Bible Text: Psalm 16:11 | Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | When you think of kids opening gifts at Christmas—what a picture of fun! But all too soon for them the special day is over.  And they know it will be another whole year before Christmas comes again.

Hymn-writer Frances Ridley Havergal writes, “You never had a pleasure that lasted. You look forward to a great pleasure, and it comes, and then, very soon it is gone, and you can only look back upon it. The very longest and pleasantest day you ever had came to an end.”[i]

However, a verse in the Bible about God, says, “You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (Psalm 16:11).

Eternal pleasures—now that’s something we’d all like to have. But what kind of pleasures are eternal? What really satisfies the human heart? Riches won’t do it, for sure. Someone asked the very wealthy John D. Rockefeller how much money it would take to satisfy him. His honest answer was, “Just a little bit more.”

Ultimately, lasting pleasure is found, this verse tells us, only in knowing God, for He made us to have an intimate, close relationship with Himself. A poor Methodist woman of the 18th century wrote,

“I do not know when I have had happier times in my soul, than when I have been sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white cloth, and…with God in my soul.… I rejoice in being exactly what I am,–a creature capable of loving God…. I get up and look for a while out of the window, and gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty hand. I think of the grandeur or the universe, and then sit down, and think myself one of the happiest beings in it.[ii]

Eternal pleasure comes when you’re growing ever closer to the Lord, getting to know Him better each day. Yes, an intimate, personal relationship with God–now, that’s pleasure that lasts!

 

[i] Frances Ridley Havergal, Opened Treasures, compiled by William J. Pell (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1962), Feb. 7.

[ii] Quoted in Mary W. Tileston, Daily Strength for Daily Need (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour, 1990), 25.