Tempted by God

No one, when tempted, should say, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. (James 1:13)

I just became aware of one of the devil's greatest schemes by which he can automate his entire system of tempting us to evil. His technique is so effective that not only does he leverage his ability to keep us in a vicious cycle of falling for temptations repeatedly, but he does so by accessing the most basic part of our creation design, our very purpose of existence. By doing this he also escapes detection as being detected as the origin of our temptations and causes us to shift blame over onto God.

It can be easy to be content with a simplistic interpretation of this verse. But James is not simply insisting that we should never use these words, “I am being tempted by God.” The problem is not in whether or not we use this phrase or assume that God might be tempting us to do something that is wrong. Rather the diabolical subtlety of Satan's scheme is to tamper with our innermost beliefs about what God is like and who He really is and gain control over us through that means.

The more I think about this the more the effectiveness of this scheme becomes evident. Rather than repeatedly tempting us to do the same messed up things we so easily fall for, he instills into our subconsciousness distorted images of the God we believe Him to be. Thus he arranges a predisposition for failure in a bed of lies about God ,perceptions of Him that are perverted, twisted and reinforced by widely accepted notions about Him we are not even aware are wrong and so seldom even question.

In this way Satan masks the things that really tempt us with temptations to obvious evil that too often have compulsive power that we find very difficult to resist. W may just give up and keep falling as easy prey, or we may work up will power relying on self-help techniques or popular spiritual formulas to teach ourselves (with divine assistance) to get our behavior in line with religious standards. But we are still unaware that mainstream religious ideas of what it means to reflect God are themselves already prostituted and in actuality mirror more the character of Satan than the character of the God of heaven who is love.

What I have discovered is that many, if not most of our temptations are not the real temptations that take us down. For instance, if I am tempted in a way that from my perspective is actually a call of God to do something in His name to further His kingdom on earth, then how can I resist or even desire to resist such a temptation? Satan has effectively captured my conscience to manipulate in his scheme and I am not even aware that my reflection of God's image has been hijacked. No wonder so many of us remain stuck feeling unable to become more like Jesus.

Let me give an example. If I believe that it is my God-appointed duty to raise my children fearing the Lord, yet I believe that such fear means belief in a dualistic concept of God as both threatening as well as loving, and I treat others that same way myself, what might be a hidden trap in that sort of thinking? An I simply raising what I hope to be godly children based on mainstream beliefs that God rewards the good and issues threats of dire punishments from His hand if anyone steps too far out of line?

This in fact is the way I and far too many other people were raised. But in recent years God has been alerting me to the fact that in reality this view of Him is the after-effects of my first parent's choice to embrace the entire system represented by the forbidden Tree in their garden. By eating from that Tree, more importantly they became infected with a diabolical internal picture of God and His ways of relating to His children. Now the internal picture of God in each of us became perverted by the principles of evil of that Tree rather than the principles of life represented by the Tree that was rejected.

Since it is unavoidable that we treat others and even ourselves based on the internal picture we have of the kind of God who in charge of our lives, then rather than needing to tempt us directly to do things outside of what is healthy or good for us or others, all Satan has to do is to keep our perceptions of God in turmoil and we will default to living according to the standards of the god we imagine Him to be.

Whether or not we think Satan even exists matters little within this scheme; what matters is that we remain trapped in believing that we are defending what we assume is truth, righteousness and decency while in reality, if we would allow ourselves to see things the way heaven sees them, we would discover that much of what we defend in the name of religious 'truth' and moral decency is in fact riddled with faulty assumptions. And all this can be traced back to the original slander against God's character that is now embraced as religious facts about Him that must never be questioned.

I learned an important principle years ago that has helped me begin to see how such a scheme could be so effective. I learned that the sins we talk about and the temptations we assume trouble us so easily, leading us to indulge in bad behaviors, are often not the same kinds of temptations Jesus faced. I had puzzled for years over the teaching that Jesus was tempted in every point just as we are, yet clearly was never tempted to smoke or drive too fast in a car or many other things we face today. I pondered if Jesus was even tempted to have sex which is clearly a temptation for most men. Did Jesus experience overwhelming urges like a drug addict to take another hit? I don't think Jesus ever suffered the experience of a torture conscience driving him to look for something to give Him relief. So how could we insist that He experienced every temptation known to man (and woman)?

What began to dawn on me was the hidden diversion underneath so many of our questions. Our emphasis is often on the wrong thing because we fail to see underlying assumptions embedded within our questions. This happens so much that even Jesus often did not answer questions directly, because to do so would only endorse the faulty reasoning inherent in the question, creating an inescapable trap either way He answered. This was the crafty intent of many who dogged His steps much of His life.

