Delight
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)
Delight as a feeling involves a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment. In other words, it’s experiencing joy. That’s how the dictionary defines delight. Strong’s Greek translation, however, better captures the higher-level delight we all, if we are honest with ourselves, desire.
Delight: To be soft, pliable, effeminate, luxurious
Now, before getting all worked up about the word effeminate, realize that it simply means soft and pliable. It’s getting at the idea of delight that isn’t in any way harsh or edgy but flexible and form-fitting, sort of like memory foam.
My favorite translation of the word delight, though, is luxurious. When something is luxurious, it’s extremely comfortable. There’s also a sense of elegance or refinement involved. Luxuriousness especially involves great expense.
There we have it. Delighting in the Lord because we are comfortable with him, because he is refining us, and because it was through great expense that this relationship is possible.
Desire
When we experience our relationship with the Lord in this way, we become able to receive the desires of our hearts. Before we have a delightful relationship, though, we may not want to receive what we desire. At least, that has been my experience.
You see, it’s in that learning to delight in the Lord that our desires become shaped and motivated by the great expense – the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Not just that sacrifice, though, but the sacrifice of the benefits of godhood in order to become flesh, too.
As our delights change and we are less driven by feelings and emotions and immaturity and greed and… we begin to reorient toward what honors the Lord and less toward what honors our flesh.
So, delight yourself – hope in, do what the Lord wants, seek your happiness in the Lord, and be happy with – the Lord himself. From baby to cross, he sacrificed to allow us to experience luxury in him.
