i will delight

I was reading Isaiah 11 this morning and read these verses (vv.2&3)
"The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD -
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD."
I'm not so great at figuring out the layers of meaning in O.T. prophesy but I'm pretty certain the "him" mentioned here refers to the then awaited Messiah, Jesus. I always want to keep at the top of my list the goal to be more like Jesus and I am strongly convicted of how much I fail to pursue growing in the FEAR OF THE LORD. Out of all the things this passage says the Spirit will infuse... wisdom, understanding, counsel, power, knowledge... THE FEAR OF THE LORD is the one thing that is followed by the words "... and He will DELIGHT in the fear of the Lord"!

Sadly this is a continual challenge for me. My heart so desires to live in a state where the Father's opinion of who I am; what I'm doing, saying, etc. is the first thing on my mind - my greatest motivator. Oh, that His perspective on my daily choices would be the single, most important thing that either makes my heart skip a beat when He is pleased with me or weighs heavy on my heart until I am motivated to make different choices.

In his book, "The Dangerous Duty of Delight", John Piper does such a great job of talking about what it means to DELIGHT in the Lord. He discusses the gap between, or rather the combination of, Duty and Delight when it comes to living like someone who believes they are ever being pursued by God.

All I know for sure is that I want my heart to expand EVERY DAY so that more and more I can say
I delight in the fear of the Lord!