No, I don’t mean what does the scale say after all these months of lock down. Do we really want to know—not me! Rather, I ran across this verse and the deeper meaning of it was so cool that I wanted to share it with you
Psalm 37:4-6, “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He will do it. 6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday” NASB.
Usually to delight in someone or something means to take great joy or pleasure in that person or thing. That is one of the meanings for delight in the Old Testament (Isaiah 61:10) but that is not the word for delight that David chose to use in Psalm 37. The word for delight in this verse means “to be soft and pliable to the will and purposes of God.” When are follow God in allow ourselves to b molded and shaped by God, He brings us salvation, satisfaction, plan, and a purpose—the very thing our heart desires! The longer we follow the Jesus, the more we become like Him, and the more easily our desires fall in-line with His desires for us.
When I came to faith as a kid, I thought that if I agreed to follow the Lord, He would call me to some far off jungle in Africa where I would have to live in a hut with a dirt floor and the indigenous people would want me to eat monkey meat! Now after all these years of following the Lord, I am pretty convinced that if the Lord wanted me to go to Africa then that is where I would be most happy and fulfilled. God’s faithfulness in my life time and time again has made it easier to trust Him when I find it hard to understand what is happening and why. The more I trust Him the easier it is to be soft and pliable to His will and His ways. (Dr. Bev Rodgers, Tech-Pecked or Tuned In: Finding God in a Digital World.)
The more we surrender our agenda to the Lord, the more fulfilled we become. The more we dare to trust the Lord, the more He proves Himself trustworthy. Then we find He either gives us what we desire or transforms our hearts to desire what He gives us. As we seek to be soft and pliable to the Lord’s leading and as we commit our way to Him we find: “He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday,” Psalm 37:7.”
David goes on to add, “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him;” NASB. Now let’s look at what the word rest means in this passage. The Hebrew word is damam, and it means to be dumb, (implied) to be astonished, to stop, hold peace, quiet self, put to silence. When we remain teachable before the Lord, we seek to die daily to our own selfish desires and embrace God’s desires for us. As we submit ourselves to the Lord and let Him mold us to His will for us, we will find ourselves astonished at His mighty work in our lives. His miracles, peace, and provision can leave us speechless in awe and gratitude.
“I have learned to see a need for everything God gives me, and nothing that He denies me. Whether it be taken from or not given me, sooner or later God quiets me in Himself without it. I cast all my concerns on the Lord, and live securely on the care and wisdom of my heavenly Father,” Joseph Eliot, 16th century missionary to the Algonquin Indians. I want to be like this guy, don’t you”
If the stress of your current situation makes it hard to hear from God, perhaps you need a place to process anxiety during this global quarantine, with its threat of disease and death, and fear government breakdown. Experts tell us we need a safe place to talk about how we are affected by all of the changes around us. I am setting up weekly classes with only a handful of people per class to give folks a place to voice their concerns so they don’t wear out their partners and loved ones. And each week we will visit new tried and true tools from cognitive therapy and from God’s Word to help you cope with stress. Join us.