Desire and Delight

Be delighted with the Lord. Then he will give you all your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him to help you do it, and he will. Your innocence will be clear to everyone. He will vindicate you with the blazing light of justice shining down as from the noonday sun. (Psalm 37:4-6)

A heart's desires can be many - no doubt your desires differ from mine, but if we were to list them all, our lists would be long! I desire for my children to know and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. My delight will be to see my two grandsons to grow up to be morally strong, obedient to the commandments of Christ, and to trust him fully with the control of their lives. My desire to see both my children and grandchildren realize their dreams burns deeply with. I desire health, so I do what I can to preserve it wherever possible. I delight in time in the Word of God, good worship music, and the freedom to share my heart in open communion with my Lord. A heart's desires and delights - many though they may be, the one that is most important is the one that leads us to the commitment to do all the Lord desires.

According to the seed sown shall be the harvest reaped. We sow seeds that are a result of our desires - desire the good and the seed will be good; desire the unholy or impure and you know the harvest will be filled with all manner of 'weeds and tares'. I learned that the wheat seed and tare seed are very similar, producing a plant that almost looks the same in the earliest part of their growth. When you begin to see the difference is when the fruit is being produced. The seed of the wheat plant is brown, while that of the tare is purple with a black seed. While the wheat seed is good for consumption, the seed of the tare is actually poisonous, containing a soporific poison. I wouldn't want a diet of tares, would you?

Desire functions as the seed for many an action in our lives. Perhaps this is why God reminds us to examine our desires - for our desires often reflect our delight. What is it you find your greatest pleasure in? Maybe the better question is 'who' is it you find your greatest pleasure in? A boyfriend and girlfriend, captivated by young love may immediately say it is the one they are in relationship with. A father of a newborn may be absolutely delighted in the new life he holds in his arms, but his delight in his wife may actually become more profound as he observes her take such good care of that new life. A man or woman who has asked Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, finding unending and unconditional grace at the foot of the cross, may actually find their greatest delight in him. 

Desire and delight go hand in hand. One leads to the other. We desire more of Christ and are delighted to find him in the stillness of our time with him. We desire to understand his ways and are delighted to see his hand in action in so many ways around us. We desire to fully grasp a teaching from his Word and are delighted to find those words come to life in us as we are faced with a challenge too great for our human wisdom. Desire leads to delight - delight leads us to the feet of Jesus. What desire is the greatest in your life today? If it is anything other than Christ and his goodness, perhaps it is time to take a break from whatever stands in the way of us finding our greatest delight in his presence. Just sayin!