Today’s Devotional Verse: Psalm 37:4. God Shall Give You the Desires of Your Heart!
- Vicent Nemeyimana
- October 27, 2019
- Motivation and Inspiration, Word of Life
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4, NIV).
Introduction
The Lord is promising you, promising us all that if we delight in him, he will provide for our desires. However, you and I know it well (out of experience) that actually He doesn’t provide for our desires always. And neither does He give us every time we ask. And yet He says: Ask, you shall receive. Knock, and the door shall be opened. Seek, and you shall find (Matthew 7:7-8)!
Why Our Heart’s Desires aren’t Met by God!
What’s is wrong? For our God to promise us in His word and then not deliver accordingly means FEW things; He is a liar or UNABLE to provide for all we desire or we don’t do the asking, the seeking, the knocking or we ask but wrongly! Which of the above is really possible?
About being a liar, the Bible says it clearly that, unlike humans, God doesn’t lie (Numbers 23:19). Titus 1:2 asserts that our God doesn’t lie and the promise of eternal life is real and unshakable. And, Hebrews 6:18 emphasizes this point by asserting that it is actually impossible for God to lie. In other words, He doesn’t necessarily and consciously avoid the idea of telling lies, but it (lying) is inherently not in Him.
For the second possibility (inability to provide for our desires), Ephesians 3:20 hits directly on our heads by asserting that actually our God is able to do not only what we ask for but ‘exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think’. There are tens of verses talking about God’s mighty power to deliver us from enemy, demons, and to provide for our needs. Examples are, Exodus 15:6, 2Corintians 9:8, Daniel 4:37, the famous Luke 18:27 (what is impossible with man is possible with God), and many more. Therefore, this possibility isn’t only wrong but it is ridiculous!
Concerning the third possible reason why our desires aren’t always met by God, the Bible clearly tells us that we don’t have anything because we don’t ask! That is the first accusation against man. We don’t seek. We don’t knock. We don’t ask in prayer. And so we get nothing! That is the first part. What is the second part of this accusation?
About the fourth possibility, James 4:3 says that even when we do the asking, the seeking, the praying, the knocking, we do it wrongly; ‘when you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures’. This is very serious. To do the asking but in a wrong way!
Wait! The above three possibilities were only if we are dealing with God, the true God of Israel. However, there is another possibility of us asking wrongly in a way that we aren’t asking from God but from gods (Judges 10:14)! In this last case, we still can’t have our desires met simply because the gods are too weak to provide for anything, not even for themselves (Isaiah 44:9-20).
READ THIS TOO: Our sin isn’t our desires but our weak desires
Can’t Meet our Desires: The Reasons in Summary
In summary, despite the Bible’s proclamation of ‘ask and it shall be given, knock and the door shall be opened’, the fact is that God doesn’t always meet or provide for our heart’s desires. He surely doesn’t! There are about 4 major possible reasons why He doesn’t:
- Our God is a liar. He says He will but doesn’t mean it!
- Our God is unable to provide for the desire. He would want to but He can’t because He is unable.
- We haven’t asked or prayed or presented our desires to God
- We have presented our desires but wrongly; to Him for our selfish reasons or pleasures or interests or have simply presented them not to God but to gods!
What is the truth about i?
First and foremost, the verse is conditional; delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. In other words, if we don’t delight in God, our desires can’t be met. Secondly, the desires talked of are the true desires of your heart (not ‘you’ but ‘your heart’).
Understanding the verse: Psalm 37:4
If we consider our guide to interpreting every biblical verse, we will first familiarize ourselves with the immediate verses surrounding our verse of interest. Later, we will consider the bigger context.
Psalm 37 is simply about the life of righteous man versus the wicked! David is clearly telling us that, even though the righteous men of God may be visited by adversity, hunger, famine and all sorts of evil, they are the winners for, besides the successes that God grants them in this life, their end is peace (Psalm 37:37).
