Delight in the Lord
Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. 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 37:3-6
As a father-to-be, I have been praying for my child. And the list of prayer items goes pretty long. There are so many things to pray for, but one thing I pray particularly hard for is that he (yes, it’s a boy!) will delight himself in the Lord. The more I pray and meditate on “delight himself in the Lord,” the more I want it for my child, and also for myself.
What does it look like when someone delights in the Lord? How does one become delighted in the Lord? Being delighted in the Lord is not a controlled action. You cannot manufacture delight. It is an involuntary action as a result of many things. Being delighted is a posture, a stance, a state of mind toward our Creator. It means that we find fulfillment and peace in our loving Father at all times.
It takes many things to happen for us to reach this “delight” state. We have to first get to know our Lord and understand His heart. By committing our ways to Him, we learn how to trust (verses 5 and 6) in His sovereignty. Through trust, we will experience His grace and goodness. Our hearts will be changed from the inside while our faith grows. We can truly be delighted in Christ when we find satisfaction and our worth in Him regardless of our circumstances.
We can also choose to delight in the world but Jesus tells us that we will never be satisfied through it (John 4:13). But when we are delighted in our Lord, the thirst of our heart will be quenched through Him and we will never be thirsty again (John 4:14).
Let us delight in the Lord by:
- Praising His delight in you without reservation and despise.
- Asking His help to fix your eyes on Jesus and understand what it means to delight in Him in good and bad times.