Upon realizing this I decided to go back and more closely examine the evidence to find out just how Jesus was really tempted. To my amazement I discovered a mistake we make in our faulty assumptions about the verses that seem to support this line of logic.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-- yet was without sin. (Hebrews 4:15 NIV)

What struck me one day was related to who's temptation we use as the standard of measure for the very definition of temptation. By starting with the false presumption that we already know how we are tempted and then projecting our opinions into this text, we mistakenly conclude that either Jesus was indeed tempted in every detail exactly what we think we are tempted to do, leaving us puzzled or very skeptical, or we conclude this verse must not be true and feel like discarding it as nonsense.

But what if Jesus really was tempted in every point like I am tempted? I believe that is what this verse teaches. But do I realize that it is faulty reasoning to use my own experience and my presumptions about temptation as a standard by which to judge Jesus and how He was tempted? Wouldn't it make more sense to lay aside our preconceptions about temptation in order to investigate and discern the nature of Jesus' temptations so I might better grasp how I am tempted in the same way He was tempted? When I did this I discovered a long-hidden reality that made a huge difference for me.

I found that as I began to discern what temptation really is based on what I learned about Jesus, and on what points the real temptations focus, many temptations I assumed were the problem were actually decoys diverting my attention from the deeper temptations that I had already fallen to long before.

I am now seeing that the core temptations ahead of what I experience typically viewed as 'normal' temptations, are temptations directly affecting my internal beliefs about what God is like. And the reason we find ourselves so weak in the face of other temptations is because of our faulty, dark concepts and beliefs about God that undermines our ability to overcome more obvious temptations.

If you would ask about anyone questions regarding what they imagine a temptation looks like, most answers would be along the lines of something they believe that God would not do or related to His commands. In other words, if this activity or attitude is something we don't think God would approve of or would do Himself, then likely it is something we should not do either but are tempted to do anyway. That is actually a definition of godliness – how much we are like the God we imagine.

Now, this may be a very good answer, at least on the surface. It is this line of logic that was popular with the WWJD fad a few years ago – What Would Jesus Do? The problem with that fad was not that we shouldn't seek to emulate Jesus – every follower of Jesus should be seeking to do that very thing. The problem is that underneath this valid desire to only do what Jesus would do is the wide variation of opinions of just what Jesus would based on opinions in the thinking of people using this motto. If our concept of God is not in line with the Jesus we discover in the gospels, then just imitating an ill-informed notion about who He really was and how He treated people can be very misguided.

Yet how often are we willing to seriously question our fundamental beliefs about the kind of God we worship? This can be frightening I know, because for years I struggled against a willingness to challenge my underlying beliefs about what God is like. Such thoughts aroused a sense of primordial fear that to do so would be very dangerous, would be stepping off the platform of established truth given to me by authority figures in my life, and the only possible direction from that point would be a slippery slope toward perdition and a sinful rebellious life. Little did I realize however, that my internal perception of God was already deeply infected and riddled with dark notions effectively blocking my heart from being able to love Him, or anyone else for that matter. All I knew was that I had been taught to cling to 'the truth' that I had been taught all my life, and that anything beyond that was too dangerous and should be shunned at the peril of my eternal destiny.

Yet this very fear is part of the genius of Satan's scheme for each one of us. To tempt us openly to do things out of harmony with what we believe God would have us do is too obvious; but to tempt us with those same things while our deepest perception of God is immersed in beliefs that His character includes a dark side that makes us afraid of Him can make us more vulnerable to other temptations.

Only the real truth about God will bring the satisfaction that our souls crave. This is key to appreciating the enormous importance of challenging our feelings and beliefs about who God is and how He treats us. So long as our internal version of God remains out of harmony with the version that Jesus came to reveal, we will find ourselves easy targets fall into sinful behaviors and choices. The inherent power of any temptation is that we find it appealing related to some intense but unmet need deep in our souls. Whether it is a temptation to experience short-lived pleasure to mask our emptiness or pain, or whether we are tempted to work hard to keep God happy so He will save us, either way temptations find their effectiveness by leveraging our mistaken notions about the kind of God we are supposed to trust.

Let me ask this question. How often do you suppose a person would define temptation as an enticement to do something they believe that God would and should do? That almost sound silly, for if God would do something Himself then it just follows that to be godly it should be something we would also do. Yet even as we say this we may begin to feel a little sense of uneasiness as we begin to think of exceptions; a sense of dissonance begins to emerge in our hearts. Why is this?

