What we want

 What We Want

 

The one thing I ask of the LORD — the thing I seek most — is to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, delighting in the LORD’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.

PSALM 27.4

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

PSALM 37.4

In my inner being I delight in God’s law.

ROMANS 7.22, NIV

 

Do you know how to get what you want from your parents or a teacher or a boss or a friend? Is it all in how you ask or in choosing just the right timing?

When we read Psalm 37.4, “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires,” we’re tempted to see it as a formula for getting what we want from God. We might read it as, “Get close to God, and then he’ll give you what you want.” We might think that if we give God our obedience and interest and compliments, we can get what we want from him in return.

But delighting in God is not a way to get what we want from him. That is manipulation or bribery. Genuine delight has no ulterior motive, no additional demands. Delight is saying thank you to God for his many blessings, such as good food to eat, a house to live in, people who love us, and a school or a job to go to. But delight also means saying to God, “I will not worship these things by making them more important than you. And I will not demand them from you.”

If we see this verse as a formula for getting what we want from God, we’re settling for much less than what God is offering. God wants to change what we want. He wants to free us from the slavery of wanting what will never completely satisfy us. He wants to give us what he knows will completely satisfy us forever, himself.