My recent book Enjoying God in Everything is a Christian guide to maximizing life’s pleasures. The assumption is that all of us want to enjoy everything good God has given in creation and the gospel maximally. Doing so requires us to contemplate what the source and the reflection of the pleasure are.
Love the Moon for the Sun’s Sake
Imagine with me that you had never seen the sun, only the moon. You might think it was the sun. After all, there are remarkable similarities. A full moon is big, bright, spherical, and illuminating with white light. What would it be like to see the sun in all its brilliance for the first time? The moon would be usurped in your estimation by something more magnificently brilliant and beautiful. You would never look at the moon the same way again. There would still be much to enjoy about moonlight, but it would be appreciated for what it is—a reflected light.
Every created pleasure and beauty that we have ever desired in this world is like moonlight. Void of any enhanced comparison, they seem like the best this life has to offer. But through the gospel and the Holy Spirit, we have seen the radiant glory of the Beautiful One, Christ. This changes our perspective on the pleasure of moonlight beauty. We used to worship created beauties for their own sake, but we discern a better beauty through the gospel and the Holy Spirit. Until we see the beauty of Christ, we will never see the true beauty in anything else.
Once we discern His glory, however, we enjoy created beauties all the more because they remind us of Him. We enjoy the moon because we love the sun. Jesus is the person we love. The created world is the reflection. If we love Him, we will love every resemblance and see everything good and true in the universe as a portrait of Him. This Spirit-enabled perspective turns wonder’s sensory experience of beauty into an occasion for joy, reflection, and worship.
Transposing Wonder into Worship
The Holy Spirit restores our created capacity for wonder-inducing worship, yet we can still experience wonder without worship. I know. Although I was a Christian for many years, I walked beaches, viewed sunsets, enjoyed music, watched movies, ate desserts, and stared at the stars pretty much like an atheist. I enjoyed these things immensely, but primarily for their own sake and for the sensory pleasures that accompanied them. Based on my conversations with many other Christians about this subject, my story is all too familiar.
We have largely missed out on pleasure’s ultimate high and God’s intended purpose for it. The reasons for this are many, but the chief culprit is pride. Romans 1:20 says God’s purpose in creation is to display His character. Because of our pride, however, we remain deaf and blind. We presumptuously accept the joys and pleasures of God’s creation without giving His purposes proper consideration. “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:21). Paul describes how sin has incapacitated image-bearers from responding rightly to created beauty. He says we “did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” Hearing what we have failed to do also tells us what we are supposed to do. We were made to respond to created beauty in two ways: giving God honor and giving God thanks.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Tonktiti
Give God Honor
To honor something or someone means to magnify its value. The heavens are declaring the glory of God by magnifying the glory of their Creator (Ps. 19:1). The whole earth is resplendent with God’s glory (Isa. 6:3). Every created thing is declaring the truth about God and giving honor to Him. Image-bearers participate in this praise by contemplating the glory of God in our moments of wonder. To give God honor is to agree with what the experience of beauty is intended for. This is challenging because it is not readily apparent what a flower or mountain, for instance, is saying about God. Flowers and mountains allow us to think about God and marvel at His creativity and power in creating the thing itself. The lesser beauty leads to contemplations of the greater. At least it should, though this doesn’t happen automatically. The Spirit is available to help us discern the greater beauty, yet our minds and hearts must be trained to consider it.
Loving God motivates active contemplation of the wonders around us. As the psalmist writes, “On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate” (Ps. 145:5). This is the power and blessing of beauty. Ugliness doesn’t stir the heart toward God. Ugliness doesn’t resemble Him at all. Beauty creates delight in us and arouses spiritual affection. Wonder-producing beauty is an opportunity for us as Christians to consider the glory of the One who created it in the first place. All beauty whispers to us in this way. These are calls to worship, going from what I can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch to what I cannot. My thoughts go from the visible to the invisible, from the created thing to the Creator. When my wonder gets me there, I esteem Him as glorious by giving God honor for both the beauty and my enjoyment of it. Having seen the sun (Jesus), the Christian relishes the wonderful experience of the moon (earthly beauties) as a sublime reflection of His beauty and maximizes pleasure by offering God praise.
Give God Thanks
We all have those happy providences when something unexpectedly good happens to us. Have you ever put your hands in a pocket and discovered a long-forgotten $20 bill? These occasions make us cheerful inside, and we can’t wait to tell someone about our good fortune. What is often lost on us at these times is the responsibility to thank God as the Giver of all good gifts. Thanklessness was on display when Jesus healed ten lepers, but only one came back to thank Him (Luke 17:11-19). Jesus poignantly asked, “Where are the other nine?” Giving thanks honors the generosity of the giver. It acknowledges that I am the recipient of a gift and honors the person who gave it. Paul describes false teachers as those who deny the goodness of God’s created gifts to us: They “forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:3-4). What do we have that we have not received from God? When we experience a moment of beauty, we should turn wonder into worship by giving thanks to God for His goodness in providing it, for His creativity in making it, or simply for our pleasure in experiencing it.
Consider this famous verse: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). When I’m with friends and say the prayer before a meal, I occasionally include these words: “Help us eat this meal like Christians.” After the amen, an exciting discussion usually ensues about what it means to eat like a Christian. Eating is an excellent example since we all do this multiple times a day. For Christians, a meal can and ought to be a worship service. Some eating experiences are potentially more worshipful than others. Peas are more challenging to turn into worship than, let’s say, strawberry pie (a favorite of mine). How does one eat strawberry pie like a Christian? A slow-motion, frame-by-frame replay of a bite of strawberry pie sends joyous anticipation to my heart. As the fork places the pie on my palate, taste buds start dancing in my mouth. The flavor of strawberry sweetness sends a sensation from my tongue to a pleasure zone in my mind. The flavor is distributed throughout my mouth as I chew, and its sweetness creates further delight. Of course, one bite is not enough. I begin the process all over again—savory bite after bite—until, sadly, the whole pie is gone. Strawberry pie and other delicacies are eaten around the world every day. Yet if I simply eat and enjoy them for their own sake without thought of God as the Creator and Giver of the pleasure, then I am eating strawberry pie like an atheist. My wonder and delight are experienced for their own sake. In other words, when we fail to acknowledge God as both the Giver of pleasure and the Beauty behind the beauty, we miss beauty’s intended purpose—to lead us to Him.
The key is to love God in such a way that we actively contemplate God’s goodness in granting pleasure or wonder. Doing this with thanksgiving is what Psalm 145:5 calls us to do: “On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.” We give God honor when we give Him thanks and acknowledge Him as the giver of all good gifts, whether big or small. When we experience pleasure as Christians and turn them into occasions for worship, God, the giver of all holy pleasure, is honored. Our worship enriches pleasure and maximizes our enjoyment. By doing so, we enjoy God in everything good he has so graciously provided to us.
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Steve Dewitt has served as Senior Pastor of Bethel Church since 1997. Bethel is a nondenominational church located in NW Indiana/Chicagoland and ministers to its community across multiple campuses. Steve is on the council of The Gospel Coalition and is a board member of Global Action. His teaching ministry can be heard on his popular podcast and media ministry The Journey. Steve and his wife, Jennifer, are the proud parents of two daughters. They live in Crown Point, Indiana.