I believe that because we are all born with a sinful nature, the nature we all inherit through all of our parents since Adam, it is impossible to begin life with a completely correct internal concept of God. Certainly some people have better versions of God, those fortunate enough to be raised in loving homes where their parents or caregivers are very spiritually mature and are themselves advanced in having their own concepts of God greatly improved. Nevertheless we all still start out with inborn selfishness which simply means that our internal compass originally designed to steer us toward God has been broken requiring that each of us requires a personal Savior to connect us with the healing power that God is longing to plant in our hearts.

The core of this healing that must take place inside relates to our idea of what God is like and how He treats us and feels about us. Until that core malfunction is repaired, no amount of effort to educate, train, discipline, manipulate or influence our outward behavior will prove very effective so long as our internal concept of God remains distorted. We were created to be reflectors of God and we cannot help but do so. But what we actually reflect is not the real God in heaven but the god our heart perceives Him to be. Because of this we must pay more attention to the root cause of our malfunction – our internal picture of God – rather than spending so much time and effort trying to fix the external symptoms resulting from this wrong image of God deep in our soul. So long as our picture of God remains distorted, then we will believe that we are in fact doing God's will when in reality it is the will of the wrong god, yet we can't see that because we resist allowing the true God to show us this.

They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. (John 16:2-3)

Can you now see how sly Satan is in tempting us deeper than what we initially perceive? We imagine that our temptations are over things our God would not do. But we fail to see as temptation anything that we believe God would do, so if we believe He uses violence then we feel justified in doing the same.

We are told that God cannot be tempted. No one, when tempted, should say, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. (James 1:13) Yet at the same time our belief systems embrace and teach things about God that in any other context we would plainly view as evil. So how do we reconcile this obvious discrepancy? How can we justify believing a God who tells us to love our enemies and treat them with kindness, yet at the same time believe He will in the end torture His own enemies with fire to punish them for not obeying Him? It takes an enormous amount of self-delusion and twisted reasoning to try to reconcile these opposite extremes. No wonder sane, logical people turn away from religion in disgust, for they can see more clearly than most religious adherents to religion the obvious contradictions in those beliefs.

The way I have seen we typically try to rationalize such contradictions is to assert there are simply things we cannot understand, or that are simply mysterious and it is wrong to even question them. We call that 'taking it on faith.' But such faith has nothing to do with the faith that Jesus had.

How convenient. That is the same argument tyrants and abusers rely on as they exploit others for selfish purposes. “Just trust us” they say. But as soon as someone starts throwing around that kind of logic you can be sure something is likely amiss.

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. (James 1:5-8 NIV)

We must come to see that our dualistic teachings about God are the root cause of double-mindedness. And this is the reason we see so much instability in the lives of Christians everywhere, for we are attempting to believe opposing things about the same God at the same time, something our brains were never designed to do.

John addresses this same issue. We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:3-7)

Let me ask this question. If there is no darkness in God whatsoever, why do we try to insist that God will do things that would be crimes punishable in just about every society? I am not suggesting that we should measure God using systems based on fallen perceptions about justice. But the moral framework that is still evident in our deepest humanness recoils at certain things as reprehensible, especially on the part of those who have not yet been calloused by years of distortions and abuse that has seared their conscience. And what does the most damage to our conscience is too often the confusing, conflicting teachings about God taught as truth and forced into the minds of young people causing them to lose the image of God in the innocence they had from birth.

Yes, we are all born infected by selfishness and we all need healing for that. But we are also born with at least some of the image of the true God that is too often defaced by those around us pounding into us false ideas that erode His image as we mature.

There was a song in a broadway musical years ago called, You've Got to be Taught. It had a profound message in it that led me to go look it up a few years ago and review the words. I realized that the writers of that song were expressing an important insight related to this that too many have missed.

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

The most effective way to retrain the brain to destroy the image of God in the human heart is to inculcate the notion of a god who is more like what we want him to be like. And why do we promote a god who is more like us than like Jesus? It is because with a god to worship who reacts like we would toward those who mistreat or hate us, we can feel justified in craving revenge or in inflicting harsh punishments on others. Such a god allows us to rationalize any number of horrific things we would normally find impossible to vindicate should we allow Jesus to define the true God.

Our beliefs and perceptions about how we are tempted directly reflect our views about God. Identify your beliefs about what you think constitutes temptation for you, and you have just strong clues as to your beliefs and opinions about the nature of the god you believe is in charge of life.

