This excerpt is the latest "Fresh Words" from the Desiring God website. Incidently, thousands of audio sermons and some video sermons have just been quietly added to that site!

The question is not whether God delights in his children. He does. The question is twofold: One, What is it about us that He delights in? And two, Why does He tell us that He delights in us? What effect does He want it to have? (When I say “God,” I mean all that God is for us in Christ. I mean the triune, Christian God.)

. . . In answer to our first question, my answer is: At root, what God delights in about us is that we delight in Him.

One way to get at this is to say the obvious: God approves of what is right . . . “Rightness” is thinking and feeling and acting in a way that expresses in true proportion the value of what is most valuable. Rightness is thinking, feeling, and doing what flows from a true perception of the supreme value of God. It is seeing truly, savoring duly, and showing consistently in action the infinite worth of God. Therefore, we are doing what is right when we are understanding the truth of God’s value for what it is, and feeling it proportionately to his universal supremacy, and acting in ways that express God’s supreme value. That is what “right” means . . .

Now the second question we asked above is: Why does He tell us this? Should we be glad to hear it? Yes, we should be glad to hear it. But why? What is the bottom of our joy in hearing it? It is possible to hear it, and be glad to hear it, in a way that is devastating.

The proper reason to be glad that God delights in our delight in Him is because it confirms that our delight is truly in God. This fixes our gaze more steadfastly on Him and deepens our joy in His beauty . . .

The teaching that God delights in us is very dangerous. Very true. And very dangerous. The reason it is so dangerous is that we are fallen and the chief pleasure of our fallen nature is not sex, but self-exaltation. Our sinful nature loves to be praised for what we are and what we have done.

The remedy for this is not to make God the praiser, and think all is well... Hear me well. We do delight in being praised by God. But not the way a carnal mind would. God’s praise of us is not the bottom of our joy. We should not let His praise distract us from the very thing He is praising — namely, our delight in Him. We delight in being praised by God because it confirms and increases our focus on Him, rather than distracting us from Him . . .