- Grant your Desires
Psalm 37:4
Delight thyself also in the Lord;
And he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
The conditional promise: if you delight yourself in the Lord, then He will give you the desires of your heart. It sounds like God is a Santa Claus who will give me all the things on my wish list, whatever my heart desires. Can this be true? This cannot be true according to common human experience and common sense. If God gave me everything I desired my life would be ruined, and my spiritual, eternal life itself would probably be in jeopardy.
Therefore, the condition is important and it is worded the way it is for a reason: Find your delight in the Lord. When one is happy with the Lord and the Lord Himself occupies one’s happy thoughts and joyful emotions, the world with its allures and temptations becomes smaller, less attractive and less pleasant by comparison. He who finds his joys and delights and satisfactions in the Lord, in His mind, and in His ways will discover that his desires change.
When God is your delight His desires become your desires, your will happily and freely conforms to God’s will, you like what God likes, and what pleases God also makes you happy. God’s Law and the Ten Commandments look beautiful and the more one delights in God the more one desires to keep the Commandments. Obedience, righteousness, holiness and purity please us as much as it pleases God. One delights in the Lord by hearing and meditating on His Word, by spending time with Him in prayer and praise, by fellowshipping with the saints of God, by practicing His Presence, by setting one’s mind on the things above, and by turning instantly to Jesus in repentance whenever he is convicted and aware of sin (at least daily). One delights himself in the Lord by humbly accepting God’s Providence and learning through afflictions to trust Him instead of complaining.
Once our desires become what God desires He will certainly grant those desires. Do you want to crucify the flesh, drown the old man, resist the devil, hate evil, and live a better life? Do you want to be forgiven, loved, accepted, cared for, provided for regularly?The Lord will surely grant you those desires. “Delighting in the Lord” and seeing prayers answered is the natural way of living as God designed it. It is not manipulating “Santa Claus” to give you things, for that is not delighting in the Lord. We have the mind of Christ; learn to know it better and enjoy it. Let Jesus change your desires and give you these new desires in answer to prayers that are in accordance with God’s will.