Now, take that composite internal picture of God as exposed by your ideas about temptation and compare it closely with Jesus, with the way He treated people and what He taught. This is the reality check that should force every one of us to feel exposed by the incongruence between what we assume God is like by how different He really is in the light of truth as it is found in Jesus.

Let me give another example from my own life that came to mind as I pondered this. I realize that one of my temptations right now is to want to pour on anyone willing to listen a barrage of spiritual information, things I am excited to learn about recent discoveries in my own pursuit of truth. These are all hopefully very good things, helpful things, maybe even necessary things that people need to know. If they were not I should not want to be sharing them or believing them myself.

The problem is not in that what I want to share is false, the problem is much deeper. I am now seeing in this weakness roots of remaining misperceptions I still feel about how God relates to me. You see, I am more than eager to 'witness' to others about what I am learning about God, how good He is and how messed up are our ideas about Him that keep us afraid of Him unnecessarily. But there is the darker side – I want to share all these things to convince you that you need to believe these things while at the same time I feel too intimidated to make myself vulnerable to enter into a closer relationship with you where you might gain opportunity to see me react in ways opposite to what I claim God is like.

Do you see it yet? Many of us are afraid to get too closer to each other for fear that others will see our inconsistencies and judge us as hypocrites. It is much easier to keep a safe distance while excitedly sharing intellectual enlightenment that would be a blessing when applied in practical life. Yet we fear risking looking like a fool if our own beliefs should be tested by getting close to other messed up people that might make us too uncomfortable. It is easier to remain in our comfortable group to enjoy shared interests but not have to get too close, where we can maintain safe boundaries to protect ourselves from getting too exposed or getting hurt or having our faults seen too obviously.

Ironically vulnerability is precisely what Jesus demonstrated and lived out His entire time as a human in our dangerous world. No wonder historians said that He was know to frequently weep. This is not something most of us want to be known for; we would prefer to have a Savior who makes life better for us, more comfortable and to make us feel safer. Yet if we take a close look at what Jesus said along with what He did, we discover that He lived a very different life than what most of His professed followers today live having nice churches, comfortable homes and keeping in safe little cliques.

Now I feel challenged to face this issue more directly and to become even more willing to get involved in the messiness of broken lives around me to fulfill the teachings of Jesus. Isn't that what it means to follow Him in serving others? But my real question is, why do I feel this way? There must be something deep inside of me that still believes that God is the way I want Him to be. So as I allow myself to compare my temptation to what my gut-level feelings may be telling me, I find that the god I have believed in most of my life may in fact be very suspect compared with Jesus.

Through much of my life what was emphasized as most important in religion was to know the right answers and to believe right doctrines. We isolated ourselves to associate primarily only with those of our religious denomination. The result is that I still don't know how to develop healthy relationships with anyone who believes significantly different than me. What I am now starting to see is that in reality this has been my picture of God all these years, a God who puts greater emphasis on being right than on caring, even though the content of that correct information included instructions of how we were supposed to love our enemies and minister to the poor and other things we feel uncomfortable doing. But so long as we believed the right things it seemed O.K. to lag far behind when it came to living them out in everyday life, even though we were ready to criticize others who did that very thing.

Now, just confessing this brings up another tenacious problem I have related to God. To admit that I have this fear about what others might think about me, or fears about getting involved in the lives of people different than me arouses guilt inside. A new fear then becomes what people will think of me if I don't follow through now and address these faults I have just confessed. I begin to discern here a very familiar pattern of relying on guilt to motivate me which includes trying to avoid or assuage guilt rather than living from motivations of sincere and genuine love.

What I am trying to say is that in recent years I am coming to realize that guilt has been possibly the primary motivation keeping me in line with God's will for my life. Guilt is related to fear; it is in fact fear of what God might do to punish me if I do stay in line with His demands. For most of my life guilt and shame have been so ever-present in my subconscious most of the time that I find myself basing most of my decisions on how much guilt I might experience on the other side or to escape current guilt. Since the god I long believed in really had no ability to awaken love in my heart for him, the only motivation that worked was to get me to avoid doing bad things because of how guilty that would make me feel, and I had far too much of that already.

Clearly the god I have worshiped and obeyed so long is a god who relies mostly on guilt to manipulate me into conforming to His rules. But in that relationship I could never work up or discover the necessary love that this god also demanded of me that I read about in the Bible. I could never figure out why all this was so confusing until recent years as I began discovering that the real God is different than what I had always thought. As my awareness that God is much, much better than I had every been allowed to think in the past began to take influence in my heart, I began feeling strange new sensations of spontaneous love that had never existed before – which started to get me very excited.

