Delighting in Holiness

Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4)

Of all of the verses and passages in the Bible, of all of the exceeding great and precious promises from God found in the Bible (2 Peter 1:2-4), I cannot think of one more fascinating, more intriguing, more enthralling, more engaging of my soul than Psalm 37:4. It is like an open checkbook from the almighty creator and sovereign ruler of the universe, promising that if there is a desire conceived in my heart that I bring to Him, He will fulfill it on the condition that I delight in Him.

The word delight, as a noun, encompasses a profound sense of joy and pleasure, satisfaction and contentment that leads to rejoicing – happiness. She found delight in being nominated for class president.  As a verb it is the joy, pleasure, satisfaction, contentment evoked in us by an experience, object or person. People in love delight in each other.    

I thus find two aspects of this promise most intriguing. The first is that this is a promise made by God, who is holy, of granting something that would come from our heart, the very core of our being, which the Bible reveals in our fallen condition is deceitful and desperately wicked, in which the thoughts and imaginations that proceed from it are only evil continually as well as the related actions (Jeremiah 17:9) (Genesis 6:5) (Mark 7:20-23).

The second is that we are told in both the Old and New Testaments that no one seeks after God, certainly not as the object of our delight and for the fulfillment of our heart’s desires (Romans 3:11) (Psalm 14:2-3).  Rather than delighting in God as the source of all of our good, we live our lives spiritually dead in our sins and trespasses, worshiping and delighting in the things God has forbidden or that have been corrupted and perverted by our sin, motivated in doing so by disordered desires and vile passions (James 1:17) (Romans 1:18-26). In doing so we willingly suppress the truth of the knowledge of the glory of God, of the outshining of His holiness, which when seen through the eyes of faith in this world and ultimately by sight in Heaven, will cause us to delight in Him above all else (Ephesians 2:1-3) (Psalm 73:23-26).

This promise in Psalm 37:4 is thus to a redeemed people, who have been born again, restored to spiritual life by a supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit, having had our sins forgiven, our standing before a holy God restored, and most essential, having our spiritual blindness lifted such that we are now able to see, by faith, the glory of God revealed to us in the person and work of God the Son, Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate expression of God’s love toward us (John 3:3-8) (Ephesians 2:4-6) (2 Corinthians 4:3-6) (Romans 5:8).

In our beholding Him as He is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in and as the Word of God incarnate, we come to see, love and delight in Him for who He is (Hebrews 11:6), which is the most glorious, most desirable, most excellent, most essential, most awesome, most valuable, most happy being in all of the universe (Exodus 15:11), the creator and sovereign ruler of that universe and all that is in it; an eternal being of infinite beauty, wisdom, goodness and power, the only source of goodness in the universe who created mankind in His image and likeness for His glory– that we would know our greatest joy, my greatest pleasure, my greatest satisfaction in knowing and loving and being loved by Him (John 1:1-3) (John 16:13-14) (John 1:14) (Isaiah 43:7) (James 1:17).

As such, we, as the redeemed in Christ, come to delight in Him to where He becomes the desire of our new heart and the delight of our restored soul, the object of our deepest love and source of our eternal joy (1 Peter 1:18-19) (Jeremiah 24:7) (Psalm 23:3) (Psalm 43:3-4).

My favorite theologian, Jonathan Edwards, wrote as to why this must be, “God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper happiness and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here: better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean. Therefore, it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey towards heaven”.

In our call to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16), 0ur delight in God above all of His creation is essential to our ability to answer this call, as God delights first and foremost in God (Jeremiah 9:23-24). The Bible reveals that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have existed in an eternal love relationship of unimaginable pleasure and delight, creating us, and now redeeming us to share in that relationship, not as divine equals but as beloved children, who delight to do His will as we trust in and display His unfathomable love  (1 John 4:8) (Psalm 16:11) (Genesis 1:26) ( 1 John 5:2) (Psalm 40:7-8).

Thus, in our passionate pursuit of holiness, we will desire ever increasing communion with our Lord, that He would reveal more of His glory to us (Psalm 65:4) (Psalm 27:4) (Psalm 63:1-8) (Exodus 33:17-19).  To this end we will delight in and meditate on His word day and night, that we may align our will with His and pray unceasingly for the priorities that Jesus set before us while on earth, being thankful in all things (Psalm 1:1-2) (Romans 12:1-2) (Matthew 6:8-13) (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18).

We will keep our heart and mind on things above where our Lord resides at the right hand of the Father, striving in the power of the Holy Spirit to live our lives in a manner that pleases, honors and glorifies Him, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, living joyfully, righteously as shining lights in the darkness of this crooked and perverse generation (Colossians 3:1-4) (Titus 2:11-14) (Philippians 2:12-15).

Most important to our pursuit of holiness is our striving for conformity to the nature and character of our Lord Jesus, as God will be working all the events of our life to that end as we look expectantly for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, when we will see Him in all of His glory, be made fully like Him and rejoice and delight in His unfailing love, by which He will satisfy our deepest desires forever  (Romans 8:28-30)  (2 Corinthians 3:18) (1 John 3:1-3).   I encourage you to rejoice now with this cheerful tune based on Psalm 90.

Grace and Peace ×