Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you
the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4 (NKJV)
I read this verse in my devotions prior to a conversation I had with a single friend who was quite a bit older than me. She was in her early fifties and still desiring to have a child of her own. When she expressed her desire to have her own child I remembered the verse I had just read. In my Christian immaturity, I said that God would grant her desire because I knew she was a godly woman who delighted herself in the Lord. She died single and a virgin at the age of sixty a few years ago never receiving the gift I had promised her. I had obviously misunderstood what the scripture had meant.
I have since heard many people use the verse the same way I had used it back then. I sense God calling us to delight in Him that He might give us the desires of our hearts. Let’s take a closer look at the verse so that we can apply it rightly to our lives and reap the rewards it promises. We will do this by taking a closer look at three words: delight, give, and desires. Once we have a fuller understanding of the meaning of the original Hebrew, we will be able to blissfully apply this verse to our lives and find God’s very best for us.
Delight
This word is translated ten times in Hebrew, but only four more times with the exact same usage. (Job 22:26; 27:10; Isaiah 55:2; 66:11) Defined, it is to be delicate, to delight oneself, enjoy, and to mock. This definition, however, does not make the verse any clearer. When the definition doesn’t help much, it is good to look at the other verses with the same translation to gain a better understanding of the word. Here is what I found:
To delight in God is to first have a saving relationship with Him. One must have confessed, repented, and sought forgiveness of sins. These three things bring peace with God (Job 26:21; Isaiah 55:1). Beyond peace with God, He expects those He’s forgiven to seek Him diligently, to hear Him, and to guard what they’ve heard in their heart (Job 22;27; Isaiah 55). God is to be one’s treasure above all else (Job 22:25).
Isaiah encourages God’s people to delight themselves in the spiritual abundances of God (Isaiah 55:2). Delight in spiritual abundance must come before delight in the tangible. Many times Christians have this backwards. They are waiting for abundance in the physical realm before they will delight in the spiritual. However, God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8). He desires His followers to fear and tremble at His word – to take Him very seriously and obey His Word (Isaiah 66:5). Job explains that “a hypocrite cannot delight in the Lord,” because his troubles will weed him out (Job 22:9, 10, 22).
In short, to be able to delight in the Lord one must be saved, hunger and thirst for the Lord in daily devotions, apply scripture to life, place God high above all things, and enjoy the abundance of spiritual fruits received. Delight yourself in the Lord.
Give
This word is translated over two thousand times and means: to give, put; to be given, dedicated. After choosing a sampling from Psalms of all the words translated the same as the word give in Psalm 37:4, it is apparent that give simply means: the giving of an item (literally) or the giving of a blessing (figuratively).
I had thought, lately, that give, being translatable as to give or put could be used two ways here. I thought that God would place proper desires in our hearts and then fulfill them. I am only right in concept, but not by the definition or use of this word give. However, this will become clearer as we look at that last word.
Desires
The word is translated only twice, once as desires, and once as requests. Desiresis then easily understood as being our requests, the wants we have in our hearts.
Here are two quotes that sum up and clarify this definition: “The godly [person] never indulges a desire which [they] cannot form into a prayer to God” (Adam Clark’s Commentary on the Bible, www.e-Sword.com). “Highest desire in God, cannot desire anything that is at enmity with God,” (Keil and Delitzch Commentary on the Old Testament, www.e-Sword.com).
We have discovered together that to delight in the Lord in such a way as to have desires fulfilled is nearly as simple as saying, “Have daily devotions.” However, I would like to change that a little to say, “Have devoted devotions daily.” Do you hear the difference? Anyone can read their Bible every day and go through the motions of Christianity. Yet, God calls us to more, because He wants to give us more; He wants to give us an abundance of blessings both spiritual and physical. What does it require except to seek Him with your whole heart, make Him the apple of your eye, and your desires will come in line with His. Those things that are not of kingdom importance will become less important to you – setting you free of desires that are not God’s best for you. While those things that are most glorious in you, through you, and for you will come raining down with abundance of overflowing joy. When you come to that place, you can claim Isaiah 55:11, “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
The mistake I made early on with this verse and my friend was a devastating one. I hurt my friend, who I deemed to be the godliest person I knew. I once described her apartment as having the oil of the Lord dripping down its walls, because His presence was so strong there. It didn’t occur to me that she might be asking amiss, because I admired her too much. It did not occur to me that a baby of her own might not be God’s best plan for her. I mentioned that she died a virgin. You might have wondered why I would offer you such personal information. Part of God’s plan was to use her virginity as a witness in her later years.
The year she died was the year the movie, “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin” came out. She was interviewed on a local television station and proved herself to be a shining witness for Jesus Christ to a very large population, simply because she was a sixty-year-old virgin. I didn’t know that God’s plan was to preserve her for such a public witness. His desire was different than her desire. Yet, while she never had children of her own, she touched the lives of children in our school districts that were very high risk kids and she did it with the love and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. She could have had the child she desired, but the ministry God had for her would have been void.
Take a minute to ask Jesus to reveal to you any hope, dream, or desire that you have not given up for Him. Can you honestly tell Him He is more important to you than your desire(s)? If He never fulfills your desire, will you yet love and serve Him? Will you say to Him “not [my] will but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42)?
If you cannot answer yes to these two questions, ask Him to help you release those things to Him that keep you from delighting in Him. Talk to someone who will hold you accountable and ask them to pray with you and help you walk through letting go and getting in the right place to allow God to bless you in ways you cannot think or imagine. He is just waiting to pour out blessings upon you.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Matthew 6:33 KJV