So on verse one, God says, ‘fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against them that work unrighteousness’. In other words, while, most of the times, the wicked prosper and their houses seem to be full of peace, prosperity and abundance, it is not true; their end is terrible. They are simply a fattened cow for slaughter (verse 2). For this reason, the righteous (even though he may be in pain now) shouldn’t fear (fret) or feel jealous of such ungodly life. Instead, the righteous should wait on the Lord who shall deliver him at His own time.
Bearing the above in mind, verse 4 says this to the righteous: delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Considering the above and below verses, the context of Psalm 37 isn’t about the righteous succeeding in the same measure as the wicked in this life, no, not all. It is about the righteous exceeding far highly both in this life and the life to come and, clearly, this isn’t about physical or material success (though this can as well be) but the everlasting glory with Jesus.
And so the psalmist continues:Patiently wait on the Lord (verse 70) and He will act (verse 5) and vindicate your righteousness (verse 6). ‘The evil-doers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land’ (verse 9). ‘In Just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace’ (verses 10 and 11).
In other words, our God is at work to provide for our desires, the everlasting peace, inheriting the land, holding on through pain and trials while trusting in Him. This psalm reminds us that our God is at our service for such desires. Which brings us to the right question; what desires is the bible talking about in this verse?
What are these desires?
The whole Psalm 37 has many of these desires; peace (verse 11), inheriting the land (verse 9), abundance in famine (verse 19), justice (verse 6), delight or happiness (verse 11), everlasting heritage (verse 18), God’s strength, especially in trouble times (verses 17 and 39), generosity (verse 21), living forever (verse 27), wisdom (verse 30), God’s law in his heart (verse 31), to be redeemed during Lord’s trial (verse 33), exaltation to inherit the land (verse 34), taking refuge in God (verse 40) and of course seeing the wicked pay up for their sins (verse 34).
Have you seen the desires that, according to this chapter, God is fighting to provide for? In other areas, David plainly illustrates more of these desires:
READ THIS TOO: The Secret to Answered Prayer!
I enjoy living by your rules as people enjoy great riches (Psalm 119:14). Your rules give me pleasure; they give me good advice (Psalm 119:24).
David is saying that his desires and pleasures are to deeply fall in love with God, His word. In other words, the true desires of our (your) heart are actually not money, cars, sex, and power; they are more!
They (desires) aren’t about owning this world now but inheriting it forever. They aren’t about a one-time calm night but everlasting peace. They aren’t about wicked success but true success in its time. They aren’t about getting anything from God but being His completely or, for lack of better words, owning not what He provides but all of Himself!
Therefore, when David says, blessed are those who delight in the Lord, He is simply asking us to find satisfaction, joy, fulfillment, pleasure, and completeness in God alone. It’s making God your number one; the center of everything! And Surely, God promises us that, if we seek, we will find! Blessed are the thirst for they shall be quenched!
Summary and Conclusions
The verse is simply saying that if God is to be the answer to our heart’s desires, then He should be the Lord (King) in our lives. If God is to provide us with all we ask for, then we should be closer to him. Do you get this conditional relationship? Let Jesus summarize it for us:
“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). The condition is to remain in Him and His word in us.
But why? Here is the secret: when we delight in God and His laws, our desires are no longer natural desires of a carnal man but great spiritual desires of the heart and soul of a renewed man! That is the deal.
The desires talked of are not simply cars, money, health, and sex (though these can as well be given if deemed appropriate in His will; they are not guaranteed and we can’t easily tell when they are appropriate or not) but the deep desires of our soul and heart of, eternally living with God, seeing justice, inheriting the land, finally finding peace.
Maybe you (we) don’t feel like the above desires are indeed the ones we long for but that is exactly because we still have some lack or shortage in our delighting in the Lord. And yes, when examined deeply, our true inside desires are not sex, money, power, and health (those are diversions of an already starved heart and soul).
God is true to His word. What He promised, He fulfills. When things are not working as per the promises, then something is wrong. And this must be wrong with us, the ones that shift our goal posts in relation to our promises to our God. Dear brother and sister, God wants your heart to find delight in Him and Him alone and He will happily grant you all the desires of your heart.
NB: We have written many articles to explain some gaps in this one, but we hope you have got the real message of the verse. Some of these other articles explore are:
