Jesus rejoices over you with singing 

I read Zephaniah 3:17 from the Swedish Bible: 

The Lord your God lives inside of you, a Mighty Hero that saves. He rejoices over you with gladness, He sits quiet in His love. He rejoices over you with singing.”

This verse is very special to me, since I got it from a brother in the church where I met Jesus April 2006, Sankta Klara church in Stockholm. I was for various reasons sitting in a chair crying, and a beloved brother walked by and said: The Lord just told me to give you Zephaniah 3:17. I read it and my brother said: you see, Jesus rejoices over you! And since that day this verse is very special to me, and I have also been given it to me from the Lord via sister Liliane. 

This verse is wonderful, I really love it, because it wants to remind us and open up our eyes and hearts for how the Lord, Our God, looks upon us. This is from Jesus, but it’s not only for me, God’s Word is for everyone! Yes, in a certain situation it can be to a single person, but it’s for everyone in here also. And if this verse does something to me, it’s that it fills me with joy and love. Imagine that Jesus is sitting in Heaven, and He is rejoicing over me, He is thinking about me in great love, and He is also rejoicing so much that He is singing out of joy for me! It’s amazing! 

And the same joy and love is filling Jesus’s heart when He looks upon you! 

I love what I call spiritual humor, it means to joke a little bit about things of our faith, of course in love and respect for God. Jesus is Holy, but I believe also Jesus has humor. And sister Liliane has a few words that she says about this verse that I love, and it makes me smile, and I truly believe that Jesus smiles in Heaven when He hears this. Liliane says that Zephaniah 3:17 means that Jesus can’t sit still on the throne when He thinks about His beloved children. Jesus is so filled with love and joy over His children when He thinks about them so I His shouting with joy: Bishnu, I love you! Konrad, I love you! Liliane, I love you! Dolly, I love you! 

And then Liliane says that Jesus is so happy over His children so He is using a jumping rope, and He is jumping in Heaven with joy! I believe that Jesus smiles and shouts with joy when He hears those words from sister Liliane. 

This is said with the glimpse in the eye, with love for Jesus and some humor, but it’s a way to describe the joy that Jesus has over His Own Children, and it’s good for us to sometimes think about how Jesus looks at us from Heaven, the love Jesus has for all of us and the joy that fills Jesus when He thinks about us. 

Some of you here have children, and I believe that when you look at them, you are filled with love for them and joy. And when Jesus looks at His beloved children, He is filled with joy. 

Then you ask: how is this possible? I am not perfect, I sometimes sin, how can Jesus rejoice over me? It’s true that we are not free from sin, and we need to remember that, because it keeps us humble. There are preachers today that say that if you believe in Jesus Christ you should not use the word sinner at all when you speak about yourself and say that you are only holy. This theology comes from USA and it’s dangerous, because that’s not true! 

1 John 1:8 says: if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. This is serious, because Jesus is the truth, and if the truth is not in me, it means that Jesus is not inside of me. I want Jesus to live inside of me, so I confess that I am a sinner. The apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15 that he is the chief of sinners, the greatest sinner of all, and Paul was maybe the greatest, most holy and sanctified of all of the apostles, so if he called himself a sinner, I believe that we must realize that we too are sinners, in myself, in my old nature.

But now comes the good part! We are sinners saved by grace, it means that we are under grace, and that’s where the joy comes in, the joy in our hearts when we say: I am forgiven! I am under God’s grace! I am saved! Jesus loves me! Yes, I am still a sinner in myself, I am not free from sin, but my sins are forgiven and I am under grace! That’s when the joy comes! 

So what does it mean to be under God’s grace? It means that Christ is inside of you, and also that you are in Christ. And it means that Jesus and His blood is a cover, a shield of grace around you, and when God the Father looks at you, He sees the image of His Beloved Son, He sees Jesus Christ inside of you. That’s why God rejoices over you, because you are now under God’s grace, He has set you free, He has bought you with His own precious blood. don’t you believe that Jesus rejoices when He sees what His suffering on the cross gave Him! It gave Jesus you! You are His, and He is yours! 

