Psalm 37:4

My devotional for staff meeting at CCC

Psalm 37:4

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

I’ve been on a journey with this verse over the past year. I first found it on a sheet in the life school prayer class this spring. The sheet was about praying God’s promises into your life. There were many verses that listed promises topically, and this one stuck out to me. I didn’t know what to do with the verse. Just two parts, a command and a promise, but it seemed almost impossible to believe or even understand.

Fairly quickly, God told me to focus on the first part of the verse. “Delight yourself in me… come away with me… love me, I’m your strength, your shield, your rock.” And for a while I did just that. I focused on delighting in God and reveling in the joy that only He can give. Until self righteousness set in.

“God! What about my desires?” I asked. I opened my childlike fists and demanded that they be filled with all of the great things God owed me for delighting in Him. After all, I’d been delighting in Him for a few months already. Surely I deserved something for my efforts, right? So when God didn’t fulfill my deepest desires with speed and ease I began to bitterly pull away. 

Thankfully, God still pursued me. He began to show me the difference between the desires of my flesh and the desires of my heart, for there is a great difference! Slowly, He helped me sort through a few of my desires and see them for what they really were—a desperate attempt to control my life and define my own worth.

Through surrendering all of my desires to God, the underlying message in the process of living Psalm 37 has become more clear: God not only fulfills desires, He plants them. The promise is two-fold. Part of delighting yourself in the Lord is surrendering all of your perceived desires. God then gives you the desires that He meant for you to have before sin corrupted your heart and taught you to desire things of the flesh. By giving all of your desires to God and delighting in Him, He can turn around and breathe life into your heart, planting HIS desires in the process. And it is these desires that He fulfills in your life.

In May God began to teach me a lesson about His faithfulness. After a breakout session at the FAM conference I was so confused. The session awoke so many desires in my heart about reaching out the urban community. I wanted to be out in the community loving on hurting and broken people. I love those who are marginalized and facing discrimination. And I love their kids. My question for God was, “Why do I have these desires if I’m meant to be in Children’s ministry at a church?” Yet, when I got an application for a job that would allow me to be in children’s ministry at a church that reaches out to the marginalized, broken, poverty stricken people of Macon my first response was, “No way!”

How thankful I am that God has been working on my understanding of desire over the past year. When I walked through the doors at TLC I realized that this job would fulfill the desires of my heart. God was bringing my attention to those desires at the FAM conference, and He showed me how strong they are in my heart while I drove around Macon. I didn’t earn this crazy job that came out of nowhere by figuring out the formula to success. Two months ago I might not have even considered this job. It didn’t fit into my plan, but God knows me better than I know myself, and now I can see that He is fulfilling the promise of Psalm 37:4 in my life, and He will do the same for you.

So today lets meditate on this promise and pray it into our lives. Ask God to show you the desires of your heart. Let Him trim the hedges around your heart and dispose of the desires of your flesh. He may lead you somewhere you didn’t expect, but “we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” (Rom. 8:28) So surrender. Delight yourself in our great and awesome Lord. Give Him your desires, and joyfully follow him to new ones.