4 Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
There is something profound and powerful about delighting in the Lord. Unfortunately, the moment I say “delighting in the Lord,” the focus tends to be on the delighting and not on the Lord. Through the years, when I’ve heard people talk about delighting in the Lord or desiring God, I’ve been caught up with: How do I do that? It becomes the old “how-to” trap rather than focusing on God Himself and His delightfulness.
The more I walk with the Lord, the more I realize the principle is really quite simple. When we go to a beautiful place in nature—the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Everest—we don’t need a primer on how to enjoy such spectacular beauty. We naturally behold that wonder, and it invokes pleasure, enjoyment, and awe.
If that’s the way it is in creation, how much more as we behold our Creator God? The key is not learning how to delight in the Lord, because we already have the capacity to delight—it’s God-given and natural. We’re always delighting in something.
It’s the same way with the Lord. We need to be exposed to who He is, what He is, and what He has done. As we learn of the biblical truths about God, as we behold God, our capacity for delight rises. The focus is not on delighting—the activity. The focus is on God, who is delightful. The focus is not on desiring God. The focus is on God Who is desirable.
That’s the revolutionary difference that takes the focus off us and our activity, which is a trap in our fallen, man-centered thinking and upward to God-centered thinking.
For years, I used to look at Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” I’d think, “But how do I delight myself in the Lord?”
That focus is totally wrong. The focus of “Delight yourself also in the LORD” is not in the “delight yourself” part, but rather, the LORD. The delighting is the consequence of beholding God, learning who He is and what He has said, and enjoying Him.
Astronomers are some of the happiest people I’ve ever met. They experience endless delight in the vast unfolding wonders of the universe. No one needs to tell them, “Delight yourself in the universe.” They just look up and look out. There’s so much to behold and enjoy from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes—the glories of the universe and space.
King David had such a wonderful relationship with God because as a young man, alone with his sheep, he would look up at those dazzlingly clear Judean nights and see the sky ablaze with stars. His mind was filled with awe:
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? (Psalm 8:3-4)
And Psalm 19:1-2 (AMP)
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows and proclaims His handiwork. Day after day pours forth speech, and night after night shows forth knowledge.
Hear David’s seeking heart in Psalm 42:
As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
This deep longing for God Himself captured David’s heart from his youth. I believe this was the hallmark of this godly (though flawed) man.
Human beings have a built-in capacity to desire and delight. God has given us many delightful things in creation. Food can be amazing—a five-star restaurant with top cuisine rightfully brings delight. But we can also get delight from a Twinkie, then want two, three, four, and become addicted because those things really don’t satisfy us.
This is exactly what God asks in Isaiah 55:2:
Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.”
Charles Spurgeon pointed out something brilliant about Psalm 37:4. He spoke of people who have so much—for instance, the rich—yet they want more and feel like they don’t have enough. No matter how rich they become, they remain unsatisfied. The problem is that the earthly things that we delight in don’t really satisfy us. He adds:
Mark this, this [delighting in God] is the only thing that a man can delight in and get his desires.
It’s one thing to delight. It’s quite another thing to delight and be satisfied. Nothing—no food, sex, music, work, or scientific discovery—can truly satisfy the heart that’s been designed to be satisfied by God Himself. Psalm 63:5:
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.
Psalm 16:11:
You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
That’s what delighting in the LORD is all about. There’s a vast difference between focusing on “delight” versus “in the LORD“—the object of our delight.
Desiring God is not about desiring. It is about the desirability of God. Our delighting and desire is in God Himself: His character—loving, wise, gentle, kind, long-suffering, patient, faithful. His nature—all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing, eternal. His aseity, which speaks of God being I AM, and all that exists, that all good is from Him and of Him. The fact that He is immutable, unchangeable.
Hear it in Psalm 73:25-26:
Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Job 22:25-26 really nails it:
25 Yes, the Almighty will be your gold And your precious silver; 26 For then you will have your delight in the Almighty, And lift up your face to God.
Our delight in God naturally rises when we think about all the wonderful things that God has done—His perfect accomplishments through Jesus: perfect life, perfect sacrifice, perfect death, perfect resurrection, perfect redemption, perfect priesthood. He has set us apart as His own, made us holy, bought us with a price, redeemed us.
Consider also how God is also working now in the believer. The Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit with nine characteristics of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. He brings us peace—the Hebrew word shalom, where nothing is missing, nothing broken, nothing lacking.
There is great delight in the reality of Christ, who is our life: “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).
Beyond that, there are all those amazing “in Christ” realities—some 150 of them in the New Testament.
Also the great reality of Christ in us, Colossians 1:27: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The older I get, the more my thought isn’t about what I should do or not do. My thought is no longer “how-to” Christianity. In fact, i could care less about such “Christianity”, so-called. My thought is consumed with: “Tell me about my God! Tell me about my SaviorI Tell me about what He has **done for me! Tell me about who I am in Him! Tell me about who He is in me!” It’s all about Him.
As I look to Him, behold Him, know Him, learn of Him from His Word and by the Spirit, my heart thrills. My desire is aligned toward God and truly satisfied! My delight is in God. I want to yell and shout and dance and sing and write poetry about this great God. I want to tell the whole world!
Why? Because I’m “supposed” to delight in God and I need to work on that? No! It is because He is so wonderful, so delightful, so desirable. I think about that beautiful song that Larnelle Harris and Sandi Patty sang years ago, “More Than Wonderful”, which speaks of Jesus being more wonderful than our minds can conceive, more than our hearts can believe, beyond our highest hopes and fondest dreams, everything our souls have ever longed for and so much more. He’s more than wonderful.
Every true believer knows how beholding Him, experiencing Him, enjoying Him, brings deep satisfaction. There is nothing like a direct personal encounter with God! Every person who has directly experienced God in a deep and profound way is fundamentally altered and changed. It changes our direction, our passions, our seeking heart.
We seek Him not because the Bible says “seek the Lord.” We seek Him because He is so worth the seeking. We know Him because He is so worth the knowing. We love Him because He is so worth the loving—because He’s loving, wonderful, and good.
Psalm 34:8: “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” Taste and see—those are experiential things.
That is the great, powerful magnet and gravitational force that pulls us to His heart and away from ourselves, away from lust, pride, sinfulness, selfishness, and into His heart. We walk holy because a holy God has made us holy, and we delight in His holiness. As King David said in Psalm 27:4:
One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple.”
Oh, the great wonder of delighting in a delightful God! Oh, the joy and satisfaction of desiring a desirable God!
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