My Hearts Desires

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of you heart." Psalm 37:4

This has always been a favorite verse of mine for as long as I can remember. As a teenager I would doodle and write these words in almost every journal I owned. I clung to these words everyday and couldn't help but to share them with whoever I had the chance. It was always interesting to hear what other people thought or how they interpreted that verse for themselves. The majority of people would interpret it in this way:

"I believe the scripture is saying that as long as I love God and I delight (or take great pleasure) in Him, then He will promise to give me whatever I want."

I would usually stand there a moment and eventually respond with a "hmmmmm" and then say "ok". Not much to my response back then huh? Well, needless to say, my response has grown (greatly)... Lol

Don't get me wrong. I believe God always wants to bless His children, but I also know that being human we tend to take the selfish approach as well. The selfish definition of "delight" would be "to take great pleasure", which was the answer most given then and I'm sure even now most people would still define it in that way. But when we look at the way the word "delight" is defined in this verse it really means to "please greatly". So who are we really pleasing? Ourselves or God? You see, our desire should be to please God and so therefore, he blesses us with our hearts desires because the desires in our heart are already from Him. Many people immediately think that it just means whatever we desire we will receive. I desire to have a new car and "poof", God makes it happen. I desire a to win the lottery and "poof", we have all we could ever imagine. The desires of our heart should be those that God has placed inside of us. Let me share some examples:

When we give our lives to Christ and we become a born-again believer (meaning we die to our old way of living and choose to live our lives according to Gods word), we desire in our heart to please Him by obeying His word. We choose to please him everyday with the choices we make. We desire to fulfill our purpose that He has created us for.

Romans 8:28 says it like this..."And we know that all things work together for the good of them that love God, and are called according to His purpose."

He promises to work all things out for our good, but we must promise to love Him and live everyday according to His purpose for our life.

One way we can do this is found in Psalm 119:11
"Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee."

We can "please Him greatly" by spending time everyday in daily devotion by reading His word and just talking to Him. I shared about prayer in a previous post and how people are sometimes afraid to talk to God because they just don't know what to say, but prayer is just your own personal conversation with Him. Many times I will find myself in the kitchen cooking, worship music playing and I'll just begin to tell Him thank you for all He has done for my family. It's not this elaborate, elegant, extensive prayer, but a few simple words of gratitude. God loves when we just take the time to love Him.

When we desire to please God with our words, actions, obedience and life altogether, He desires to bless us with our hearts desires because we honored Him first.

Matthew 6:33 says it best...
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto  you."

I can truly testify to God's word and say that if you "Delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart." Choose today to Honor Him in all you do.