“Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4, NKJV).
Wow! That’s some promise, isn’t it? Just delight in God, and He’ll give you whatever your heart desires!
There’s just one problem: delighting in God isn’t exactly natural for us sinners. In fact, in Romans 7, Paul describes an internal battle that makes it impossible for us, with our fallen human natures, to truly delight in God.
So what’s the deal? Is God taunting us? Does He purposely dangle a carrot before us that He knows we can never reach?
No. As Paul goes on to point out (Romans 7:24, 25), Jesus is able to deliver us from our internal battle. We just have to accept His victory and cooperate with the Spirit as He transforms us into the image of Christ—into people who truly do delight in the same things that delight God.
As the word “cooperate” implies, this isn’t a passive endeavor. We cooperate by choosing.
1. Choosing to submit to God, not to fight Him as He does His work of cleansing and remaking us.
“If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up; you will remove iniquity far from your tents” (Job 22:23, NKJV).
2. Choosing the attitude of a learner—by perceiving God’s Word as the treasure trove of wisdom He intended it to be.
“Let Your tender mercies come to me, that I may live; for Your law is my delight” (Psalm 119:77, NKJV).
3. Choosing to meditate on Scripture—rather than rushing through a quick reading. We don’t get as much nutrition from food that moves too quickly through the GI tract. Similarly, we glean more from passages of Scripture that we take the time to really digest.
“But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2, NKJV).
4. Choosing to memorize Scripture—to make it part of our psyches.
“Receive, please, instruction from His mouth, and lay up His words in your heart … For then you will have your delight in the Almighty” (Job 22:22-26, NKJV).
5. Choosing to become acquainted with God—to really know Him, not just know about Him.
“Now acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you” (Job 22:21, NKJV).
6. Choosing to expect joy in God’s presence—rather than seeing our time with Him as a chore on our to-do lists. Can you imagine dating someone with that attitude? How much more should we look forward to an audience with the King of the Universe!
“They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights” (Psalm 36:8, NIV).
7. Choosing to enjoy God’s gift of the Sabbath—our very own weekly date with God Himself!
“If you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord” (Isaiah 58:13, 14, NIV).
8. Choosing to focus on spiritual things—and disappoint Satan in his many attempts to distract us.
“The ones sown among thorns; they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the delight in riches, and the desire for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:18-19, RSV).
What delights does God have waiting for you today?