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IF I DELIGHT IN THE LORD, THEN according to Psalm 37:4, I will be given the desires of my heart.

Rationalization has a field day with this verse. We consider this to be carte blanche, and whatever we ask we will be given if we delight in the Lord. So let’s analyze this for a moment. I want a new BMW and since I am delighting in the Lord He will give it to me. Since when is someone delighting in the Lord when material possessions become the main focus? Their delight is in stuff and not the Lord. “Love not the world neither the things that are in the world” (1 John 2:15).

There is another more troubling way to look at this verse. “I really want children” or “I really desire to be married” is the cry of many who have delighted in the Lord, yet these desires have not been fulfilled. But these are normal desires and are not necessarily the result of delighting in Him.

A third understanding is that God places strong desires on our hearts when we delight in Him that cannot be fulfilled in any other way but by supernatural grace.

So if I am delighting in the Lord, then I might expect that He will give me an overwhelming desire to advance the Kingdom in ways that are beyond my normal desires and capabilities. A missionary call or a deep desire to start a Bible study at work may well fall into this category. After I came to know the Lord, I had a passion to plant a church which at the time made no sense at all (and was well out of my comfort zone and training.) But God’s calling is His enabling: “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it” (1Thess. 5:24).

If I delight in the Lord then I can expect Him to move in ways that I am not familiar with. Such ways are exciting and have no human explanation attached to them. None of us, however, fully delights in the Lord, yet we have this record of Jesus: “…. for I do always those things that please Him” (John 8:29). When we are in Christ, then what Jesus has done in total obedience to the Father is credited to our account. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Prov.3:5-6)