Tasting Divine Delight

Is it dangerous to delight in God? Stephanie Rousselle invites us closer.

Elisa

Tasting Divine Delight

By Stephanie Rousselle

My favorite chocolates are small little wonders from high-end French chocolatiers. They’re precious jewels of unmatched beauty for the five senses. Don’t let me wax lyrical about flavors, colors, textures, shapes and scents. I’ve visited chocolate museums in France and Switzerland and taken tours to discover the history, harvesting, and manufacturing of chocolate. But it’s all still just theory about chocolate. Are we going to like the dark stuff?

Good news! Tours usually lead to a room full of samples. There, chocolate becomes experience. Dark ganache. Orange peel. Vanilla-infused. Ginger-stuffed. Lavender-laced. We take a bite to determine whether we like it. Yum! Now we know. And without fail, we reach for more.

If we need to taste chocolate to experience its goodness, how much true is this of God? It’s one thing to know about God. It’s quite another to know God. These two go together—hard facts and experience, or, put another way, theology and relationship. I enjoy chocolate more for the knowledge I have of its history, processes, and variety. Similarly, our delight in God grows in our mind through theology. We also want to know Christ experientially, in our hearts. Scripture calls us to balance head and heart, truth and love. Delighting in God is a bit like enjoying gourmet chocolate.

Delight is both experience and truth. The Christian life is about growing in our experience of what we intellectually know to be true. Delighting in God is meant to be hearty spiritual food to be enjoyed daily by the everyday Christian. It’s learning to love what God loves and enjoy what he enjoys. It’s to rejoice when he’s glorified, exalted, made known and famous. It’s heady stuff.

I like to think of spiritual maturity as a balance between theology and experience. Entering the presence of God through worship and Scripture is a gift from Jesus through the Holy Spirit. As Bible-consuming Christ-followers, we’ve invited to experience what Scripture teaches: We’re created to delight in him. How can we live a life that’s the practical application of this objective reality? How do we taste its flavors? It starts with Scripture.

We can spend a lifetime discovering with our hearts and minds what Scripture means and our spirits long for, as we follow him more and more completely. What we know in our mind becomes experiential reality in our soul. In other words, our delight in God comes from both tasting experience and seeing truth.

Awakening delight in God is the decision to welcome greater desire for him. As delight for him awakens in us, he faithfully nurtures desire into ever-deepening delight of him. Before long, we find our spiritual tastebuds firing left and right, enthralled by the beauty of their experience: God in Christ is truly becoming our delight.

Awakening delight in God thus kindles a lifestyle we’ll enjoy through all eternity. The more satisfying we find our divine delight, the deeper our holy longing for more of this delight, and the more other-centered we’ll become in our delight. This longing will carve in our hearts an ache that only deeper satisfaction in God through Christ will satisfy.

Taken from Awaken Delight by Stephanie Rousselle. Copyright (c) 2026 by Stephanie Rousselle. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com

Stephanie Rousselle is a Bible teacher, speaker, host of the Gospel Spice podcast, and founder of Gospel Spice Ministries. She is the author of Awaken Delight: Satisfying Your Soul’s Longing for God. Born and raised in France, Stephanie is a former atheist whose life motto is now "God's glory, our delight!" Having resided in four different countries during her lifetime, she now lives with her family in Pennsylvania.