I read in Spurgeon today:  In deepest sorrow through conscious failure, or in trials and difficulties through faithfulness to his name, we can ever plead with God what Christ is. God is ever well pleased with him””ever occupied with him as risen from the dead and exalted to his own right hand in heaven; and he would have us also to be occupied with him as the heart's exclusive object. True faith can only rest on God's estimate of Christ, not on inward thoughts and feelings. That which may be called the faith of the formalist, rests on the ability of his own mind to judge of these matters. He trusts in himself. This is the essential difference between faith in appearance and faith in reality. — Things New and Old.

I had a rush of insight today when I read about the Father being “ever well pleased” with His Son.  As an author, I know a correlative feeling:  that feeling of fullness and eminent satisfaction at having completed something, of saying it just as I wanted to say.  In physical terms, it is the deepness and hollowness of the lungs, filled with the long sigh of finishing.

The Father has been reveling in that feeling for all eternity:  as He contemplates His beloved Son, who Himself is “just the right Word.”

(Quote is from Spurgeon”‘s treatise on Psalm 84 in The Treasury of David, in which he cites Things Old and New — online at http://www.spurgeon.org/treasury/ps084.htm )