The desires of our hearts...

“Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart…” Psalm 37:4

Oh, how much I would love for that verse to read “serve the LORD and you will get what you want.” Instead it says “Delight yourself…” So what is the difference in the two? How can they sound so similar and yet mean two totally opposite things?

Serving the Lord and delighting in the Lord are often looked at as the same, but how many times have I been in a serving position with a junky attitude? How many youth mission trips (back when I was in youth group) have I been on that I went mainly to make new friends and really didn’t think much about the work I was doing, and didn’t do it with excellence? How many times have I worked with teenagers and thought they would never get it and what I was doing wasn’t making a lick of difference?? Well I can tell you that has happened quite often, more often than I like to admit. I have certainly served the LORD without delighting in Him before.

So delighting in Him, how does that look? Being glad in our serving positions, no matter how small or how trivial they may seem, we are the hands and feet of God and there is no such thing as a small position when it comes to furthering His kingdom. Looking past ourselves when we really don’t want to be where we are or around the people we are around; basically getting ourselves out of the way so that He can work through us.

When we are delighting in Him we look forward to what He might do in every situation. We joyfully come to Him and spend time with Him. The He will give us the desires of our hearts.

I’ve wrestled with this verse and tried to get it to mean that I’ll get what my flesh wants. But the actual meaning is so much more rewarding. When we find ourselves delighted in the LORD, His desires BECOME our desires. His will becomes what we long for, what we run after! His plans for us begin to overlap our plans and eventually they can become one! Resistance to His will might become less and obedience might come a bit easier…