How Much God Wants to Bless You

“The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous.” (Deuteronomy 30:9)

God does not bless us begrudgingly. There is a kind of eagerness about the beneficence of God. He does not wait for us to come to him. He seeks us out, because it is his pleasure to do us good. God is not waiting for us; he is pursuing us. That, in fact, is the literal translation of Psalm 23:6, “Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.” God loves to show mercy. Let me say it again. God loves to show mercy. He is not hesitant or indecisive or tentative in his desires to do good to his people. His anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger. That’s what he meant when he came down on Mount Sinai and said to Moses, “The Lord , the Lord , the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” (Exodus 34:6). God is never irritable or edgy. His anger never has a short fuse. Instead he is infinitely energetic with absolutely unbounded and unending enthusiasm for the fulfillment of his delights. This is hard for us to comprehend, because we have to sleep every day just to cope, not to mention thrive. We go up and down in our enjoyments. We get bored and discouraged one day and feel hopeful and excited another. We are like little geysers that gurgle and sputter and pop erratically. But God is like a great Niagara — you look at it and think: Surely this can’t keep going at this force for year after year after year. That’s the way God is about doing us good. He never grows weary of it. It never gets boring to him.
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Devotional excerpted from The Pleasures of God, pages 172–174 - John Piper