God, Ours
1Chronicles 16:10 teaches that, Our hearts can be filled with joy by reflecting on who God is.
So seek Him (v11)—our joy is with Him and nowhere else.
And remember Him (v12)—that is, to recall what we already know about Him.
The final piece of 1Chronicles 16 that we’ll consider is vv 13-15:
13 O offspring of Israel his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen ones! 14 He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth.
15 Remember his covenant forever!
Notice that vv13-14 are just statements. v15 is the command: “Remember His covenant forever.” (That is, “remember that God has made a forever-promise to attach Himself to you.”)
And that’s what vv13-14 actually are: they are the singers remembering God’s relationship with His people! These verses celebrate who Israel is to God and who God is to Israel.
Let’s put this all together.
We want our hearts to be filled with joy.
So we should turn toward the LORD—joy comes from Him.
And we do that by remembering what we already know about Him and all He’s done.
Now go further: how do those truths apply to you? We know joy starts with our God, but it has to make contact with our hearts for it to become our joy.
We must remember that God is our God. He has attached Himself to us. What He is, He is for us—He is all He is, as ours.
Here is how the truths travel from our heads to our hearts. We remember that we ourselves, as we are, all that we are, are welcomed; we are His and with Him. And that’s what our lives are—life within His life, His love, His grace and good-purposes.
And then the truth goes from our heads and hearts to our hands. Joy is not just good feelings. Joy is the spilling-over of what’s in our hearts into our lives. Joy is what other people get from us when we live our lives toward God, with God, remembering Him, as His own.
“Glory in His Holy Name!” They sang that day. Today, I want to remind you, there’s glory—a filling kind-of joy—for you, with Him. Seek Him, find your life, and know His joy.
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash