How do you understand Psalm 37:4 - "Delight your self in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart"? We tend to think this means if I delight in God, he will give me what I have always wanted. So the single person may think "if I delight in God, He will give me a partner"; the frustrated employee "God will give me a better job"; a pay rise; health; wealth..... whatever.
This is a misinterpretation of the verse. It makes our love of God conditional, like being good a few weeks before Christmas so Santa will give us what we want.
Martyred missionary Jim Elliot wrote in 1949 on this verse: "It does not say He will give you what you want. It does say he will give you THE want. Delight in Christ brings desire for Christ." In other words delight in the Lord does not somehow trigger God to answer our indulgent prayers; instead, delight in the Lord transforms the desires of our heart. We come to see the pettiness of our earthly desires and how insufficient our limited dreams are for ultimate fulfilment.
God is calling us to find a deeper fullness in Him - not by fulfilling our desires, but by discovering His.
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About Me
- Andy le Roux
- Odiham, Hampshire, United Kingdom
- Andy leads The Vine Church, a newfrontiers church in Odiham, Hampshire. He is married to Kate and they have 3 children, aged 7, 5 and 2.
1 comments:
Great post on a meaningful topic!
I just had to comment to let you know about a new book with JIM ELLIOT'S own words. It contains transcriptions of recordings of messages he gave prior to leaving for the mission field.
One of the messages is based on Psalm 37:4 and "delighting in the Lord" and was part of a series he gave to 7th and 8th graders.
The book is "JIM ELLIOT: A Christian Martyr Speaks To You" (ISBN 9781615797646) and I must say I am biased since I edited the book (I knew the Elliot family well and Jim was one of my Sunday School teachers).
In Him,
Robert Lloyd Russell
Abundant Life Now
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