know why God created man? Revelation 4:11 “For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased (NLT).”
God took pleasure in creating people. We brought God pleasure and our original state was to live in pleasure (Eden). Does that change your viewpoint of God? It changed mine years ago when I found it out. God’s not an angry task-master, He is a person of pleasure and He wanted his children to live in pleasure.
Psalms 37:4 says Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. The first delight we are all called to is to delight ourselves in the world. As we spend time with Jesus and he comes our primary delight, He will give us or put the desires He wants us to have in our heart.
I often have people say to me, Pastor, I want to get involved and help out at church. What do you need me to do? I usually respond with a simple question: What do you want to do? Sometimes people look at me funny, like don’t you have something you need done? People often want me to give them a job to fill a need, but I generally won’t. Why? Because, I don’t want to steal from them their opportunity to seek God with all their heart and discover their pleasure. Serving out of relationship and passion yields lasting fruit; serving out of debt and obligation is at best not fruitful and at worst legalism. Either way, it always miserable and ungodly – not like God because he is a God of pleasure.
I’ll close with a simple question. When you seek God with all of your heart, what is your pleasure? If you can’t answer the question, there is no condemnation. I’d just encourage you to begin to spend more time with Jesus. Allow Him to love on you, teach you about Himself, and teach you about yourself. Unplug from whatever you need to, so you can find out why He made you. Sure, it’s a sacrifice, but if you aren’t living in the God ordained pleasure you were created for, you are sacrificing now.
I taught an entire message about doing things that give you life recently. I was able to go more in-depth in that teaching than I can in this short article. I talk about the process of fulfilling our God ordained dream, prayer, and other things that will answer more questions. If you’d like to learn more, please click here.
I know this teaching may seem a little different if you are new to the ministry of Grace Life Church. It’s different from religion, but it is biblical. He is the God of pleasure and it gives Him pleasure for you to walk in your divine pleasure. So what’s your pleasure? This is the key to fulfilling your divine purpose!
