Delighted in God

This is Derek Prince with a word for you from the Word.

“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4 NIV)

Notice that first word: “Delight yourself.” I heard someone once ask this question of a group of people: “Do you enjoy your religion, or do you endure it?” I think that to the majority of people religion is something to endure. It’s a kind of painful duty that they have to go through with, but that’s not the way God wants us to experience Him. He doesn’t want us to endure Him; He wants us to enjoy Him.

The Westminster Confession, which is the basic doctrinal statement of the Presbyterian Church, says this: “The supreme duty of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” Have you ever thought of enjoying God? God says, “Delight yourself in Me and I will give you the desires of your heart.” That doesn’t mean simply that God will do for us everything we might wish or think. It means that He’ll put in us new desires – godly desires, beneficial desires, the kind of desires that God has Himself. And then He’ll satisfy those desires because He’s put them there in our heart in the first place. And all that comes when we delight ourselves in the Lord. When we find real joy and pleasure and satisfaction in our personal relationship with the Lord. Then out of that comes that blessed peace that He will put into our hearts – those desires which He Himself has and which He wants to share with us, desires that are beneficial in their fulfillment.