Delighting in the Lord
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Introduction
Turn on the TV to the God channel or Revelation TV if you have Sky - or any other religious channel. Or go to Youtube and look at some of the sermons preached there, and it won’t be long before you stumble across a prosperity gospel preacher like Joel Olsteen or Creflo Dollar or any of the other prosperity preachers.
And a verse they love to use is this one here...
Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
And their take on the verse is this…if you delight yourself in the Lord then whatever your heart wants you will get. If your heart desires that new house then delight yourself in the Lord and you’ll get it.
If your heart desires that new boat, delight yourself in the Lord and you will get it.
And if your heart desires that new job then delight yourself in the Lord and you’ll get that new job.
You get the picture.
But is that REALLY what this verse means?
Let’s take a look at it word by word and see...
Pause
So the First word we’re going to look at is Delight.
And in the Hebrew, this word means to take pleasure in - to delight in or to refresh oneself.
So think food - think of an exquisite meal or dessert - you know when you go to a fancy pants restaurant and indulge on an amazing dessert. And when it comes it’s glistening, with drops of moisture on the surface, with stripes of raspberry coulis around and over it. And your fork sinks into it slowly but with little resistance, and glides through the base just right. And you put the tiny morsel in your mouth and bite down on it. And it starts to dissolve in your mouth - it’s melting and the creaminess is just fantastic. Your mouth is coated with velvet sweetness.
You eat that piece of dessert slowly - you savour every mouthful - every bite. You delight in it. You kinda enter into a place where you zone out cos all you can do is focus on this creamy sweet goodness.
How about we do the same with the Lord?
How about we delight ourselves in him? To savour him, to make him sole focus, where we almost zone out because we’re sitting in his presence, meditating on him, focusing on him…making HIM our everything - our all in all.
You see, today, more often than not, our life gets in the way of things. And while we may believe in God and trust in him, we are often not terribly great at delighting in him - at making him our sole focus and spending time savouring him and meditating on him. We are too busy to do that. Myself included.
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As some of you may know, last week I was at the New Wine conference in Sligo - which is a conference where local churches come together to worship together, to share with each other and to teach each other. It was a truly blessed time.
But something that made it so much better than going to Spain for a week was that I was enabled, due to the program, to delight in the Lord. I had many times where I was able to stop thinking of myself, or Kate, or the girls, and simply praise and worship Jesus.
And after a week of that, my whole being was changed - I felt renewed and refreshed…because I had taken time to delight myself in the Lord.
That’s what David is getting at here - Making the Lord the sole focus of our day. And in everything we do we delight ourselves in him.
But that can be difficult.
So, for example, last week, when I was able to delight myself in the Lord, it was because my children were at the Kid’s worship sessions so I wasn’t having to focus on them. Kate was beside me, but the lights were low and so I wasn’t focusing on her - I was able to free my mind of the other things that get in the way and focus on the Lord.
But this past week, that’s been really difficult to do - because family, work, other things, get in the way. And yet, there are benefits when we do this.
Pause
The next word is The Lord.
Cos we don’t have a problem in delighting ourselves in things - the problem is in WHAT we delight ourselves. David is clearly saying that we should be delighting ourselves in the Lord.
But we have a habit of delighting in other things. For example, our husbands or wives. Or our children. Or our jobs or career. Or our retirement.
And these are nothing wrong in and of themselves. And it’s good to take delight in your children or your spouse - that’s not a bad thing.
However, what David is getting at here is that we need to place the Lord over and above all these things. Where does the Lord come on your list of priorities? Where does Jesus come on your list of delights?
But this past week, that’s been really difficult to do - because family, work, other things, get in the way.
David says, make the Lord your focus and your delight.
And as much as we can, we need to do this too - cos it will change your life and your relationship with Jesus. So make time for him. Set aside time during the day to spend with the Lord, to meditate on him and his word, to praise and worship him, will make a ton of difference to the rest of your day and your life.
And I don’t just mean saying your prayers before bed. I mean reading the bible and praying over it.
Pause
The next words to look at are He will give.
And let me say this…this isn’t grace.
There is a cause and effect in this verse. And that’s not grace.
Just to recap - grace is getting something for nothing - undeserved favour from God. If you get something you deserve it’s not grace. If you get rewarded with something because of something you’ve done, that’s not grace.
So this ISN’T grace. This is cause and effect.
A quick physics lesson…cause and effect works like this - if I do something (cause), something happens (effect).
So if I push the lectern (cause), it will fall over (effect). I have caused the lectern to fall over.
So Grace is what saves us. As Paul says we are saved by grace through faith. Our salvation is nothing to do with us. Our entrance into heaven has got nothing to do with us. We have no CAUSE in our salvation - it’s a free gift from God - not of ourselves.
It’s not through what we do or how we live or anything - it’s a free gift. Remember ?
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
But in the context of this verse, the things that God GIVES US come a result of our delighting ourselves in him.
Which means that the more we delight ourselves in the Lord, the more that he will give to us. It’s cause and effect. And he gives to us because he also delights in us...
The steps of a man are established by the Lord,
when he delights in his way;
This is out of his generosity as a response to our delight in him.
So if you think about it - God has so much to bless us with and so much to GIVE to us if only we made him the focus of our lives - if only we delighted ourselves in him and savoured him and spent time enjoying him we would get the desires of our heart.
Pause
And that leads us to the last few words...
The desires of our heart.
And this is when the prosperity gospel preachers go to town.
But this isn’t about getting whatever our heart desires. That’s not what it says.
But let’s take a step back for a second...
Let’s take a step back for a second...
If Jesus is our sole focus, and we delight ourselves in HIM. If he is the one whom we savour and meditate on and focus our attention and love and devotion to…What’s happening to our hearts?
They are being aligned to him, aren’t they? Our hearts are being devoted to him, delighting in him.
You see, in Hebrew thought, the heart was where the emotions lay - it’s your inner core feelings - what you CRAVE the most, as opposed to the mind, which was your intellect and logic and reason.
And so the more we delight in the Lord, the more our hearts will crave more and more of the Lord. If HE is our delight and our sole focus, then our hearts will be craving that - more of THAT - more of Jesus.
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Put it like this...
If you don’t delight on the Lord then what do you delight in? Whatever that is, that’s where your heart will be. Remember ?
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
What you delight in is what you treasure - it’s what you value more than anything else - and whatever that is, THAT is where your heart will be, and THAT is what your heart will crave.
But if you delight yourself in the Lord, your treasure will be the Lord - Jesus will be what you value more than anything else and THAT is what your heart will be crave. You’ll be craving more and more of Jesus - more of the intimacy with him.
And since God will give to us the craving of our hearts - the outcome of our delight in the Lord is that we will receive more and more of the Lord. And when you’re walking that close with the Lord, you’re in the best place ever…and things like a new house or a new job are secondary.
But notice, in this verse, we are urged to delight ourselves in the lord NOW, not later - not after we’ve received his provision.
Pause
So if you want a life-changing experience, delight yourself in the Lord. Make him your sole focus of worship - give him time and attention. Meditate on him and his word, pray to him, listen to him and foster that deeper relationship with him.
And if you do that, your heart will crave more of it - but God will give you more and more and more of himself to you and you’ll be walking in step with the Spirit.
And think about how that will affect those around you…You’ll be able to speak into people’s lives, to minister to them in unimaginable ways. Your everyday interactions will be Spirit-filled and Christ centred so that your conversations are acts of worship to the Lord.
This is life-changing.
So delight yourself in the Lord - make HIM your heart’s desire, and he WILL give you what you long for - more and more of him. An intimacy with him and a life like no other.
Let’s pray.