The Desire
Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 (NKJV)
I’ve been thinking and meditating on this verse lately, and I believe God has shown me a new layer to this verse. At least it’s a new layer to me- you may have already seen it.
Before we peel back the layers, let’s take a look at the Words delight and desire. They are important pieces to this verse. Delight means to be soft and pliable, to take delight and pleasure in something or someone, to make merry. Desire means a request, desire, petition and refers to an earnest desire or wish. So, let’s take these definitions and plug them into the verse:
Be soft and pliable in the Lord, taking pleasure in and making merry in Him, and He shall give you the earnest desires, the requests, petitions, and wishes of your heart. Psalm 37:4 (My paraphrase).
So, let’s look at this verse layer-by-layer. The first layer is to take this at face value and understand that when we take pleasure in God, He gives us what our hearts desire. In other words, as we look to God, He gives us what we want. That’s pretty simple and straight-forward.
The second layer is that when we delight in and take pleasure in God, He will give us the desires that He wants us to have in our hearts. In other words, as we seek Him and delight ourselves in Him, His desires become our desires.
The third layer is what the Lord just revealed to me, and I think it is the most exciting layer of all. As we delight and take pleasure in God, enjoying Him and becoming soft and pliable towards Him, God Himself BECOMES our heart’s desire. When this happens, He gives us the desires of our heart- namely Himself because He has become our desire. There is nothing greater or more meaningful than God giving Himself to us. As we take joy and pleasure in God- His presence, His Word, and everything He is- He gives more of Himself to us for us to delight ourselves in! And it begins a wonderful cycle of delighting ourselves, then getting more of God’s presence, then delighting ourselves in this new and greater revelation of God, then getting even more of God’s presence, and so on. It is a never-ending cycle of loving and knowing God more and more and more!
