Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:3-4, NIV)
Elite sports like the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Final Four basketball tournaments, the Masters, the Super Bowl, and other similar championships have become significant arenas of cultural worship.
While sports offer much goodness to our world, many fans and participants attach the desires of their hearts to the outcomes of watching or playing sports.
Today’s scripture often falls into a similar category: if you do A (delight in the Lord), then you will receive B (your desires). This incorrect understanding reduces the Lord to a vending machine and leaves us worshipping the “desires of our heart” instead of the Lord himself.
Take Delight in the Lord means to seek God, to love his ways (even when it doesn’t feel good to us), and to align our hearts with his. Childlike delight in the Lord fosters joy and contentment in our relationship with God; it directs us to trust in his goodness and teaches us to prioritize him above all else.
A soft glance at He will give you the desires of your heart may seem like God wants to give us every wish or material thing we want. But this is not what David is communicating. When we delight in the Lord, our desires will shift towards wanting what is pleasing to God instead of our own self-centered desires.
Skye Jethani writes, “When he invites us to “delight in the Lord” in Psalm 37, David is telling us to make God himself the greatest desire of our heart. Because when we do, it is so pleasing to God that he will eagerly respond by granting us what our heart desires, which is more of God himself (With God Daily Devotional, June 29, 2023).
To delight in the Lord is to experience pleasure, enjoyment, and satisfaction with him. A few ways we might do this is by reading and studying God’s Word, being in nature, seeing and listening to God’s created beauty (without our electronics), being in a community, or caring for the needs of others. What might you add to the list?
Making God himself the greatest desire of our hearts is a daily process of transformation. The entirety of Psalm 37 offers a wealth of wisdom and guidance and is a good place to start.
Prayer: Lord, help me to understand and learn to delight in you today and every day, making you the desires of my heart.