As Iron Sharpens Iron: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and..."

Psalm 37:7 - “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

What an amazing promise. What stellar truth. However, I feel that there may not be another verse so wonderful yet applied to our hearts so errantly.

When you read that verse, what are your immediate next thoughts? Search them and see.

If you are like me for the entirety of my life including immediately up to this moment, the principal joy and attraction of that verse is the second clause, “and He will give you the desires of your heart.” We have seriously missed the point…we have seriously missed the joy…we have seriously missed the attraction: God, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Delighting myself in Him is the delight. That sounds redundant and I wrote it purposefully as such in order to demonstrate its simple truth and expose how easily we miss what should be so obvious. If I delight myself in the Lord—delight!—what else matters? I am delighted in and of the Lord Himself, and nothing apart from Him. In that moment, all the desires of my heart are fulfilled, whether they are purely spiritual or actually realized in the physical world.

But when this verse is read, and when I have heard it all my life, it is given as hope for all the good things we desire or might desire. We realize that we do love the Lord at some capacity and are delighted in Him alone to some capacity, and we see the true promise that follows. That is actually fully good in my opinion—as the starting point of our thoughts—but it cannot be where our thoughts end. It could be the spark that ignites the flame, but God is the only fuel that will keep the flame burning. Who can keep warm via merely spark after spark? Only the flame that burns much hotter can satisfy that need for warmth in a world that is cold. Desiring the current things in our hearts as a result of delighting in the Lord is like desiring sparks instead of the flame—it is backwards and leaves us yearning for more. So the promise of good things that our hearts desire is the spark that turns us to the first part of this verse, delighting ourselves in the Lord.

Unfortunately, most of us take that verse into our worlds this day or week or year and start looking for all the desires of our hearts to come true. We keep a record, as if we had to prove that God is true to His promises. Firstly, if we think by keeping the knowledge of those desires and the status of their fulfillment or lack thereof is at all important, then we have kicked faith to the curb. If we had faith, we wouldn’t have to keep track, for God would do the good thing in His timing with no need of our record keeping. The fact is, such behavior displays doubt that the promise is true because God said it—instead, we are saying to some degree that it is only realized as true when we have seen it personally—where is our faith? But beyond that, we should have never let that second part of the verse so powerfully overshadow the real importance of the promise: the prerequisite that is also the fulfillment—delighting ourselves in the Lord.

I think we need to focus on the second half of that verse, the fulfillment of the “desires of your heart,” just long enough to recognize that a wonderful promise has been given by a Wonderful God and to recognize that He loves us that much and in that way. Upon the revelation of His love through this promise, we must then immediately shift all focus, desire, passion, and energy on the first half, delighting “yourself in the Lord.” That is the beginning and the end of it.

Too often we take it as the means to the end. That “if I delight in the Lord, I’ll get the desires of my heart.” I want to change our attitudes—yours and mine—to, “if I delight in the Lord, He is the desire of my heart.” Then we realize for whom that is true, He will not hold back the all-surpassing greatness of knowing Him, the overwhelming joy in His presence, the fullness of His love, the depth of His mercy and grace, the peace that surpasses all understanding. In that moment, whatever desires of our hearts that remain have been tested as true, and all other desires that are present have been newly given, better than all I previously held in my heart. And in that moment, all the goodness of Christ is availed within me, and all the desires of my heart—my now pure heart through Christ—are given freely and abundantly, to the extent that I cannot contain it alone and it flows forth from me into the lives of those around me who are also beginning to delight themselves in the Lord.

A note of encouragement here: if you feel so far removed from this attitude of abandonment, such that you have no practical vision of how you could ever be so dead to your current desires, and fully and only fulfilled by your relationship with God—know that I stand with you. I have stood with you my entire life, and this realization is only one step closer. Imagine someone who one day realizes that they must climb over and trek through a mountain range in order to get from their place of starvation and isolation to a wealthy village inhabited by their family that yearns for them to be present to share in their wealth. What lies before them is the choice of staying where they are, a certain and lonely death awaiting, or finding a way to assured life and loving community. But they must do what seems impossible—make the seemingly insurmountable journey, starting with almost nothing. They would feel like if they started on the side of wealth and provision, fully fed and fully equipped, that they could make the trip to the other side, but how can they hope to make it to prosperity if they have nothing to get them through the perilous journey?

The realization of where we need to be is quite different than starting out in that direction. This inspiration is only a realization and not a testament to arriving, nor even starting, except for maybe one single step. Ah, but I know something that I hope you also know. Our situation is not so bleak as the one described in the paragraph above. For we have One who is with us where we are, who will not leave us to find our way Home alone—for without Him our fears are well-founded—we would certainly not survive the journey, never making it to Paradise! Instead, there is One who has come down the mountain to meet us, to give us Nourishment to get us started, Provision to keep us going, and He is already there before we’ve even made this first tiny step: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). How much more will He be there once we have taken that first step?!

The One here is Jesus Christ. The Nourishment is the Holy Spirit and Word of God sent to sustain from within our very bodies. The Provision is the entirety of the Word of God through the Bible, as well as the Holy Spirit within us. All of this possible by the incomprehensible depth of love of our Father in Heaven, our Salvation through the bearing of our sin in Jesus Christ—tortured, killed, and resurrected to give us eternal life—and the companionship and advocate of the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us to the Father and affords us the presence of God right where we are and everywhere we go, for “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

Even still, you may ask, “where do I begin?” First, above all else, is asking Jesus Christ to be your Savior, confessing your unworthiness as a true sinner, acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God. Soon you’ll come to realize that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, who took on human life, bearing the burden of sin, yet remaining perfect, who died a mortal death, but conquered it by rising from the dead, and He now reigns forever. Start simply by declaring your yearning for Him to save you, and He will instantly.

Next, what about the desires that are in your heart right now? What do I do with them, especially if I have no idea if they are good or need to be banished from my heart? Jesus speaks to you regarding this and the thoughts above in Matt 7.

Matt 7:7-11 - “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

If you ask, not knowing you are asking for a stone or a snake, he will be sure not to give you something so terrible, for He knows what you need and what you were really longing for in that request. And if you do ask for bread or a fish, then He will certainly give it to you or something even better. So we find that no matter what we ask, God knows the source of that desire, and is willing to go right to the foundation of it and give us that bread and fish. Along the way, we’ll begin to recognize exactly what we were truly asking for all along, most deeply to delight ourselves in Him.

Here is the rest of the this portion of Psalm 37 that I think paints an even fuller picture:

Psalm 37:4-24 – “Take delight in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:
6 He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.
7 Be still before the LORD
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
9 For those who are evil will be destroyed,
but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
10 A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found.
11 But the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy peace and prosperity.
12 The wicked plot against the righteous
and gnash their teeth at them;
13 but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he knows their day is coming.
14 The wicked draw the sword
and bend the bow
to bring down the poor and needy,
to slay those whose ways are upright.
15 But their swords will pierce their own hearts,
and their bows will be broken.
16 Better the little that the righteous have
than the wealth of many wicked;
17 for the power of the wicked will be broken,
but the LORD upholds the righteous.
18 The blameless spend their days under the LORD’s care,
and their inheritance will endure forever.
19 In times of disaster they will not wither;
in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.
20 But the wicked will perish:
Though the LORD’s enemies are like the flowers of the field,
they will be consumed, they will go up in smoke.
21 The wicked borrow and do not repay,
but the righteous give generously;
22 those the LORD blesses will inherit the land,
but those he curses will be destroyed.
23 The LORD makes firm the steps
of the one who delights in him;
24 though he may stumble, he will not fall,
for the LORD upholds him with his hand.”