Jesus said that all that the Father gives Me will come to Me. We are a gift from God the Father to Jesus, and when someone gives us a gift, we rejoice, and we are a gift that Jesus rejoices over. 

The Bible says that we are the bride of Jesus Christ, and Jesus is the bridegroom. When we are about to marry someone that we truly love, don’t we rejoice? Don’t we smile with joy and love when we think of the love of our heart, the ones we love, our family, children, or wife or husband? Yes, when we think of them, or look at them, we smile, we are filled with both love and joy! 

And it’s the same with Jesus! When Jesus comes back, we are the bride of Christ. Jesus will marry us forever! And that makes Jesus smile with love, it fills Jesus with joy when He thinks about us, because we are the beloved bride, a precious stone in Jesus’s eyes. 

And when we hear that Jesus rejoices over us, we can also rejoice in the Lord. Paul says: rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say: rejoice! This is not a demand from God, sometimes we are sad, but it’s good for us to rejoice, joy in the Christ is our strength, and when we understand that Jesus rejoices over us, it’s easier for us to be glad. when I speak with sister Liliane on the phone, she prays for me in tongues, and sometimes the Lord speaks to her and she says: Konrad, Jesus says that He rejoices over you, and then I too is filled with joy. And when I see my beloved brothers here, I feel Jesus rejoices in my heart. 

Also, Don’t forget how much Jesus loves you. Jeremiah says in the Swedish Bible: yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I let My grace stay over you. Jesus’s love for you is amazing. The Bible says that now abide faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. If you are rich in love, you are rich before God. So ask Jesus to give you a heart that really loves Him, and ask Jesus to fill you with His Abundant love and grace. Then you will have a heart full of love for Jesus, for your brothers and for all people. And Bishnus favorite verse: eye has not seen, ear has not heard, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. The promise of Heaven for those who believe in Jesus and love Him, is an amazing promise that we can think about when we are sad. 

And remember: The greatest joy of our life should be in being a child of God, to belong to Jesus.  because that no one can take away from you! All other things can be taken away from you, but no one can take away from you your status as a child of God. 

(Jesus can give you many good things in your life. He can give you a wife or a good job, He can give you many friends and children. Those things are good.) 

But when you belong to Jesus Christ, it can also cost you things! It can cost you friends, your job, it can make them persecute you and put you in jail. In many countries this is what it will cost you to belong to Jesus, and that’s what it might cost you and me also. I strongly believe that persecution might come to Sweden. 

But what Jesus gives you is still so much more precious and valuable than that, because There is nothing greater in our lives than to belong to Jesus, so even in prison you can rejoice if you Think about yourself from the perspective of Christ. 

Because it’s still true that you are still a child of God and no one can take that away from you, and that’s a great joy, to be a child of God! Jesus is still singing over you in Heaven, Jesus still loves you. And in Heaven there is still a place prepared for you that no one can take away from you, a place where you will be happy forever. When we love Jesus and live for Jesus and for Heaven, we can rejoice that we are God’s children and that our names are written in Heaven. 

And No one can take that away from you! Romans says: no, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus, and nothing can rob us of our inheritance in Heaven. 

but in your daily life today, even when we are not in prison or are being persecuted, things are sometimes tough for us. We can have troubles and testing. But Jesus loves you every day. Jesus rejoices over you, rejoices over His beloved children. 

So every day that you wake up you can say: Jesus rejoices over me with singing! Jesus loves me! And then you say: Thank you Jesus for loving me! And you say: Jesus, I love you too! And when you say to yourself: Jesus loves me! Jesus can’t sit still on the throne of Heaven out of joy because of me! Say that to yourself every day And I believe that it will fill you with both joy and love. 

And then you say: Jesus, I love you! And you will also be filled with joy and love in your heart. You will see what happens inside of you! When I say: Jesus loves me! And Jesus, I love You, I am filled with joy and love. So Say it every day, and something will happen to you! 

So if we think in our hearts of how much Jesus loves us, , and how much we love Jesus, and something will happen inside of us! 

The Lord your God lives inside of you, a Mighty Hero that saves. He rejoices over you with gladness, He sits quiet in His love. He rejoices over you with singing. Amen.