From Psalm 37:4 it reads: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
What a great scripture. A scripture I have loved for years. And I have meditated on it. I’m sure you are very familiar with it as well. Delight is a word we use to describe things in which we take a great deal of pleasure; The concept of delight calls for feelings and expressions of exuberance and joy. My guess is that many of us might come up short if we were asked to provide evidence of how much we delight in the Lord. Perhaps we have lost focus over the years. It is this sense of focus that I hope can find restoration as I take on this week’s episode of Sunday Spice.
I heard John Maxwell say on a podcast … what you focus on will expand. Now these words really impacted my life. So let me say it again. What you focus on will expand; it will increase. So, with that in mind and with an intention to increase our delight in Jesus, let’s take a moment to re-focus. Let’s first ask ourselves if He is worthy of our delight. It’s a fair question, right? And even in asking it I am already convinced of His worthiness, aren’t you? Therefore, our attempts at re-focusing our delight is indeed a worthy effort; why? because He’s worthy. Having posed the question of God’s worthiness, it doesn’t take us long to come up with an answer.
If you have ever known the joy of sins forgiven, the promise of Heaven as an eternal home, and the assurance that He will never leave you or forsake you then there are three reasons right there that help us to focus and to ultimately delight in our God. Why? Because He, and He alone, is the source of sins forgiven through the work of Jesus on the cross. Jesus alone promised to go on ahead and prepare a place in Heaven for us. Truly a generous act of His redeeming mission. And, if you’re paying attention to God’s generosity, and you’re like me, you are so grateful God stays true to His word and has never left us nor forsaken us.
And that’s just the short list of blessings, but it’s enough to start a re-focus of why we should exist as the most grateful people on the planet. And this provides a reason, a very strong reason, to take a great deal of delight and joy in our Savior.
Let’s realize that if we can re-focus well enough with the help of the Holy Spirit, and restore our sense of delight in the Lord, that it’s not because He stands idly by doing nothing; it’s never been only up to us. The fact is that He is the one who initiated all this delight. He first delighted in us. Think about it; the reason we love Him at all is because He first loved us. He took the initiative. Evidence of His delight and love for us is woven into the Bible and included in such verses as
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” And in Romans 5:8, “but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In other words, when we were not finding any delight in Him at all Jesus died for us anyway. And a verse I have already mentioned from 1 John 4:19 “We love because He first loved us.” Zephaniah 3:17 says “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing.” Imagine God singing loudly . . . as He thinks about you and about me. And Psalm 18:19 “He brought me out into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me.”
So, if any delight flows from us to Him it’s because He set the standard by first delighting in us. Delight then is a glorious two-way street between God and us; we delight in each other. It’s the kind of thing that makes for a great relationship.
If what we focus on expands then God and His priorities can start to expand in our lives. This doesn’t mean we control how big and awesome God is, but our focus does determine how much of the awesome God is allowed inside us to do the work He intends to do. He will always exist as the awesome God and creator of the universe whose redemptive plan for mankind is gloriously magnificent—whether we focus on Him or not. But the moment our eyes are opened to see Him in all His love and majesty the more we become like Him. Such a focus transforms us and expands who He intends us to become.
This is affirmed in a principle from 1 John 3:2 where it says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” The more glimpses we can get of Him on this side of Heaven the more we can become like Him. But there is a day in the future when He will appear, and we shall see Him as He is. The result of our focus that day will make us like Him.
This will give us even more reason to delight in Him and worship Him forever.
And one more thing to mention for those who delight in the Lord is the last part of Psalm 37:4 “and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Let me take the liberty to interpret this verse in two different ways.
Sometimes we pray, “God, get me what I want, please!” And there is room Biblically for petitioning the Lord for things that we hope to acquire and enjoy. But those who delight in the Lord might find themselves also praying this prayer: “God, help me to get what You want.”
I’m Tammy Reneé, and this is Sunday Spice. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed are the people who take refuge in Him!
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