God Promises You His Joy

Psalms 43:3-4 Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. 4 Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
 
ONE can easily join Psalm 42 with Psalm 43. The author is the same, and he uses this psalm to confirm he has rediscovered God’s song in his heart.
   He hears the songs of praise and thanksgiving because he knows the way to God’s joy. The night is done, and the light comes over the land. God’s life-giving light directs a downcast soul into God’s presence.   
   When the psalmist once more asked in v 5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? he did not have the same weary attitude as in Psalm 42. Instead, he was confessing, “It’s not possible to be downcast when I look up and put my hope in God, for I know I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Twice he confirms a personal relationship with God. This is living under God’s joy to know the pleasure of belonging to him.  
   How good it is to know God is my joy. How wonderful to say, “God is my delight.” You will know this when you understand how completely God has controlled history to put you at his altar today. This is the psalmist’s praise. He looks beyond his personal circumstances that have caused his downcast soul (see Psalm 42), in despair of God’s goodness. Now within God’s light, joy has given him a new attitude. “I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.”
   One of Christianity’s most beloved hymns is How Great Thou Art. It begins with these 4 words: “O Lord my God.” We claim God as the psalmist did. “O king, my ruler of heaven and earth.” The hymn continues, “when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made…how great thou art, how great thou art.” The hymn proclaims the wonder of God’s greatness over all the world and in heaven to come. It describes the way to God’s altar. “And when I think that God is Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in…Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, how great Thou art.”
   The psalmist found God’s joy when he discovered God is a very personal, compassionate, loving God. Jesus said it this way: Matthew 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”
   Your most precious possession is God himself. Faithfully confess to him from Psalm 42: You are God my stronghold. O God, my God. I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Live with joy. Know nothing will steal God from you. Acknowledge with joy he has shown you the way to his holy altar.