Heart’s Desires

Trust in the LORD and do good.

Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.

Take delight in the LORD,

and he will give you your heart’s desires. Psalm 37:3-4

WE’RE TEMPTED to use Psalm 37:4 as a formula, or even as a tool of manipulation, offering God our interest and dutiful obedience in order to get what we want in return. It’s a verse often quoted to communicate something like: Get really serious about God, throw yourself into working for him, read your Bible and pray a lot, and then God will finally be able (or be obligated) to give you what you want most —whether it’s a spouse, a new job, or a compliant and happy child!

But delighting in God is not a means to get what we want from him. That is manipulation. Genuine affection for God is an end in itself, not the means to some further ends. Genuine delight has no ulterior motives, no additional demands. Delight says thank you to God for his many blessings, such as good food to eat, a house to live in, people who love you, and a job to go to, but it also says, I will not worship these things by demanding them from you.

As we delight ourselves in the Lord —enjoying his holiness and purity, experiencing the pleasure of his ways —we begin to see the desires of our hearts in a different way. Our delight in the Lord loosens our grip on the things we’ve longed for. We are able to see what is standing in the way of true delight. We discover that the Holy Spirit is working in us to change what we desire most so that increasingly what we want most is more of Christ.

Lord, I know that you are not after simply an external change in our behavior; you want an internal change in our affections. You want to transform and redirect our most personal and passionate longings and then to satisfy them fully. So, Lord, help me to keep my focus for ________ on an internal change in affections rather than merely an external change in behavior. Transform ________ into a total pleasure seeker who recognizes that you are the greatest pleasure to be found.