“Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Psalm 37:3-4 seems a little short and simple to study for a full week, but the longer I sit with these two verses, the more I’m finding new troves of treasure in each of them. Truthfully, I find myself focusing on that last part – the Lord giving me the desires of my heart – with much more excitement and passion than I feel in the instructions before those words. I spend so much time chasing a calling or a desire of my heart, that I forget the instructions he has so beautifully laid out before me: Trust in Me. Do good. Dwell in the land. Befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in Me. 

I’d love to spend this week together turning our attention to those things and seeing how the Lord transforms and grants us the desires of our hearts when we put things in their right order.

Delight Yourself in the Lord

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:4

Many times in life I’ve gotten this verse backwards. I’ve believed that getting the desires of my heart would cause me to delight in the Lord. I’ve thought that getting what I want will nudge me closer to the Lord, and I would measure the strength of my relationship with the Lord based on what I saw Him doing for me.

But this verse flips everything back to how it needs to be. We must delight in the Lord first. We must find our ever-present, ever-growing foundation of joy in Him and Him alone. And then He will give us the desires of our hearts.

The funny thing about doing this the right way – delighting in the Lord first – is that oftentimes it changes the desires of our heart. Finding our joy in the Lord first changes our hearts to be more responsive to His.

Delighting in the Lord frames and changes our desires to look more and more like His desires. My desire to travel and see the world has been constantly refined into a desire to follow where the Lord may lead me to be a reflection of Him. He delights to give us what we desire because we begin to desire the same things that He desires for us. Delighting in the Lord looks a lot like seeking Him first, over all things. It’s looking to Him in good and bad, and holding fast to His promises and the joy of our salvation.

He is the only place that our joy is secure and complete, and remaining faithful to that allows us to pursue Him in the pursuit of our heart’s desires.

I encourage you – “Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Chelsey