Made for gladness, made for God
How to Enjoy God and Delight in Him
Here is a phrase that surprises many people the first time they hear it: the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Enjoy God. Not merely obey Him, serve Him, or fear Him, but enjoy Him, take actual delight in Him, the way you delight in a person you love. For many, God has been a duty, a standard, or a distant idea, and the notion that He is to be enjoyed feels almost irreverent. But it is deeply biblical. Delight thyself also in the LORD, the psalmist commands, and it is a command to enjoy, an invitation into pleasure, not away from it. God is not only to be worked for; He is to be relished. And learning to enjoy Him is not a spiritual luxury for the advanced. It is the heart of the whole thing.
“Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”Psalm 37:4
“O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”Psalm 34:8
“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”Psalm 16:11
“Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.”Psalm 73:25
Let's be honest about this
Let us be honest that enjoying God is hard to imagine if your picture of Him is wrong. If you think of God as a stern examiner, a disappointed parent, or a cosmic policeman, of course enjoying Him feels impossible; you do not enjoy your auditor. So enjoying God begins with correcting the portrait, and the truest portrait is Jesus, who welcomed children, ate with outcasts, wept with the grieving, and called His followers friends. The God revealed in Christ is not grim. At his right hand there are pleasures for evermore, the psalmist says, pleasures, in the presence of God. He is not the enemy of your joy but its source and its goal. Enjoying Him is not a strange add-on to faith; it is the thing faith was heading toward all along.
Where the joy actually comes from
So how do you actually enjoy God? The same way you come to enjoy any person: by spending unhurried time with Him, by getting to know who He really is, and by paying attention to His goodness until it moves you. O taste and see that the LORD is good, the psalmist urges; enjoyment starts with tasting, with actually experiencing Him in prayer, in Scripture, in worship, rather than only knowing about Him secondhand. Whom have I in heaven but thee? he cries, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee; that is the language of someone who has tasted and now desires God more than anything. Enjoying God grows as you linger in His presence, notice His kindness in your life, savor His words rather than skim them, and let your prayers become less a transaction and more a communion. Thou wilt shew me the path of life, the psalm concludes, in thy presence is fulness of joy. The fulness is found in the presence. So go there, often, and stay.
Jesus, the joy of the world
And here is the astonishing thing: you can enjoy God because God first enjoyed you. Zephaniah says the LORD thy God rejoices over you with joy and joys over you with singing. Before you ever delighted in Him, He delighted in you, enough to send His Son to bring you home. Jesus is how God's enjoyment of you and your enjoyment of God meet; in Him the distance is closed, the guilt is dealt with, and the friendship is opened. He came that His joy might be in you and your joy might be full. So enjoying God is not you working up warm feelings toward a reluctant deity; it is you responding to a God who is already glad over you, drawing near through Jesus to the fountain of joy. Delight yourself in Him. You will find He has been delighting in you all along.
Who is Jesus? · Begin with Jesus · Ask someone to pray with you
Questions people ask
What does it mean to 'enjoy' God?
It means to take genuine delight in God Himself, not just to obey or serve Him, but to relish Him as a person you love and treasure. The old catechism says our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Enjoying God is experiencing His goodness, presence, and love as your greatest pleasure, so that He becomes not merely your duty but your delight. The psalmist captures it: in Your presence is fulness of joy.
How do I actually enjoy God in practice?
The same way you enjoy any relationship: unhurried time together, growing knowledge of who He really is, and attention to His goodness until it moves your heart. Practically, that means lingering in prayer as communion rather than transaction, savoring Scripture instead of skimming it, worshiping, and noticing His kindness in your daily life. The psalmist invites you to taste and see that the Lord is good. Enjoyment grows through actual experience of Him over time, not by trying to force a feeling.
What if I find God boring or hard to enjoy?
Often that comes from a distorted picture of God as stern or distant, and the cure is to look at Jesus, who reveals God as welcoming, kind, and glad over His people. It can also come from only knowing about God secondhand rather than experiencing Him. Start small: ask Him honestly to help you enjoy Him, spend real time in His presence, and let Him surprise you. Remember, He already delights in you; enjoying Him is largely learning to receive a joy that is already reaching toward you.