Welcome to the Daily Disciple Podcast, where we seek daily to be with and to become like Jesus, our team. Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Daily Podcast. This is Travis, and as usual, it is wonderful to be with all of you. So good morning and turn to Psalm 18 as we continue this season in the podcast, where we are really talking about prayer, talking about connecting with Jesus, experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ, reframing prayer, going after prayer, and also cultivating a pride that devotional life with Jesus, and just enjoying Him.
And that brings us to the title of the podcast. And the title of the podcast this morning is, It's About Him. And that's important. And so often, it's all about us, everything's about us.
What do I get? How do I feel? What did I experience? What was the good result for me?
So the title of the podcast is, It's All About Him. It's about His pleasure, His enjoyment, it's about Him. And that is a very important thing to ponder and to learn as we journey deeper in our relationship with Jesus. It is about Him.
And during times of darkness, times of long walks through the valley of the shadow of death, understanding that it's about Him and how He feels, and His delight is actually the crucial thing to get us through those seasons. And so it's good that we learn it before we hit one of those seasons, so that that is something that is part of our spiritual tools when we do enter into those dark nights. Now, I remember about seven years ago when I began to learn, It's about Him. It's about His delight.
It's about His pleasure. And this is one of the verses that helped bring me into that Psalm 18, verse 19. Here we go. It's so good.
He, being God, brought me out into a spacious place. He rescued me because He delights in me. He rescued me because He delights in me. So it's about God's delight, about His pleasure.
It's about His enjoyment. He brought me into this space because He delights in me, and He is pleased with me, and He enjoys me. And this gets us into the motive of our heart. Why do we go to prayer?
Do we go to prayer for our benefit? Do we go to prayer for our pleasure? Do we go to prayer so that we might be centered? Do we go to prayer that we might get cleared?
Do we go to prayer that we might gain? And probably most of the time we do. Is it about us or is it about God? Is it more about our pleasure in His presence or is it more about His pleasure in His presence?
Who is being worshiped? Who is first? Who is this for first? And it is for God.
And again, that is such an important thing to learn. And so as we come to God in prayer, we bring our heart, but we seek nothing from Him. We rather come to prayer for Him and know that as we come to prayer, God enjoys that. God gets pleasure.
God is excited. And this is a spiritual discipline because we are so accustomed to whatever we do, trying to get something from it or from Him that we might gain, that we might benefit. And what if we go to prayer and say, God, this is for you? This is about your delight.
This is about your pleasure. And what that is going to do, if we come to prayer, come to God to please Him first and foremost, what is that going to do? Is it going to take much of the focus off how we feel? And certainly in our culture and in this cultural moment, feelings are in the driver's seat.
How do I feel? Did I feel good? Right? It all becomes centered around our feelings.
And sometimes that can be a nemesis in prayer. And when we go to prayer to please God, because He is the lighting. Even if we might not be for whatever reason, He is the lighting. It's going to take the focus off our feelings and honestly off of us and how we're doing.
And are we feeling pleasure? And are we feeling chills? And what's happening in us? And am I getting clarity?
Because it shifts the focus to God. And that's what worship is. It's fundamentally about His pleasure. Now, this is going to come in very handy as we run into walls in our Christian life, walk through dark valleys, face deep sadness and grief and pain where we're not feeling anything other than God's absence.
And some of you have been in places like that before. And all of you, if you keep going on this journey, will be in places like that where God, the only thing I feel is your absence where are you? Now God is there. That's another podcast.
God never leaves you, never forsakes you. But sometimes the only thing we feel is His absence. And those are difficult seasons. And those are often seasons where people tend to give up on prayer and give up on mission.
So if we learn this, if we learn that God, I go to prayer for you for it's about you, right? It's about your desire. It's about you, God. If we do that, then when we enter into these times of darkness.
And we don't feel pleasure. We stay engaged because it's about His pleasure. And then we're not upset when there's dryness. We're not worried when it's a difficult season.
And we're learning in this that we love the giver of gifts more than the gifts themselves. Because there's nothing wrong with receiving from God. There's nothing wrong with the gifts that He gives, right? Whether it's pleasure or comfort or clarity or whatever it might be.
But what we're learning as we go after the idea of this podcast is that the giver is who we love more than even the gifts. And that God is becoming one that we love more even than ourselves. That we would prefer God have pleasure. And God delight even above and beyond ourselves.
And that is the definition of love when the other is thought about first. This brings us into the spirituality of acceptance. God, I want all that you have for me in this quiet time, no more and no less. And if I'm feeling your absence or I'm feeling your presence, I want all that you have for me in this quiet time, no more and no less because I'm coming to prayer for you first and foremost.
You delight in me. You take pleasure in me. And as Psalm 18, 19 says, you brought me out into a spacious place. You rescued me because you delight in me.
And so let's take just a minute and read Psalm 18 verse 19 a few times. Enjoy it and say, God, I am. I'm coming to just please you. I'm coming to prayer because you delight in it.
And whatever happens with me, whatever I feel, I'm just excited because you delight. You take pleasure and you enjoy me because it's all about you. We'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Daily Deciple podcast.
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