” Delight yourself in the Lord

and he will give you the desires of your heart’”

So sang the psalmist in psalm 37:4

Oh how sweet the verse sounds in our ears to hear what we had been longing to hear for all this time.

If we could get all what we desire by delighting in the Lord, why not do it. It sounds so easy, we might say and get busy to do it as usual.

Wait a minute! Don’t be in a hurry to get what you want.

First and foremost, we need to have a desire to be with the Lord to experience delight in his presence. Unless a man or a woman desires to be with the person he or she loves, there will not be any delight in meeting each other. it would be only a waste of time and no kind of work or striving would bring about the delight they expect to have.

Psalm 37 starts with a condition. Yes, it calls us to “Trust in the Lord and do good. It further requests us to dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness.

What does that mean? I’m not a Bible scholar to provide an exact meaning. But let me share with you what I have grasped from this line with the hope that it would strengthen their intimacy with God.

To my understanding, ‘dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness ‘ means that’ be content where God has placed you and experience his faithfulness in that place. It may be the family, job, neighborhood or the position you’ve been put at the workplace, church or community, nothing happens without God’s permission. He knows where you are and under what condition you’re placed in. Life in your situation may be full of challenges and uncertainties. You struggle and wrestle to get away from your situation. You pray and plead with God to help you out of the situation. When your prayers seems to go unanswered, you even question God and his promises. While you hiss and holler in selfpity down on earth, God waits patiently for you to come to your senses and to trust him and to do good and to see His faithfulness in operation.

If we learn to trust Him and do good, and experience His faithfulness despite dire situations, then the desire to seek God and delight in His presence becomes our nature. When that happens, God will give us all what we desire as a reward. It is the end product, not a motivation for us to seek God and delight in Him.