Delight Yourself in the Lord

Psalm 37: 1 – 9 (NIV): Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself 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 righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret – it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

King David was not a perfect man; far from it, he committed terrible sins. But this passage shows us why he was “a man after God's own heart.” David desired more than anything to have a relationship with God. That is the key. We find it in the Old Testament and new: God wants to have a relationship with us (see Hosea 6:6) and will forgive our sins when we repent.

David saw wicked people succeed in this life, just like we do today. But he knew that this life is not our true home. We are only here for a short time, then we face our maker and move into our eternal existence. So we should not envy people when they succeed, wicked or not, because living in envy is no life at all. We can take solace in the fact that everyone will stand before God.

Instead of being envious of others, we should trust in God to take care of us, and we should live a life that is worthy of God's goodness to us. Psalm 37:4 is a great memory verse and one of my favorites: Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. God knows better than we do what the desires of our hearts are. When we put him first, trust in him, seek his Kingdom, and delight in him, he will respond by blessing us more than we can imagine. To delight in someone means to take great joy in his presence. This is the key to everything.

I fear that often our relationship with God is up or down based on how things are going in our lives, but this shouldn't be so. We should trust in God and wait patiently for him to act on our behalf. To David, the most wonderful place to be was in God's promised land. That land is still sought-after and fought-over to this day, as we see in the news. But being in God's land is also symbolic of being in his will and in his presence. That's where David wanted to be – and that's where I want to be too.