Psalm 37:4 says “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
How many times have you read this verse and thought, “Wow! God is going to give me everything I want?”
For me, I know that I have thought that too many times, and it’s wrong.
God isn’t some blue genie with the voice of Robin Williams who grants wishes.
We often take a verse like Psalm 37:4 out of context and say “God is going to give me all the desires of my heart, so whatever I’m asking for, no matter how self-centered, wicked, or perverse it may be, or how shrouded in good intentions it may be, God owes it to me because it’s a desire of my heart.” We have to keep the context in mind. And if we’re being honest here, I know I fit into this category.
God doesn’t owe me anything. To say that He owes me something implies that He needs me for something. God doesn’t need anything. He’s God. He’s the Almighty, Omniscient, Beginning and the End.
That’s where grace comes in.
God wants me. He wants me to follow Him because He knows what He has planned is infinitely better than anything my small and sinful mind could come up with.
I’m sure you’ve had desires. In fact I know you’ve had desires. You may have wanted to live in a certain place, wanted your life to go a certain way, or wanted a certain relationship, and for the most part, those desires aren’t inherently bad. But I think we’re supposed to hold on to those desires loosely, and we are to look to God to be the satisfier of our desires.
A friend of mine shared with me recently the idea that to delight in the Lord is to take pleasure in discovering more about God and following His will. He promises to give us our heart’s desires in His time when our requests are aligned with His will.
One of my favorite Bible teachers is John Piper. He said,
“In the end, our hearts long not for any of God’s good gifts, but for God himself. To see Him and know Him and be in His presence is the soul’s final feast. Beyond this there is no quest.”
We should take pleasure in discovering more about God and following His will.
Do you desire the kind of gladness that comes from being satisfied with all that God is for you in Jesus? Or do you desire Jesus plus something else?
My prayer for you (and for myself) is that God would do whatever it takes to align the desires of our hearts with His, and to keep us desperate for Him, because we tend to wander when we stop feeling our need for Him.
Adam Pope
Electronic Communications Specialist
