10.12.2009

Delighting in God

"Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart."
Psalm 37:4

In Wiktionary, delight is defined as joy or pleasure. In Wikipedia, delight is said to mean "happiness and may refer to someone or something that brings such a state, such as good-tasting food."

As I looked up other verses in efforts to learn what delighting myself in the LORD might look like.

Nehemiah 1:11-"desire to fear Your name"(NKJ), "who delight to revere Your name"(NRSV, NASB)
Psalm 1:1-3-"his delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night."
Psalm 111:2-"The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure in them."
Jeremiah 15:16-"Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart."

His law is on the hearts of and studied by those who delight in the Lord and then becomes the joy and rejoicing of their hearts. So then I must ask the question: Does this describe me?

I really do want to delight solely in the Lord but often I find myself delighting in His many blessings than in the giver of those blessings. I guess He does give us those blessings for us to enjoy but isn't the enjoyment of those blessings greater when you're delighting in the Giver more than the blessing.

Guess this leads to the second part of that verse - "and He will give you the desires of Your heart." Many people manipulate this verse to justify asking for just about anything and thinking God will give it to us. I can say for myself that I've done this before but have come to the conclusion that the desires of my heart can't be trusted. It could be partly because I'm a girl and we all know that girls change their minds often. (we know its true)

I wonder what God thinks sometimes when we ask for things. I'm sure He has laughed at my requests many times and said "Erin, that's not really what you want." Its usually at these points when I get frustrated that God hasn't "answered" my prayer when really what's happened is that He knows that my true desires weren't spoken and He uses time to refine them.

I love this prayer by Charles Spurgeon taken from The Power of a Believers Prayer:
Lord, if what I ask for does not please You, neither would it please me. My desired are put into Your hands to be corrected. Strike the pen through every petition that I offer that is not right. And put in whatever I have omitted, even though I might not have desired it had I considered it...'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.'"
Lord, I want to delight You in the things that I pray for. Help me to see where my desires must die in order for Your will to be done. Just as Spurgeon prayed - my desires are put into Your hands to be corrected. You are the loving, merciful Father that I need so desperately and I'm so thankful for your gentleness in reshaping the deep desires of my heart. Place this new heart of yours in me and make it beat forever for you!

1 comment:

allijack said...

mmm. this good, erin. thank you for sharing such goodness.