Enjoy Him Forever...

I grew up on the Catechism, first the child's and then the Shorter. Every night we got out those little books and recited off the answers in preparation to be asked them by our Sunday School Teacher. However, a while back when my husband started reading the Shorter Catechism I realised how little I remember of it. I could blame this on many things such as being a Ministers daughter so having to move church, but basically I think I just learnt it out of fear of not knowing the answer on Sunday and letting my parents down, so much of it was just committed to my short term memory! There is however one answer I always remember, number 1.

What is the chief end of man?

Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Recently I was thinking about what this really means. I always got what the glorify God part meant, to serve God with all our being but the 'enjoy him forever' part, I had problems grasping what that truely meant for me.

As I began to look at this many people with much more idea theologically than me seemed to have written pages and pages about it. At the start of John Piper's book Desiring God he comments:

"...in all of life God be glorified the way he himself has appointed. To that end this book aims to persuade you that The chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying him forever."

In some ways this makes more sense to me, it means that glorifying God and enjoying God are not separate entities, but rather we bring glory to God by enjoying Him.

What then does to 'enjoy God' mean? Starr Meade, in the family devotional Training Hearts, Teaching Minds comments " You cannot fully enjoy an apple until you take a bite of it and find how crisp and sweet it tastes.If you are going to enjoy God, you have to spend time finding out how wonderful He is" P10 Meade adds that Habakkuk in the face of losing everything could say "... yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation."(Habakkuk 3:18 ESV) because "his purpose was not to enjoy things, but to enjoy God."

So often we can become so bogged down in the things of this life that we don't have time to fully enjoy God for who He is and what He's done. Once we begin to grasp the awsomeness of who He is and truely enjoy Him we will be able to bring Him true glory.