Psalm 40:16

"But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, 'Great is the LORD!'"

Let us not overlook the obvious: God means for us to have joy. When He puts into the mouth of the psalmist the wish that we may "rejoice and be glad," it is the transcript of His own desire put in the mouth of the human author.

I have just one question for myself: "Andrée, if God is for your joy, why are you always pulling against it?" "Pulling against it?" my self defends in puzzlement. "Yes, you walk around with your brow knitted in guilt and worry as if your life depended on your maintaining a certain godly misery. What does this sadness do for you? Is it some strange self-protection mechanism? Is there some perverse kind of security you get out of it? Or is it that you don't trust God? Are you still living by your old motto, 'Jump before I'm pushed'?"

I am so glad for this verse and for Philippians 4:4 ("Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!") and Romans 12:12 ("Rejoice in hope") and Galatians 5:22 ("the fruit of the Spirit is . . . joy"). It is only God's permission to be joyful that keeps me from my natural bent toward moroseness as the proper posture for a sinner. If God did not say to "rejoice and be glad" in Him---if He did not indeed command it!---I would never dare to do it. Who would? He knew this, and so He made it clear that it is OK for us to be happy, to dance.

One of my new favorite verses is Romans 5:11. I used to think it was a mere rhetorical flourish, or perhaps a recapitulation of the previous verses. But no, it is an addition---an addition to the already wonderful blessings of forgiveness and reconciliation Paul painstakingly laid out starting in verse 1. What can possibly be added to justification and reconciliation? Isn't that the ultimate?

No! Paul isn't done yet. In verse 11 he says, "More than that, we also rejoice in God through out Lord Jesus Christ." That is, we are so completely saved and accepted by Him that He doesn't even want us to stay stuck at the grateful-but-timid stage, like a kid who leaves the principal's office with a reprieve from expulsion, but he spends the rest of high school avoiding contact with the man. The Lord invites us to go beyond relief to rejoicing. He gives permission. He gives invitation. And to die-hard self-flagellators like me, He gives command.

You may remember the poor little donkey Puzzle in C.S. Lewis' last Narnia tale called The Last Battle. He has acted very foolishly in his life, but Aslan has forgiven him and brought him to heaven. In the Judgment scene, Puzzle is called into a private audience with Aslan: "The Lion bowed down his head and whispered something to Puzzle at which his long ears went down; but then he said something else at which the ears perked up again." That's the idea: The droopy ears part is over; the perked ears part is here.

By the way, I think the "seeking" and the "rejoice and be glad" of this verse are meant to be simultaneous. I don't think God means that we seek him first, and then after some indeterminate time of seeking---maybe a week or a year---we come into rejoicing. The rejoicing starts the minute I start seeking Him in prayer and obedience.

"May those who love your salvation say continually, 'Great is the Lord!'" This is no "nice sentiment." This is a command, and my abiding in Christ depends on it. "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!" Yes, say so! Out loud! To myself! To my friends! Bridge that gap between Bible-reading and Bible-applying.

Once I was depressed and a friend' s counsel steered me toward Isaiah 61:3---to put on "a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit." Some time later he asked me how I was doing with that verse. "It's beautiful," I said. "Never mind 'beautiful,'" he replied impatiently: "Are you doing it?"

To read Andrée Seu's series on Psalm 40, click here.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.