I love the 37th chapter of Psalms. This chapter is so full of good advice, and comfort. It gives you something you can really grab ahold of and put into practice.
My favorite of these verses is usually verse 4. An exhortation to DELIGHT in God. I believe Isaiah 58:13-14 gives us a pretty good definition of how to "Delight in the Lord".
"...and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, not finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord."
This particular passage is concerning the keeping of the sabbath day, but I think we can apply it to our lives today. If we delight in something we enjoy it. No one has to force me to enjoy a vanilla chai tea from Dunkin Donuts! No one has to force me to enjoy vacations, or to enjoy Christmas! To delight ourselves in the Lord is to delight in our time with Him in our Bibles, in prayer, in service, in worship, in giving, in ALL that we do. And the Bible tells us that when we do this, He will give us the desires of our hearts. I believe this is a two-fold giving of our desires.
First, if we are in fact enjoying God and enjoying serving Him, He will put HIS desires in our hearts. We will want what He wants, we will love what He loves. Really there is no other explanation for the abundant love I feel for a people that I have never met. I feel overwhelmed with the desire to reach the Dominican people with the gospel, I carry them on my heart and think of them everyday. I have a longing, yearning desire to be there and begin serving these people. God has put those desires in my heart.
Secondly, if we are delighting ourselves in God, I believe He delights in answering our prayers and blessing us! I believe God loves to answer the prayers of His children and give them those things that they want. When I knew that we were going to be in California for Thanksgiving I began praying that the Lord would please provide a family to invite us over for Thanksgiving. I know, it was such a dumb prayer request right? But I guess you would just have to know me to understand that I LOVE spending the whole day cooking and being surrounded by a whole house-full of people! For years our house was an open house to anyone who wanted to come for Thanksgiving. We always had tons of food and TONS of desserts! I loved it, I enjoyed being a blessing and providing a place of sweet fellowship for others who didn't have anywhere else to celebrate the goodness of God.
So I prayed earnestly, Lord please don't make us have Thanksgiving in the RV. It would be soooo depressing not be able to cook a Thanksgiving dinner and all the fixin's and pie. I know what you're thinking, "you're a missionary, get used to it". But I have grand plans of cooking the biggest chicken I can find and making fixin's and pies in the DR. And I'm sure we'll have no problem finding someone to invite for dinner! :-)
How good God was to answer this insignificant request. A wonderful family invited us to dinner and though I had never met them before we had sweet fellowship centered around our Lord Jesus and His goodness. It was wonderful, we had korean BBQ for dinner and wonderful sweets. Isn't it amazing how God knits together the hearts of believers and makes us family. I have every confidence that though we will be hundreds of miles away from home that God will give us this sweet fellowship in the DR. The same God who puts His desires in our hearts will also grant us our desires just because He loves us. Let us continue to pray for the small things and big things that our hearts desire. As we delight in serving our wonderful God we will find He delights in blessing us too!
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