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Delight yourself in the Lord


Psa 37:4 NKJV - Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.

I love Psalm 37:4.  I hear it quoted a lot.  "Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart." I think, however, that often people quote this verse because they like the latter half of the verse.  Everyone likes the idea that God would give the desires of their heart.  Most people, though, leave out the qualifier - Delight yourself also in the LORD - or they don't address it, maybe because they do not understand it. 

After all, what does it mean to "delight yourself in the Lord"? I've heard many people's definitions.  Recently, I read a verse that had the phrase "delight yourself in the Lord" and believe there is a connection. 

Isaiah 58:13-14 says, "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, [From] doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy [day] of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking [your own] words, Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken."

I think that Isaiah 58:13-14 holds a type of explanation of what it means to "delight yourself in the Lord." It calls us to obey his laws and honor the Lord, not by doing our "own ways" or "finding our own pleasure" or "speaking words." To call what He says is holy and a delight, holy and a delight - forsaking doing our own pleasure, but doing things on His terms.  

Feel-good Christianity - Humanistic "Christianity" - expects God to cater to man.  We think that God will give us the desires of our heart because God must exist to help us and give us what we want and need.  But that is not Biblical.  Christianity is GOD-centered, not man-centered.  When we put our own opinions of pleasure and our own definitions of the world around us on the shelf, and honor Him through obedience, true joy will be found.  It is in that joy of obedience that our true desires will be fulfilled. Yes, God placed those deep desires inside of us, but also - God loves to fulfill the desires of the one who takes joy in loving Him well. 

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