Psalm 37:4 Delight in the Lord

July 24th , 2020, was a delightful day. After the long pandemic-driven delay, baseball was back! How wonderful!

I spent the weekend watching whatever games were being broadcast on the channels I have. That meant no Cardinals or Royals, the two Missouri teams I like to root for. But I did get to watch a Washington Nationals game with Max Scherzer pitching. And that was a delight, since I frequently watched him pitch years ago when he was with the Missouri Tigers ballclub.

Max and his team didn't win this weekend, which was less delightful. But all in all, I was still delighted that I got my heart's desire, which is to watch some baseball. I'm the kind of oddball fan who takes pure joy in the game itself, no matter who wins. Sure, it takes a bit of my joy away if my team loses, but the greatest thief of my baseball joy is when the season is over - or it's suspended by a virus - and there's no baseball at all!

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:4

Hang around with 21st century American Evangelical Christians much, and you'll begin to wonder what it is that brings them delight? What is their greatest desire?

One would think the Lord would be the object of their delight. The Bible certainly points in that direction over and over.

What, though, steals their joy away from them most often? It would seem they take the most delight  in being right, whether's it about their theology or their politics. They delight in getting the last word in when there's an argument about cultural or lifestyle differences of opinion. Their greatest desire would appear to be convincing people to change their political opinions.

Do they not delight in the Lord? Oh, I think they do, some more than others. It's just that they haven't necessarily made the solid connection between their delight and their desires.

David says the two go hand in hand. If you take delight in the Lord, he will give the desires of your heart. If this, then that.

Like the Bible's frequent "put off/put on" statements I've been pointing to, the conditional "if/then" statement is another favorite of the biblical writers. Frequently they're misunderstood by readers, though. We tend to read sentences like "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15) as though they were commands. The same way children learn to interpret, "If you clean your room, I'll take you to the mall."

Quite often, it's more accurate to understand such If/Then statements in the bible the same way we'd understand, "If you want to avoid catching the coronavirus, wash your hands." The "then" is the natural outcome of the "if".

David's statement in Psalm 37:4 is not a matter of getting a reward.  It's not, "If you delight in the Lord, you'll earn the desires of your heart", as though the only connection between the delight and the desire is transactional.

Instead, David appears to be saying that when you've grown so close to God that He is actually your greatest delight, then the desires of your heart will naturally be the same as the Lord's desires.

Within the context of Psalm 37, if my greatest delight comes from seeing the evildoers and wrong doers get what's coming to them, then my greatest desire will be to watch them stumble and fall on their faces.

It's much more joyful, though, to practice delighting in the Lord, in who He is, the things He does, and the things in which He delights. Then when the negativity and bad behavior of the world threatens to steal my joy, then the joy of the Lord will be my strength (Nehemiah 8:10).