Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
– Psalm 37:4
Is that not a great verse? Just a simple, glorious verse.
Psalm 37:4 Provides Beautiful Imagery of Delighting in God
This picture of delighting yourself in the Lord. Even that imagery. One of my sons and I were talking this week, just about all this imagery in the Psalms. There’s so many phrases with such rich word pictures, and this is one of them. “Delight yourself in the Lord.” That’s a command from Psalm 37. Delight yourself in God, enjoy God, and He will give you the desires of your heart. And, really, there’s multiple directions that goes when you think about the rest of scripture. One, God will put His desires in your heart. He will implant in your heart His desires. He’ll give you the desires of your heart. Isn’t that what we want? We’ve mentioned it multiple times on this podcast that the secret to prayer is making your wants, God’s wants. And then asking for whatever you want.
And so to pray, God, give us the desires of our hearts. Put your desires in us. And then for every desire that we have that comes from Him, every desire that is in alignment with His word, we can ask and know that God will answer according to what His word says. And then, on specific things, where we don’t have a word from God, where we want healing from disease, where we want… Well, there’s so many things that we desire in our lives, or we desire for others’ lives, in our families, or in our churches, or desire in the world. Like we want peace in Ukraine and Russia. We want peace in Sudan right now. And so we have a Father in heaven who says, “Express to me the desires of your heart.”
So let’s do that right now together before God. Oh God, right now, we say together that we delight in you. You are our joy. Lord, you are our desire. You are our delight. And you are supremely delightful. You are the fountain of all delight.
Psalm 37:4 Pictures God as the Source of All that is Good
You’re the fountain of all that is good. You’re the author of everything good. Oh God, all of our desires for good lead us to you. We delight ourselves in you, the good, gracious, merciful, God, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The fountain of all satisfaction for our souls. We delight in you, and we pray that you would give us the desires of our heart. That you would put your desires inside of us, that we would desire what you desire today in our lives. Transform our desires, we pray. Help us to desire that which is good according to your word. Help us to desire that which is good according to your spirit. And, God, as we walk with you and delight in you, we praise you for the privilege of expressing our desires to you.
Praying for Peace
As we mentioned, God, we desire peace in Sudan. God, we pray for that. We pray for your peace in Sudan right now, amidst all the war and fighting there. God, we desire your protection for your church in the middle of all of that. And your protection for all people in the middle of all that. God, we pray for an end to war there. Lord, we pray for an end to war in Ukraine with Russia.
God, we pray for an end to conflicts. We pray for an end to suffering. God, we pray for this in specific ways in our own lives. God, we want healing. We want restoration, reconciliation, and resolution with conflict in relationships with others. God, we want so many things on our hearts right now. So many things on my heart that I’m thinking of, that I’m praying for. And I praise you, we praise you for hearing the desires of our hearts.
Expressing Gratefulness for Our Godly Desires
And when it is good and wise, for the way you give us those desires. God, when it is not best for reasons you alone may know, we will trust you with these desires. God, I think even today, as I celebrate my 17-year-old’s birthday, and I think about a desire we had on our heart for years to have children. And you, in your wisdom, chose to withhold children for many years until you provided this son, our first son, through adoption.
God, I thank you for hearing our prayers over many years, and giving us the desires of our hearts. And I just pray, and it’s to all the desires represented in people who are listening to this right now, that we would do Psalm 37:4, delight ourselves in you. That you would give us the desires of our heart. According to your word, in Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
