Asheritah Ciuciu

4 min read ⭑

Most of us enjoy at least some years of our childhood filled with a sense of wonder and delight. As children, we’d marvel at the puffy clouds floating outside our school window and imagine their shapes and the adventures they’re drifting off too. 

Remember losing yourself in the embrace of a furry friend, wrestling a puppy, or stroking the fur of a purring kitty?  Remember marveling at grown-ups’ stories of epic adventures, hoping you’d grow up to experience the same?  Remember your childlike adoration of Jesus, caught up in the wonder of his love for the whole world?  

Maybe you think back with fondness on the chocolate chip cookies your grandmother baked, the bike rides with your friends, or the sticky juice dripping down your chin at the annual watermelon eating competition.

For some of us, that childlike delight stretches into our adolescence and early adulthood. And for some, the sense of wonder and joy leads into a naturally optimistic and joyful worldview. 

Most of us, though, lost our joy somewhere along the way, whether suddenly (through a traumatic event) or gradually, as it wears out with age and the continual onslaught of global news, local community tension and family fights.

However long it’s been, you’ve probably realized that delightful joy is hard to maintain on a daily basis because life offers plenty of hardships that steal our joy. 

I wish there was a way to avoid suffering. If I could give you a three-step process to ensure that you and your loved ones never again experienced pain, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But there is no guarantee because suffering is a part of living in this fallen world. 

At times, we might feel as if someone is conspiring against us, as if they are out to steal our joy. The Bible tells us that Satan is a thief who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” but that Jesus has “come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10 NIV); and while that is true, sometimes our own decisions create circumstances that steal our joy. Sometimes, other people’s choices and actions hurt us.

Remember that Jesus has come to restore what’s been stolen and heal what’s been broken: 

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, 
because the Lord has anointed me 
to proclaim good news to the poor. 
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, 
to proclaim freedom for the captives 
and release from darkness for the prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1)

Jesus is moving to undo the damage of sin in this world. Jesus wants to restore your joy!

Joy and delight are at the heart of God’s good plan for his people. From the first pronouncement of “very good” when he stepped back to admire the creation he’d just completed, to the promise of coming to dwell with us again in the last chapter of the Bible, the thrust of the gospel is this invitation to a relationship of mutual delight.  

Every beautiful gift that has ever brought a smile to your face held within it a kernel of God’s affection for you. Every baby’s laugh, every painted sunset, every comfortable hug expresses your heavenly Father’s pleasure in you. For every good and perfect gift comes from God above.

And because God already delights in his children, we can learn to delight again, to recapture the childlike wonder of a life lived with him. You will learn to delight in the Lord because you have a God who already delights in you.

Last fall I started praying, “Lord, teach me to delight in my children.”

I didn’t expect him to answer the way he did: not just learning to delight in my children but learning how much our Heavenly Father delights in us, and through them, learning to delight in this beautiful world our Creator made for us. It’s been a beautiful and unexpected journey.

These days, I’m learning to savor the adventures, the hand-holding, and the bedtime snuggles — to breathe it all in before it becomes past tense.

These days, I’m slowing down time by being fully present, by looking my children in the eye, by watching the sun rise or the rain fall or the bird fly.

These days, I’m missing out on tags in Instagram stories so that I can play tag with my kids and listen to their make-believe stories.

These days, I’m rediscovering the child-like rhythms of wonder and play and faith and naps and ice cream before dinner. I’m rediscovering the joy of climbing boulders and building sandcastles and balancing on the fallen log rather than speed-walking on the concrete sidewalk.

In other words, I’m learning that to delight in my children, I need to slow down, to bend low, to enter their world and see the universe through their wonder-filled eyes. And as I borrow their childlike gaze, I marvel at our playful God who imagined such a marvelous world of beauty and majesty.

No wonder Jesus said that we need to become like little children if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom seems so near to them that they feel they can almost touch it. It is us — all grown up and serious and rushed — who have sometimes lost our way.

But by God’s grace, the Good Shepherd has been guiding me back to childlike faith by allowing my little children to show me the way … to wonder, to adventure and to play.

Asheritah Ciuciu is a national retreat speaker, YouTube Bible teacher and bestselling author of 10 books, including Prayers of Rest, Unwrapping the Names of Jesus and her newest book, Delighting in Jesus. Growing up as a Romanian missionary kid, Asheritah helps people worldwide delight in Jesus through creative Bible habits. She and her high school sweetheart raise their three spunky kids in Northeast Ohio — and anywhere they adventure together in their camper. Connect with Asheritah and discover your devotional personality type at www.DelightinginJesus.com.

Adapted from “Delighting in Jesus” by Asheritah Ciuciu (© 2024). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.

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