Delight in the Lord
4 Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
These words from Psalm 37:4 are likely familiar. They are also misused a lot! It is important for us to understand what the psalmist intended by those words. We must understand that our heart has been changed as believers and therefore our desires have changed. It doesn’t remove the delight; it actually enhances it. Let me share the words of Charles Spurgeon commenting on this verse:
“The worldly person says, “I thought religion was all self-denial; I never imagined that in loving God we could have our desires. I thought godliness consisted in killing, destroying, and keeping back our desires.” The religion of most people consists in abstaining from sins they secretly love. Negative godliness is common; it is supposed by most that our religion consists in things we must not do rather than in pleasures we may enjoy. And they suppose us to be a crabby, miserable bunch, who undoubtedly make up for denying ourselves in public by some private indulgence. Now it is true that religion is self-denial; it is equally true that it is not self-denial. Christians have two selves. There is the old self, and there they do deny the flesh with its affections and lusts; but there is a new self, a newborn spirit, the new man in Christ Jesus. Our religion does not consist in any self-denial there. No, let it have the full swing of its wishes and desires, for all it can wish for, all it can pant after, all it can long to enjoy. When I hear persons say, “My religion consists in some things that I must do and in some things that I must not do,” I reply, “Mine consists in things I love to do and in avoiding things I hate and would scorn to do.” I feel no chains in my religion, for I am free, and no one is more free. He who fears God and is wholly God’s servant has no chains about him; he may live as he likes, for he likes to live as he ought. He may have his full desires, for his desires are holy, heavenly, and divine. He may take the full range of the utmost capacity of his wishes and desires and have all he needs and all he wishes, for God has given him the promise, and God will give him the fulfillment of it.”
(Spurgeon. (2017). The Spurgeon Study Bible: Notes (pp. 721–722). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.)
Look at Ephesians 4:20-24 and see that, as believers, we have been renewed in righteousness and holiness - and our true desires are in accord with that. Or turn to Colossians 3, particularly verse 10 that speaks of believers being commanded to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the imagoes its creator. All of this flows from the fact that Christ is our life as believers. And that is not only a good thing, it is the best thing. Let’s meditate on this truth and be overwhelmed by all that we, as believers, are given in Christ, and the true pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).