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Delight

            Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

          Delight: please (someone) greatly

          The first and most obvious point of interest with this verse is that it doesn’t say what we think (and want) it to say. We are told to delight ourselves in the Lord. But it doesn’t tell us that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, we’ll get all the toys, power, wealth, or fame that we want. If we delight ourselves in God, then God is the primary desire of our hearts. He may be the only desire of our hearts. If we make God a means to something other than God, we’ve made a god of the something.

          There’s a second point we tend to overlook. It’s not a suggestion that we sit back and let God entertain or please us. The subject of the sentence “Delight yourself in the Lord” is not God. It’s an understood reflexive verb. You delight yourself in the Lord. It’s also a command with a promise.

          All that means that it’s not a passive thing. Delight isn’t something that is done to you. It’s something you actively do. That brings us back to the examination table. What does it mean to be delighted? Yes, greatly pleased, as the dictionary says, but what does it mean to be pleased? According to the dictionary, to be pleased is to show pleasure or satisfaction. What does that mean? I suspect that just as there are five love languages, there are probably multiple pleasure or satisfaction languages, so it might get messy to try to describe.

          Years ago, I worked on a family history and described genealogy as an addiction. Every time I found something, it created a small surge of adrenaline, excitement, or pleasure, meaning I got a reward for doing it. That led to my doing more of it, hoping for another “hit.” When I lost weight, I dedicated a good chunk of my life to the activity, and every time the scale showed I’d lost a pound or every time I managed to do something more than I did the day before, it produced pleasure. When I take a good picture, come up with a good idea for my stories, finish a craft project that comes out decent, or see/read/hear something well-done or useful, I get that same sort of positive vibe.

          In every case I can think of that involves delight, pleasure, or satisfaction, it has required action on my part, and has not led to the delight, pleasure, or satisfaction in every instance every time. I may read ten books before I find one that hits the spot. I can almost guarantee that I will spend more time hating my craft project than liking it, at least before it’s done.

          The work before delight aspect makes delighting in the Lord difficult because one of the big aspects of working at delighting in the Lord is yesterday’s topic. Waiting. Reading, studying, memorizing, or meditating on Scripture, praying, even when there’s no delight, knowing that the delight will come – eventually. God will reveal Himself in some manner. 

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