Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Success”
Our Bible verse for today: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Success begins with taking delight in the Lord.”
I love the promise of Psalm 37:4, the Lord will give me the desires of my heart. Yea! I have lots of desires in my heart and I’m looking forward to the Lord giving me all of them!
But wait, that’s not exactly all that the verse says and it’s also not exactly what it means. The Lord will give me the desires of my heart, yes, but first I am to take delight in Him.
The dictionary says that to delight yourself in something is to derive great pleasure and joy from it. Synonyms for delight include enjoy, appreciate, love, relish, revel in, indulge in, and feast on.
So … I am to enjoy, appreciate, love, relish, revel in, indulge in, feast on, and derive great pleasure and joy in the Lord, and then He will give me the desires of my heart. But wait, there’s more. The editors of the Holman Christian Study Bible explain that the Hebrew words used here mean that, “When there is close fellowship with Yahweh, a person’s heart’s desires will match God’s will and purposes.”
Putting all of this together I discover that when I am completely enraptured with God, in such close fellowship with Him that I am delighting in Him with love and relish and all the other descriptive words used above, the desires of my heart will match God’s will and purposes. “Then” He will work to fulfill those desires because they come from His will and purpose.
So the end result is not that God has finally come around and agreed to give me what I want, but my heart has changed and the things I want are now consistent with God’s will. And it all grew out of me delighting myself in Him.
A successful life isn’t a matter of me getting the things I want. A successful life is a matter of me wanting the things God desires to give me. It’s all about me (and you) being in synch with God. We have to spend time with Him, think about Him, worship Him, take delight in who He is and what He’s like, giving Him glory and praise. When your heart is His, He will change your heart. And from that will flow a life that is truly successful in the ways that matter to God.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 