“Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart”
(Psalm 37:4, AMP)
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
“Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart”
(Psalm 37:4, AMP)
thedailylily.com 
To delight oneself in the Lord is to meditate on His promises, His passion, His heart, to worship Him and enthrone Him over your heart and to become one with Him in those things. When we do that then our secret petitions will be His and His desires and wishes always come to fruition.
By definition, delight means: “to give great pleasure to 1) to give great pleasure 2) to be highly pleased; rejoice”. Sara, if we look at the word “delight” in the scripture above…am I understanding that if we are joyful about being with/in the Lord, then is this scripture teaching us that He will give us our desires?
Needles, it seems to me, if we let the Lord thrill us we surely would have absolutely no need of any other thrill. Then, He would have, know and understand our heart and us His. It is real Love! And, he would delight in giving us our heart desires. Because our desires would be His and His would be ours.
We sing a song that says, “I keeping falling in love with Him over and over again! It gets sweeter and sweeter as the days go by…” Why do we need a cheap thrill when we can get a deep heart throb/thrill/delight?
Reading the above Psalm 37:4 , my Bible refernced Isaiah 58:14 which begins by saying, “Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD”… The ‘then’ caught my attention and I read the preceding verses to try to understand the conditions for qualifying that I am delighting in the Lord. (“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words,..”)
It looked like IF I didn’t follow my own pleasure or did my own thing or spoke my own words THEN I would be able to delight in the Lord. It also said to not do these on the ‘sabbath’ And Sabbath means ‘rest’ which took me to Hebrews 4 where God talks about entering His rest by ceasing from our own works. He says we can’t enter this sabbath rest if we are disobedient.
If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath,
From doing your pleasure on My holy day,
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy day of the LORD honorable,
And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,
From a portion of Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary of Psalms 37: 4
What is the desire of the heart of a good man? It is this, to know, and love, and serve God. Commit thy way unto the Lord; roll thy way upon the Lord, so the margin reads it. Cast thy burden upon the Lord, the burden of thy care. We must roll it off ourselves, not afflict and perplex ourselves with thoughts about future events, but refer them to God. By prayer spread thy case and all thy cares before the Lord, and trust in him. We must do our duty, and then leave the event with God. The promise is very sweet: He shall bring that to pass, whatever it is, which thou has committed to him.
While reading a study by Beth Moore on Patriarchs I noted that Haggar placed her son under a tree and walked a bow-distance away as she did not want to see him die. She wept for her son. God heard the child even though his mother’s tears and voice was louder. ( Gen 21: 17God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.) 18. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” 19. (NIV)
Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
Hagars sobs wihout words were prayers unto God. Psalms 130: 1 reads “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” Hagar committed her situation to God and God gave her the desires of her heart (life for her son). In the days that have gone by recently many tears have been shed with all the disasters around the globe (tornadoes, deaths, flooding). In SARA’S book, Throwing Your Light Forward, she recalls this same story of Hagar. Sara follows up by asking “Do you have a story that needs God’s special attention? Write your story as a prayer so God will see you and you will see Him as Hagar did.
We can go through some pretty rough times. David certainly had some real lows when I read Psalm 40. Yet he looked to the Lord and trusted Him as he openly spoke to Him about his difficulties. And in the midst of it all he was able to say, ” I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law is within my heart.” To me, that shows the wonderful relationship he had with the Lord.
“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5, NIV) Reading Chapter 2 can really get you in the right place with The Lord if you humble yourself and just fully delight yourself in who He is!
Debi and others speak here about lows, difficult times. Rena quotes from my teachings on Hagar where I asked the question, do you have a story? If so, write it. I have heard; “attitude determines altitude.” I have found in my life writing or speaking with an honest person helps me get my attitude flying like a good kite on a great windy day. Another wise saying I work into my being is; “Today I can cry because roses have thorns or I can celebrate that thorns have roses.”
O, yes, my Lord, wore a crown of thorns for me! And, thorns have roses! WHOA, how hard can it be to delight yourself in this King?
In reading Philippians as you suggested, there was a cross-reference for vs 5, Matt 11:29, “Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (NLT) I think the Message translation shows some steps on getting into the right place with the Lord.
“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Good advice from the book of Matthew that Debi quotes. Keep company with the Lord! Wonder if one knows when they have left His company?
When you don’t agree with the Lord in what you do, say or think then maybe you know you have left His company.” Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” Amos 3:3
Also, Saul left the Lord’s company when he disobeyed him and there was scary, tangible evidence in his life that he and the Lord had parted company.
“Now the Spirit of the LORD had left Saul, and the LORD sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear.” I Samuel 16:14 NLT
In a prayer and praise book by Dick Eastman entitled HEIGHTS OF DELIGHT he bases his book on Intercessory Worship from the Scripture Rev. 5:8-10 and Rev. 8: 1-6. He calls it THE HARP AND BOWL attitude of intercession, prayer and reaching God’s heart. The harp being an instrument of worship and the bowl designating the fragrant prayers of the intercessors.
One of the segments of the “BOWL” outline (fragrant prayers of the saints) is ENJOY, to enjoy and thrill to God and His presence. Eastman quotes St. Francis of Assisi, “The thing we ought to purpose to ourselves in this life is to become the most perfect worshipers of God that we possibly can be and as we hope to be throughout all eternity.” God enjoys worship and Worship is enjoying God.
Ps. 65:4 says, “what joy for those in YOUR holy courts and what joys await us inside YOUR holy temple.” True joy will come when we learn to worship God ‘close up’ and personal!.
MG, love the sound of Eastmen’s book. Maybe I could borrow if you have it up for loan.
Absolutely. I will share it with you when you feel you would like to have it to enjoy, profusely.
Wonder if we have heart desires? And, what is a secret petition of the heart?
A secret petition of the heart may be a confidential request or prayer that one makes known only to the Father. Jesus often went alone to pray to His Father. He also instructed us to pray to the Father in secret and that He would reward us openly. Seems to be a connection here between the two…secret petition and answer.
God must have foreknow how wagging tongues would be the results of some prayer meetings. So He thought if something you don’t want advertised tell it to me in secret!
Interestingly enough, in the book on intercessory worship by Dick Eastman, Heights of Delight, he tells about the Lord’s speaking to his spirit about spending 24 hours not speaking, talking, chatting, but in pensive silence, ceasing his chatter and controlling his tongue, so to speak. He relates that after a struggle for a few hours with thoughts that tried to interfere he started to see the heavens open up to him in the things he had been seeking the Lord for…missions, evangelism, etc. He says to the effect that this time of silencing the tongue and allowing God to speak” (instead of our much-speaking) “would become a powerful key in intercessory worship because when you are silent it is impossible to boast.”
And, I suppose …not to beg, complain, argue, etc. but to let God have HIS say….a most intriguing concept, to say the least.
I know in my relationship with my husband and children the most thrilling and delightful part is in trust, hope and believing that one can sit and share the heart. The most stressful would be that I or them would not want to share the heart and prefer to discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” How Many Angels Can Sit On The Head Of A Pin? In modern usage, this question serves as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value.”
When we delight ourselves in Jesus we would only want and share the authentic self as it has connection with the spiritual, the supernatural and triune which connects to those we love in Christ.
“Today is the day the Lord has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24 ” I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul.” Psalm 31:7 O, yes, “Sabbath. It is a day of joy!” A day to delight myself in The Lord!