"So... all I need to do to get all the desires of my heart is to take delight in you and you'll just give them to me? Cool!"
That is always the imaginary dialogue with God whenever I read the verse from Psalm 37.4:
"Take delight in the Lord,and he will give you the desires of your heart."
However, realistically, whenever I look at the lives of people who truly took delight in the Lord, that verse seems to be plainly wrong. I don't imagine that any of the people whose story is in the Bible had being slaughtered, persecuted, cut in half, crucified or had their limbs ripped from their body because of their faith as one of the items on the list of 'desires of your heart'. In fact, whoever decides to really take Christianity seriously have lives that look pretty grim and undesirable.
Christ himself said that "You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved." (Matthew 10.22) and showed by example that the one who truly loves as he did ends up being hated, flogged and killed.
So... how do we understand the verse from the Psalm? Was David wrong? I don't think so.
The dialogue I had imagined - not very different from the negotiation you can find in a market - shows quite clearly I initially understood the verse as being a bargain, I realised that I was looking at my faith through the eyes of a capitalist consumer. I imagined it all as being a cosmic bargaining with the sovereign creator of the universe - which, let's be honest, is pretty pathetic.
So to try to understand it I decided to put aside the very exciting 'getting desires of the heart' to start from the beginning: Delight in the Lord.
What does delight in the Lord actually mean? Does it mean leaving all my possessions, going up into the mountains, living of the land and never being reinserted to society? Does it mean being happy all the time?
Firstly, something that God is not saying: 'act like you like me', or 'serve me human'. He is not asking for an action. He is asking for a response.
Suppose I have made a batch of cookies. The house smells great as you walk in and I say: if you enjoy cookies, I will make you happy by giving you more cookies. I don't think that God is saying something entirely different in this verse.
Taking delight means enjoying God himself, which I do not think is something to be belittled or dismissed. The point is: to know if we delight in or enjoy something, we have to try it first. "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 34.8). We are invited to try him! And the only way to do so is the same way we do to get to know people: spending time with him, listening and talking to him, essentially... building a relationship.
Generally we tend to see God as a means of getting [insert here something you want such as health, money, comfort, security, love], not very unlike a teenager that is happy to be kind to their parent on the days preceding asking for money to take a trip. But being invited to take delight in him is an entirely different picture. When you take delight in someone, you spend time with them because of them. You enjoy their company, even if sitting silently in the same room. Sometimes they may even give you council, words of wisdom, a present, but you're not there for that. You're there for them.
The thing is, any relationship which is successful ultimately changes you the more you enjoy each other and the more time you spend together. You start liking the same things, your opinions often begin to align. The way you talk, act and dress is mutually influential. With God it is not different.
When we take delight in the Lord, it is not that we are buying him or making him just shrug and say "Fine, I'll give you the things you want now". We are not changing God. It is He who is changing us.
Our will and desires are transformed as our relationship with God deepens, grows and we learn to love and delight in him. Our hearts become in tune with his, and so the things our heart desires are things that he would like to give us. A parent is much more likely to want to give an apple to satisfy the hunger of their child than a rock - even if the child asks for a rock. However much a parent loves a child, he will not give it a rock to eat even if the child desires it more than anything. It is not that the parent is being cruel by not giving it, but exactly the opposite. He is not satisfying the child's wish out of love. Once the child learns that rocks are not edible, but that apples are very much edible, the parent will far more often be able to give the child what they desire. Similarly, as we are shaped by God, he will give us the desires of our heart, because they start to become in tune with his own desires for us.
Therefore, in one sense, even if you decide to pursue the self-seeking path to get what you want in the end, seeking the Lord for that, you might end up being quite surprised if you truly succeed. You may find that in the midst of delight in him, either the desires of your heart have been already satisfied by his nature or... are really not that important at all.
"Master they say that when I seem
To be in speech with you,
Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream
– One talker aping two.
They are half right, but not as they
imagine; rather, I
Seek in myself the things I meant to say,
And lo! The well’s are dry.
Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The listener’s role, and through
My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew.
And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus while we seem
Two talking, thou art One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream.– C.S. Lewis"
