Zephaniah 3:17 "The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you; He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing."
Zephaniah? Yes, Zephaniah, the fourth to last book of the Old Testament. It's a book I rarely turn to when seeking the Lord. OK, actually, it's a book I've never turned to, except when reading through the entire Bible in a Bible-reading plan. Yet through my quiet time this week, God led me to this little-read book.
Zephaniah was a prophet, and it's a book that was written to the Jews to exhort them to return to God and stop being complacent. So if the book was written to the Jews, does it still apply to me? Yes, I believe so. God has a special plan for all people, and I believe He loves us all equally with endless love. If the Bible says He does something for a group of people, I believe we can gather that He will do it for all of us.
Let's break the verse down...
The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save.
God is with us. That's a fact most Christians know, yet those who are without Christ frequently try to deny. But the Bible says in Psalm 46:1 that "He is an ever-present help in times of trouble." This verse says He is with us, period. He is there in the good times and in the bad.
The word "mighty" is a term of battle. It implies a powerful warrior or champion. The word "save" goes along with the same thought. It means to free, defend, deliver, help, rescue, or get victory.
Yes, my God is so strong and powerful and such an amazing champion of all things that He can free me from sin that I'm entangled in, He can deliver me, help me, rescue me, and in the ultimate end, He will have the victory over everything. He is MIGHTY to SAVE! Those words definitely conjure up new images for me as I sing that song "Mighty to Save!"
He will take great delight in you.
God takes great delight in His creation. In Genesis, after He created man, God didn't just say it was good...He says it was VERY good. I know God delights in us, like a Father who loves His children. But sometimes we as children do things to disappoint our Father. Does He still love us and delight in us in the truest sense of the word? Yes, but is that delight even more enhanced when we are living out our lives the way He would expect us to? I believe so. If you're a parent, you perhaps can better understand the parent-child relationship of love and delight...when your child does something that makes you so proud you are about to burst, you want everyone to know about it. But when your child makes a really poor choice, you still love and delight in them, but definitely not to the same degree. When I think about God delighting in me, I'm humbled to the lowest degree. I don't deserve it, yet He loves me that much! It frazzles my mind.
He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing.
These two sentences give me such insight into the tenderness of God. How many times have you held a screaming baby, tight in your arms, trying to comfort him with song, kisses, and lullabies? Countless times for me. Sometimes to get a baby to stop crying, you have to raise your voice and almost yell to get his attention. Then the baby stops crying long enough to listen to you tenderly sing to him, snuggle him, and love on him.
That's the imagery I see in this verse. God will quiet us with His love. When life is screaming out of control, we just have to listen strong enough for Him to sing over us "Hush little baby, don't you cry, Daddy's gonna sing you a lullaby." Somehow in all my Christian walk, I just never pictured God as a singer. Maybe I've been taught this verse before and have forgotten, but the thought of this great and mighty warrior combined with the vulnerability of singing is an amazing combination.
Not only does God sing over us, He does it with a smile on His face. The verse says he rejoices over us with singing. Have you ever wondered why most human renditions of Jesus reflect Him with a serious look on His face? It's rare I see a picture of Jesus smiling. But I think God smiles a lot more than we realize. How can those two words--rejoince and singing--go together with the absence of a smile? I don't think they can.
I am so excited about committing this verse to memory this week. I feel like God has shown me a golden nugget of truth that I didn't realize before. I see in greater depth how God is my Daddy. Sometimes I am screaming too loud to hear Him next to me, soothing me, singing over me. My prayer this week is that I will delight in Him so He will delight even more in me. I am praying that I will be quiet enough to listen to His lullabies and smile back at Him with the same love He has smiling at me.
---Beth Banfill
www.GodandMe2theMax.com
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