Delight

March 23

Numbers 23-24

Psalm 37:1-6

Proverbs 8:30-31

Luke 1:1-25

Delight

“Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this:  He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.” Psalm 37:4-6 NIV

We like the sound of the last part of verse 4.  God will give me the desires of my heart.  Yay!!  Let’s see, what do I want?  A new house?  A new wardrobe?  Hum? Maybe I should make a list like I do for Santa each year.  Unfortunately, we tend to gloss over the first part of the verse.  Delight yourself in the Lord.  What does that mean?  Delighting in something means that we derive our pleasure from it.   I cannot honestly say that I derive my pleasure from Him.  It doesn’t say I derive some pleasure from Him, but that I derive my pleasure from Him.  Is He the greatest source of my pleasure?  Would I rather be spending time with Him than doing anything else?  Do I yearn for time with Him?  If I am delighting myself in Him and He is my greatest source of delight, then what will be the desires of my heart?  It will be to know Him more intimately and to seek Him more and more. The promise here is not that He will give me the things of this world if I delight in Him, but that He will give me Himself and in doing that He is giving me the greatest blessing He can possibly give me.  The next verse tells us to commit my way to the Lord and trust in Him and He will make my righteousness shine like the dawn.  Righteousness does not refer to perfection.  I am far from perfect.   It refers to being righteous in His sight because I am in right standing with Him.  The reason I am in right standing with Him is not because of my own actions, but because of my relationship with Jesus.  He has taken the penalty for my sin and has left me in right standing before God.  Matthew 6:33 tells us to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to me as well.” (NIV) If I am seeking Him and the righteousness I have because of my relationship with Jesus, then I don’t have to worry about anything else, He will take care of it all for me.