Worship is a Response to What We Most Enjoy!
When we delight in God our natural response is to worship him. When I was a child I memorized Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” While I understood in an elementary way what this verse is saying, even into adulthood I didn’t quite get it. I remember wondering, “What does it mean to delight myself in the Lord? Does it really mean that if I do that (whatever that is) he’ll give me the desires of my heart?”
Just a few years ago, I decided to meditate on that passage and ask God to reveal to me what it means. A means of meditating that I have found effective is to plug in synonyms for key words. I also compare various translations to see what light they shed on a passage. For instance, the New Living Translation of this verse reads, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.”
So I began testing other synonyms for taking delight in. Some synonyms include, enjoyment, pleasure, joy, desire for, be captivated by, and be enthralled by. I knew deep down inside (and from the rest of Scripture) that God is not a genie in a bottle promising to grant us our three wishes. So what does it mean, “And he will give you your heart’s desires?”
Then, it hit me! Let me paraphrase the verse as follows, “When God is our chief desire, he will give us what we desire—himself!” If we’re not thinking too clearly at first this might sound like a bait-and-switch. But stop and think about it. God promises that if we take delight in him (desire him, enjoy him, find our pleasure and satisfaction in him), he will fulfill our desire by giving us himself! That is no bait-and-switch, but one of the most profound promises in the universe!
In Ephesians 3:14-21 we find a great New Testament equivalent of what we read in Psalm 37:4. Check out what the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus:
“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.”
Let’s be captivated and enthralled by God! May we always find our delight and satisfaction in him! And as we do, worshiping him will be a natural outcome.
©2009 Rob Fischer
1 comment
My wife and I were discussing this very line of thinking only yesterday; what I mean is, we were discussing what on earth could be meant by those verses that say things like “he will give you your heart’s desire”.
Another passage has Jesus saying, “Whatever you ask in my name will be given to you.”
That seems hard to swallow on the surface. When I was a boy, I admit that I wanted a robot like the one on Lost in Space. So I asked in Jesus’ name that he provide one for me – overnight. You might guess the rest of the story; no robot was forthcoming.
As an “adult” who had become separated from my faith in God, I simply decided that verse didn’t mean what it said, or that it was exaggerated, or had been added by some scribe along the way and that Jesus never actually said it.
Now I know differently.
I believe that what Jesus was saying is very similar to your “heart’s desire” passage; when we are aligned with His heart and His mind, and when we are in tune with His desires, only then are we truly asking “in His name”. And when we are truly asking in Jesus’s name, we are asking for the same things that HE wants.
It can sound like a word game, as you point out, but I believe it speaks a much deeper truth. When we are being childish and worldly, we ask for robots (or other worldly things that may or may not be in the will of God); when we “have the mind of Christ” then we ask “in His name”… and those things he always gives us. As promised.
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