Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God in the midst of you is mighty.  He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy.  He will rest in his love, He will joy over you with singing.

I am convinced that every born again believer longs deep within their soul and spirit to love God with all their heart soul and might. We know and understand what love is.  We were made in the image of God.  That word image tselem does not have to mean a mirror image or likeness in a physical sense but it could also be a reference to the nature and emotional make up of someone.  God is a spirit.  A spirit does not have two arms, two legs, two eyes etc.   A spirit has no resemblance to the corporal being of a physical person. Thus we would have to render the word tselem as a reference to the nonphysical make up God which is His heart and His longings or desires.  The greatest desire and longing of God would also be the greatest longing and desire of a human being and that is the longing to be loved.  The very nature of love involves an act of free will. In other words God could have programed us to love Him but then that would then not be love. God had to give us a free will so we could choose to love Him.  Then he had to allow for the existence of a rival so to speak so that we would have to choose between Him or the rival.

I used to perform many marriages when I was in the ministry.  So much of the joy I observed in a marriage ceremony was that the bride and groom chose to the love their mate.  Of all the people in the world that person chose to love one particular person in that special way to want to commit their lives to that individual.  God created each us with the ability to love but that love will lie dormant in us until someone comes along to awaken that love in us and then when they do that love flows out of us and begins to sing.

In Zephaniah 3:17 we learn that God will rest in His love yacharish bi’ahavati.  These words have been very troubling for translators.  To translate it in it’s proper syntax just flies in the face of conventional Christian thought.  Yet, it may actually confirm what a believer really believes in his heart.

The word yacharish comes from the root word charash and is usually rendered as rest. Yet there are secondary and alternative renderings that we may consider.  One alternative is one that a translator would never dare to use in this passage, yet, if you think about it, it would make makes perfect sense.  I find that the standard rendering He will rest in His love really disrupts the literary flow of this passage. However if we use another English word for charash it would really make more sense. That word is enchantment.  Another word applied to charash is bewitched.  Actually, we really have no English word to use which expresses the true nature of charash. I know such terms are very anti-God but stop and consider the use of that word in our language in a non-mystical sense.  I watched two Twinkies the other day walk out of Morton High School. It was so cute, two little teenagers holding hands, staring into each other’s eyes, sharing an ear plug to their IPOD listening to their song together.  They looked so charash, enchanted or bewitched with each other.  Of course there was no witchcraft involved here or any enchantment in a literal sense, we would mean it in the sense that they were just so captivated with each other with joyous feelings and contented being in each other’s presence. Look at this phrase The Lord you God in the midst of you. That word midst is karav and means your inner most parts, being or your heart.  When the Lord enters your heart He is mighty or He is empowered to save you. That power is like a running generator. It has a lot of power but until you plug something into it, that power is not being used.  Until God connects with your heart, His power is not being used, His joy cannot be released.

Now note what follows, he will rejoice over you with joy, He will rest in His love, He will joy over you with singing.  Think about it, how does “rest in His love” fit between those two phrases?  Now plug in the English word enchantment as we use it in the context of these two Twinkies.   He will be enchanted with His love.  What happens when a man and woman kiss for the first time and tell each other “I love you.”  That rush, that high, that ecstasy that is charash.  When a woman is pregnant she loves the child within her.  But after giving birth and the nurse puts that baby in the mother’s arms and she sees it for the first time, what she feels is charash.

When you invite God into your midst karav or your heart you feel a real rush, a charash.  But soft, what Zephaniah is telling us is that God will charash in His love.  In other words what God also feels charash that rush of joy and enchantment like we feel.  When we invite Him into our hearts and He has our hearts completely and  He feels charash.  Just like two lovers who express their love for each other, they experience a real high, not so much in receiving love from their beloved but a rush or high in having their own love for that person awakened.   They then walk around like those Twinkies in a haze or a cloud, they are in love, and they are enchanted.  But, until the object of their affection shares a mutual love, the feelings of being in love cannot be awakened.  God does not stand back in smug satisfaction over our rejoicing, He is right there dancing in joy with us.

That is why he needs us to voluntarily give Him our hearts that is why He gave us a free will so we can choose Him over all the other gods in this world who are out courting us. In our life time we have many suitor gods lining up at our doorway seeking out love. There is the suitor of wealth, power, fame, security and then there is God waiting patiently in line longing that we will choose Him over all the other gods seeking our attention. When we choose to love God over all the other gods, we fulfill or complete that love He has for us.  Then God is like that Twinkie, He is in love and he likes and longs to be in love just like two people long to be in love and experience love.  Every time someone gives their heart to God, He rest or charash is enchanted with His love.

Christians are saying all the time, “I want more of God, I want to feel His presence” when all the time God is saying: “I want more of you, I want to feel your presence.”   When you give Him all of your heart, you give Him the chance to feel the joy of being in love.  Like a mother will rejoice over her baby and cherish and protect her beloved baby with her life or a husband will rejoice over his beloved wife and will cherish and protect his beloved wife with his life, so will God cherish and protect you when He is allowed to have your whole heart and he can rest in His love or rejoice over being in Love.

I believe Christians in this Western world have been so inundated with teachings that God wants to make you prosperous, heal you, bless you, give you all sorts of goodies like some sort of  genie out of the bottle that our love becomes completely one sided. Yet deeply in the heart of every believer is the longing to bring some joy or some pleasure to This God who is so giving.  It is so easy to do but we are so used to just coming to God with a handful of gimmie’s and a mouth of much oblige that we never stop to just simply say to God, I love you and allow Him to rejoice in that love, and begin to sing His love song to us. We are too busy asking God to bring sunshine to our hearts that we forget to bring some sunshine to His heart.