OneThing Conference 2016 is up and running at the moment (https://watch.ihopkc.org/). Preaching last night, Mike Bickle said, “Delighting in the beauty of God is not just delightful, it is essential.” That sentence struck my dry heart and kindled a little flame of hunger there once again.
Truth be told, I’ve been struggling this last month or so – struggling to find passion and love in my heart for God, struggling with the mundane of life and God’s apparent slowness in fulfilling promises and answering prayers. I’ve been wrestling with the depth of my own brokenness, inability to overcome and the feeling that I’m mostly alone in this world. Then Mike preached on the beauty of the Lord.
Why is delighting in the beauty of the Lord essential? It’s because my heart (and your heart too) was made to be filled with fascination unto joy and passion.
Yet the truth is that the circumstances of life are mostly mundane. Days meld together as you go about the routine of whatever situation God has placed you in: work, study, ministry. So we find a contradiction. We were made to be fueled by fascination unto joy but life is most usually ordinary and not particularly fascinating.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart for out of it flows the wellspring of life.” In other words, your heart is the engine room of your life. Luke 6:24 says, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart…” How you live and experience life is directly related to what is going on in your heart. Thus encountering the beauty of the Lord is essential.
God is beautiful. He is the very definition of beauty. He does not change and His beauty is vast. But humans see as through a glass darkly. Therefore, from the human perspective beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. The beauty of the Lord are those aspects of God that touch our hearts and move us to fascination and joy. The beauty of the Lord to the human heart is not something that we can take hold of and define. The beauty of the Lord is that which takes hold of us. And then even in the midst of the ordinary we find our hearts fascinated and bursting with life and joy. That is why delighting in the beauty of God is essential. That’s why Jesus said that He came to give life and life to the full. He came to give unrestricted access to the beauty of Himself.
And so I will rise again and go to search for the One who has beauty without measure. The beauty of God is like the Pacific Ocean in its expanse and my capacity to comprehend it is like drinking that ocean from a small plastic cup. Jesus says, “Come and drink me.” But I have to dip my cup in to start. I have to go on a journey to the sea. We have to be thirsty to begin. So would you come with me?
Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
J. Ratcliffe
Chasing the Beautiful God 
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