Yet these residual feelings of guilt still remain and still assert themselves as being necessary for keeping me in line should my love not yet be effective enough to replace them. Maybe there is some truth in that line of logic, but so long as my relationship with God is motivated by guilt avoidance and lacking in genuine love and respect and admiration of His ways and His character, I still remain trapped by old fears that nearly suffocated the life out of me. It is time to again reject this false god of my past, even the versions of God I inherited from my parents and my church, to embrace the true God who is not at all like any other gods. This is the God who loves me unconditionally which sets me free to love Him in return without feeling that I have to earn it in any way.

Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24:14-15)

Now therefore awe Yah Veh,

and serve him in integrity and in truth:

and turn aside

the gods (elohim) which your fathers served

on the other side of the river,

and in Egypt;

and serve ye Yah Veh.

And if it seem evil unto you [wrong]

to serve the LORD Yah Veh,

choose you this day whom ever ye will serve;

whether the gods (elohim) which your fathers served

that were on the other side of the river,

or the gods (elohim) of the Amorites,

in whose land ye settle:

but as for me and my house,

we will shall serve Yah Veh.

(Joshua 24:14-15 ERRB)

What is becoming more clear to me now is that one of the most effective ways to expose the core beliefs we feel about God, which in turn directly affects the kind of life we live and the way we relate to others, is through seeing our beliefs about temptation as an indicator of less obvious beliefs that conflict with what we profess. Temptations tell us a great deal more about our real opinions about God than do our professions of faith which can be very cerebral and disconnected from reality.

The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. (Luke 6:45-47)

Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.' (Matthew 7:21-23)

Jesus makes it clear here that it is not sufficient to just believe that God exists. Clearly these people who are confused over the outcome in the end question why they are not included in the kingdom of God. They had been faithful and zealous to do all the right things and have all the right answers. Was their problem in that they did not believe in God, or was it that the god they sincerely believed in was so different from the God revealed by Jesus? They had refused to accept that the god they worshiped and obeyed did not match up with the kind of God that Jesus reveals, and in so doing so they experience a terrible shock to discover that God was not at all like what they had always believed.

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. (Hebrews 1:1-3 NAS95)

I have come to see that possibly the most important decision we may ever make is to be willing to allow our opinions and gut feelings about God be challenged and transformed by a constantly increasing appreciation of the real God. This must happen as we immerse ourselves in coming to know Jesus personally, intimately and vulnerably and following His example in exposing ourselves to others. Unless we become willing to admit that our internal version of God is darkened from both religion and by our selfish nature and is in serious need of upgrading, we will remain in danger of finding ourselves among those people Jesus describes who firmly believed they had it all right while in reality they were tragically deceived about God but had refused to admit it.

Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, "How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." The people did not answer him a word. (1 Kings 18:21)

Baal was actually a god very similar to what most Christians today believe about Jesus. Baal was taught as having experienced a death and resurrection very much like Jesus. He was considered the son of God and was the main benefactor who provided needed rains and blessings on his followers. The main difference between Baal and the true God of heaven was the issue of appeasement, an issue most religious people today still assert is true about God. Baal demanded appeasement to satisfy and divert his anger in feeling offended by those who disobeyed him. And so long as we hold to similar views of God in our own hearts we are still really worshiping Baal rather than the true God of Elijah.

Elijah himself struggled to embrace a fully accurate picture of God as was seen when he took things into his own hands after his victory on Mount Carmel by engaging in violence against his enemies. That is why Jesus is the only safe picture of God found among any humans. God has promised to again send the spirit of the prophet Elijah again in our day to finish revealing what must be seen – a clear revelation of the true God who not only is One not wanting to be appeased, but never resorts to violence to get His way. This is the God that Jesus revealed all the way to His death and is the same version of God that must be reflected in the lives of all who become overcomers the same way Christ overcame. This is the God who can heal the heart and empowers His children to live from love alone and never from fear or guilt. This is the God who restores all broken relationships that sin has damaged. This is the version of God that we desperately need to take to a world full of confusion, fear and despair. This is our God and we must wait for this kind of God to save us.

Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:5-6)

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. (Isaiah 25:9)

And it shall be said in that day,

Lo Behold , this is our God Elohim ;

we have waited for awaited him, and he will shall save us:

this is Yah Veh; we have waited for awaited him,

we will be glad, shall twirl and rejoice and cheer in his salvation. (Isaiah 25:9 ERRB)