You know how you can hear something twenty million times and it can totally sounds different to the next time you hear it? Out of nowhere the emphasis lands a little differently on a word and all the sudden the scripture pops off the page and comes alive! A little bell goes off in your head and the signal travels to you vocal chords and you respond with a resounding "oh, now I get it". It’s situations like this that seem to be the greatest proof that the word of God is living and active.
The other night I was listening to a friend share his heart with a group of college kids and he was using the 37th psalm within his sermon. This rephrasing took place for me within the fourth verse......
" 4 Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you your heart’s desires."
Simple ... I know ... and I've herd it a thousand times (or 20,000,001) ...... but I want to walk you through the process that went through my head......
I first composed a mental definition of the word delight. I'm not talking about the whip cream dessert of your third cousins that you have to choke down at thanksgiving. To delight!!!! To take joy .... A father delights in spending time with his kids after a long week....I, a lover of music, delight in hearing various arrangements from every walk of musician. Bob Ross delighted in painting happy trees, but words take a different meaning when you actually see the physical definition.....
Delight- a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment
So you can say I delight in playing drums...... I know others my call it something else but ….. we are going to hold those comments for later!
"take a high degree of pleasure in the Lord"
Enjoy the time that He uses to speak to you....watching a sunset???? Seriously, if you haven’t done it in a while …. Just go out in your yard on a clear night and lie down in the grass and look up, turn your radio off in the car, sit quietly in a room in an upright chair. God really does use those times to speak to us. Do it and just let your thoughts roll. God will use that time to clear your head so that He can get your mind focused on Him. So that the delight can take place in Living your life for the cause of Christ.... take delight in moment that your whole world is pulled out from under you because of a death, break up or whatever.... BECAUSE THE TOMB IS STILL EMPTY!! ..... and if you need more motivation for this "delight" ..... Romans 8:38-39!
The real words jumped off the page when I heard the second half of that verse …. And honestly I've come to doubt it(as a result of things that have happened in my life)
"and he will give you your hearts desires"
I've always looked at this verse like ...."ok, God I'm delighting in you .... now .... give me what I want!"
This thought is wrong on so many levels, but it boils down to me trying to manipulate the creator of the universe to get what I want...... I wasn't about God's glory! This mindset was about achieving the agenda of Jimmy.
But when I heard this verse last Thursday night..........the phrasing suddenly changed, the emphasis fell on the words a little differently....... "Delight in me Jimmy! Take pleasure in the time we spend together, when you do something for me, and when you bring Glory to my name. Don't worry about everything else..... I know the desires you have in your heart, but I want to GIVE you the Desires of your heart......Take joy in me Jimmy."
I suddenly began to see mental pictures of situations where I wanted to give something to someone.A rose to a girl, a cup of coffee to a friend, or a plate of food to someone who needed it. My memory was rattled to remember my first Power wheel..... I wanted nothing more!!! and I flipped out when I got it, but I was too young to see the delight in my parents eyes when the sheet was pulled off of the red three wheeler! Yeah three wheels.... that’s how we rolled in the 80's..... I wanted to give, just like my parents wanted to give.... because when the situation of giving took place it gave the "giver" such delight and joy!!!!!
God wants to give us the desires of our hearts, but not by us pitching a fit like a little brat! I got that power-wheel when my parents saw fit for me to have it! Not when I wanted it, but when they wanted to me to have it! They wouldn't tolerate me demanding it, but they saw fit to give it!!!!!...... The hardest thing about this truth.... is patience, but in any situation that I've had to wait ...... it's always been better in the end! It's not good to look to the desired end of the journey.... because what God may want you to learn could possibly be in the next footstep!!!
Psalm 37:4
“Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires”
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