Delight in the Lord

A friend of mine had Psalm 37:4 on his Facebook page this week. This verse states, "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart." This friend then posed the question, "How do you delight yourself in the Lord?"

As I pondered this question, I thought about how odd it is that the majority of Christians know the second part of this verse all too well, "He shall give you the desires of your heart" but how often do we forget the first part of the verse. We must delight ourselves in the Lord. How do we do this? Delight means to experience great pleasure and joy in His presence. When we delight ourselves in the Lord by praising and thanking Him, our attitudes begin to change. Our focus shifts from ourselves to our Creator. When we focus on Him, suddenly our desire is to please Him by doing His will, not ours. We start to focus on the amazing blessings God has given us, not on what we don't have.

Verse 5 of Psalm 37 says, "Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and he shall bring it to pass." When we start to delight in the Lord, we want to commit our ways to Him and to trust Him in every area of our life. To commit and trust in Him, we must entrust Him with everything we have in our lives. When we do this, the things that seemed too hard for us to handle will suddenly not be so difficult. God will take the burden from us and bring it to pass.

For the past few weeks, my prayer has consistently been that my desires will align directly with God's desire. I don't want to long for something that isn't God's will. I'll admit it's not easy coming to grips with the fact that what I want for my life may not be what God wants for my life. But, I am learning to delight in Him, to commit to Him and to trust in Him more each day.