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- Feb 9, 2004
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from CBN.com
I gave birth to my son at the age of seventeen,” Cindy recently told me. “Holding him in my arms, I wept. ‘It’s just you and me,’ I told him, caressing his tiny head. His father abandoned us four months before this miracle entered the world. My hunger to be loved overwhelmed me.”
Have you ever felt like Cindy? I have. In the midst of my turmoil, I’ve often turned to Psalm 37:4 and meditated on it. I love the idea of God giving me the desires of my heart, but that promise has a condition—delight myself in the Lord. That’s the hard part of the verse—the place where I have to ask myself whether I am truly delighting myself in the Lord.
One day I wondered how the Bible defined “delighting” myself in the Lord. I knew it wasn’t an abstract concept. Two verses that I found helped me to know if I was really delighting myself in the Lord or not:
Psalm 40:8
“I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart”
Romans 7:22
For in my inner being I delight in God’s law.
How do we delight ourselves in the Lord? By doing what pleases him and putting his law in our hearts. Then, as we are sanctified, he gives us the desires of our heart. Here’s how Matthew Henry put it: “He has not promised to gratify all the appetites of the body and the humours of the fancy, but to grant all the desires of the heart, all the cravings of the renewed sanctified soul. What is the desire of the heart of a good man? It is this, to know, and love, and live to God, to please him and to be pleased in him.” *
Imagine what our desires would be and how God would meet them if we spent more time on the first part of Psalm 37:4 than the last part.
I gave birth to my son at the age of seventeen,” Cindy recently told me. “Holding him in my arms, I wept. ‘It’s just you and me,’ I told him, caressing his tiny head. His father abandoned us four months before this miracle entered the world. My hunger to be loved overwhelmed me.”
Have you ever felt like Cindy? I have. In the midst of my turmoil, I’ve often turned to Psalm 37:4 and meditated on it. I love the idea of God giving me the desires of my heart, but that promise has a condition—delight myself in the Lord. That’s the hard part of the verse—the place where I have to ask myself whether I am truly delighting myself in the Lord.
One day I wondered how the Bible defined “delighting” myself in the Lord. I knew it wasn’t an abstract concept. Two verses that I found helped me to know if I was really delighting myself in the Lord or not:
Psalm 40:8
“I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart”
Romans 7:22
For in my inner being I delight in God’s law.
How do we delight ourselves in the Lord? By doing what pleases him and putting his law in our hearts. Then, as we are sanctified, he gives us the desires of our heart. Here’s how Matthew Henry put it: “He has not promised to gratify all the appetites of the body and the humours of the fancy, but to grant all the desires of the heart, all the cravings of the renewed sanctified soul. What is the desire of the heart of a good man? It is this, to know, and love, and live to God, to please him and to be pleased in him.” *
Imagine what our desires would be and how God would meet them if we spent more time on the first part of Psalm 37:4 than the last part.
