Thursday, March 15

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Thursday

Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.      – Psalm 37:4

I have read this verse many times, and I have heard it quoted many more.  But what does this verse really mean?  King David wrote this Psalm and David was called “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22, 1 Samuel 13:14).  David certainly wasn’t called a man after God’s own heart because he was sinless, just read 2 Samuel 11 and you will see just how sinful David could be.  David was guilty of adultery, murder and deception!  David wasn’t called a man after God’s own heart because he always trusted God in every situation either.  1 Samuel 21:10-13 tells the story of how faithless and fearful David could be in the face of earthly threats. 

So, if David was not called a man after God’s own heart because was sinless and completely trusting in God, then what made him “a man after God’s own heart”?  I think this is where David’s words in Psalm 37:4 can help understand what it means to be a man (or a woman) after God’s own heart.

Let me give you the three ways that I have thought about how to interpret this verse.  These three interpretations parallel my own spiritual growth and understanding of God over the years.  The first two represent a shallow, or incomplete understanding of the text, and the third way gets to the heart of how we (like David) can be called men & women after God’s own heart.

Œ When I was younger in my faith, I thought that “delighting my self in the LORD” was a method to obtain the desires of my heart.  In other words, I had desires in my heart; dreams, aspirations, for my life, and if I wanted to achieve those desires, then I would need to give God His due…i.e. “delight myself in the LORD” (whatever that meant).  The typical form this took for me, and I suspect for many others, was going to church, serving, giving, saying my prayers, etc. trying to be a good Christian, and then God would bless me by giving me the desires of my heart.  I hope you can see how fundamentally flawed this interpretation is.  God is not a divine genie who can be summoned to grant our wishes if follow the rules of religion!

  As I grew and matured in my faith, I began to see how shallow my earlier understanding really was.  I started to think that the better understanding of the verse was something more like this – I have desires in my heart, some of them good and God-honoring, and some of them not so good.  When I delight myself in the LORD (praying, reading the Bible, etc.), God will help me sort out my desires; taking away the bad desires and replacing them with His good desires for my life, etc.

Ž  Now I am beginning to see that neither of these two interpretations are really what David is telling us in this Psalm at all.  Consider this example - If you had a friend who only called or contacted you when he/she needed something from you, wouldn’t you eventually begin to feel that your “friendship” was really quite superficial and one-sided?  Of course you would.  A true friend is someone that you genuinely want to spend time with, not just for what they can give you, but simply because you enjoy them, you delight in their company, you love them.  What David is expressing is the spiritual reality that the more we delight in the LORD, the more that becomes the desire of our hearts!  Delighting in the LORD is not something we do in order to get something else.  Delighting in the LORD is the deep desire of our hearts.