Psalm 37:4 says “Delight yourself also in the LORD and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” So often I believe, Christian thinking on this verse goes something like, “If I read the Bible and pray and go to church and give ten percent and keep my temper and be kind, then God will give me that thing I really want” like a spouse, children, this job, that home, protection from misfortune, healing from disease, emotional stability etc.
But that is not what that verse means at all. Think of it. “Delight yourself also in the LORD”. What does it mean to delight in God? Well, what does it mean to delight in another person? If I am in love with a man, I am interested in him, his thoughts and desires. I want to know what pleases him so that I can do that thing and so bring him pleasure. If his desire is inconvenient for me, I still try to get to know it and to support its fulfillment, because I am delighted with him and what is important to him is important to me. What would it look like if I were to say in my heart, “I will spent time with him and listen to him and laugh at his jokes and let him pick the movie because if I do that then I can get him to do the stuff that I want.” That seems manipulative and not loving at all. That seems like I don’t really care about him, I’m just using him to get what I want.
It’s the same thing with God. If we delight ourselves in the LORD, that means we get to know Him without strings attached. We explore Him and obey Him for the sake of loving Him. And we find that, instead of being disappointed because our desires are not met (and let’s be real - often they are not), we find that God has changed our desires, to reflect His. Then, because we truly want what He wants, He is delighted to give us our desires.
What keeps that from being manipulation on God’s part is the simple fact that He is God and God is good. His will is perfect, His understanding is unfathomable, His power is limitless and He loves us. He can see the end from the beginning and He knows when that thing that I am hung up on will not do me good even though I am convinced it would. He knows what is truly important, when I am blinded by my own small thinking.
I have been enjoying intimate fellowship with God lately and He has been illustrating the truth of this verse to me. Today, for example: There is a person that I care about and want desperately to spend time with. I had hoped to be able to do so this evening, yet I was thwarted and instead, found myself alone in the chapel, crying to God about it and some other things that were burdening my heart. I was so disappointed to not be with that person, yet I was not bitter. In the quiet and raw vulnerability of that moment, God was showing me a better way: that there are important things in life and as I was expressing myself regarding those other issues, I felt in my soul a deep desire regarding them that I had had not felt before and I truly wanted something that was certainly God’s will, which had previously not been y will.
And as for my desire for that person, I understood in my soul that it was better for me to be with God tonight then it was for me to be with someone else. That was God’s will for me and, even though I was sad, I was truly grateful.
I think that verse means that if we delight ourselves in God, He transforms our desires so that the thing that we desire above everything else is His will. All the other things we want, no matter how badly we want them, take a backseat to God’s will and we are made glad to have it so. I used to think following Christ meant living a life of drudgery and disappointment. I am now discovering that it is freeing and peaceful. It may not be well with my circumstances but, as the hymnist put it: “It is well with my soul.”
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