Turn Delight On!

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Ps 37:4 NIV

Growing up, one of my biggest fears was that if I surrendered all to God then I would have to go off to Africa and be a missionary. I heard countless stories of folks to whom that happened and I really didn’t want to go to Africa.

I presumed that whatever was unpleasant would be my duty. But, as Oswald Chambers says; Is that anything like the spirit of our Lord? —”I delight to do Your will, O my God…” Ps 40:8

As I got a little older I heard it said that God places His desires in your heart, that you will find that if He has a place He wants you to go to or a task He wants you to do, then He will sneak that desire in there and you’ll want to do it. That made me feel a little better about things…

But I have found that following God often feels like He’s asking me to jump off a cliff without a parachute; that proverbial leap of faith. What if you’re afraid? What if you just don’t want to do what you know He is asking you to do? How can it be an adventure and a delight? Why does He have to keep stretching me?

I am discovering that the beauty of this courageous life in Christ is that it’s all about knowing Him and trusting Him and being with Him. Yes, He does ask you to leap into the unknown, He does ask you to take another step without knowing the whole pathway. But every time you do that in obedience to His leading, you will discover that He is waiting for you there. He is your parachute who protects you against a fall, but your parachute won’t open until it’s needed. He gives you the words He wants you to say or the direction you need for decisions, or the guidance for the next step…..or leap!

And so it turns out that He does give you the desires of your heart after all because the true desire of your heart is Him and if He is ahead on the pathway then you’ll want to follow and be with Him at all costs.

Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. Matt 6:21 NLT

You don’t need excessive confidence first, just the simple willingness to take the next step towards Him. I will choose courage over fear because he has proven himself trustworthy over and over again. I would never know that if I hadn’t leapt off the cliff. The thrill of the adventure with God draws us on. But, more than anything just remaining in His presence is the desire of our hearts and it is because of this that we delight to do His will.

Amazingly I have discovered when I obey, that He has been preparing me for the task a long time in advance. He doesn’t throw us in so deep that we drown; He teaches us how to swim first. He has certain tasks that He has, and is preparing us for and because He prepares us for them they do turn out to be delightful. They fulfill us in ways we never expected. Whatever God calls you to do, He will give you the power and the courage to carry out. Who would have thought?

And once you’ve experienced that thrill, you will be truly delighted.

And so it’s true what He said at the beginning, but it’s the first part of the verse that the second part flows from and that’s the only part that we really need to focus on:

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Ps 37:4 NIV