Take delight in the Lord,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

When the tide of the world is moving rapidly in the direction of fretfulness, believers are called to swim against it with a joyful, God-focussed approach to life; trusting and delighting in Him. This is is what F.B. Meyer describes as the ‘current of our being…set toward God’. More of that in a moment.

But does this verse sound like a blank cheque? If so, consider this: I have heard it said that when a person delights in the Lord their desires change. He changes their hearts, so that they increasingly align with His own. To take ”delight” in the Lord is also to take delight in His Word and will and way. The more our desires conform to these, the more pleasing they will be to God.

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”  John 15:7

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”  1 John 5:14

Writing about today’s verse in ‘Our Daily Homily’, F.B. Meyer writes:

”The current of our being must set toward God. We must cultivate the habit of holy intimacy with Him, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. We must accustom ourselves to hold up before us the successive attributes and works of God, till they strike our admiration, and elicit our homage.

Then we shall find rest unto our souls, because He will give us the desires of our hearts. When God Himself is our desire we shall be forever delivered from disappointment, because we can always have Him ; we shall be removed from risk of penury and want, because we can have as much of Him as we need ; we shall be beyond the fear of loss, because He changes not. They who want God possess Him. To long for God is to have that for which you long. To delight in God is to delight in One, of whom there is an infinity for every one, so that there need be no stint, no jealousy, no envy, no satiety. Every one can have as much as he can hold. ‘* He giveth not His Spirit by measure,” that is, by metre. There is no gauge of our consumption.”

PRAYER: Lord, teach us to delight in you above all.