This verse always seemed off to me. Last night at Bible study, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to what I believe is the truth of it.
Psalm 37:4 — “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
This is probably one of the most misused and miscontextualized verses in the Bible because, at first glance, it can sound like God is promising to give me what I want. Or that I currently want to do something and it seems like a desire it must be from God.
But what does Jesus say about what I want?
Mark 10:18 — “And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.’”
If what is truly good comes from God, then godly desires ultimately come from God alone.
The way I’ve often heard Psalm 37:4 taught is basically this:
The desires of my heart come from me, and if I delight myself in the Lord, then God will give me what I want.
Delighting myself in the Lord is an “in-order-to” get what I want.
Conveniently, the first half of the verse—“Delight yourself in the Lord”—often gets pushed aside.
What people mostly say is:
“He will give you the desires of your heart.”
In other words: God is going to give me what I want.
But that turns the verse into a formula for trying to manipulate God:
How do I get what I want? I delight myself in the Lord. Fool’s errand.
This verse is not about stuff, circumstances, justifications or outcomes. It is about the desires of the heart themselves.
Maybe the desire to build a thriving multimillion-dollar business becomes a desire to spread the gospel in Africa. Maybe conviction sets in when the opportunity to gossip or sin arises and you don’t participate because an act of obedience is better than an act of sacrifice. Maybe becoming a street preacher that owns nothing seems like what there is to do. Lots of examples available and not trying to say anything negative about business. Its just an extreme example of how God changes what people want.
We probably all have someone in our lives that we’ve seen something radical like this happen to. And we’ve seen people have their exact lives before, but who they are is radically different. How they live, being pleasing to God and loving their neighbor seems to be their driving force.
This is where the rubber meets the road:
My will versus Thy will.
Oh, we are slippery sinners. This verse is HUGELY misused to justify all sorts of SIN and selfishness.
What Psalm 37:4 is actually saying is:
- Delight yourself in the Lord.
- Then the desires of your heart are given by God.
What I currently desire is not the point. The point is that if I want godly desires, I had better get to delighting myself in the Lord.
As I delight myself in Him, God makes his desires, my desires. Big difference from a manipulation that says God conforms His will to mine and my stuff is on the way. Or because I want to do this (sin) God wants me to do it.
It is that, as I delight in Him, my heart is increasingly conformed to His.
I always knew the other interpretation felt off.
Thank You, Jesus, for setting me straight.