God Fulfills Your Holy Passions

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4

In Confessions Augustine stated, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” He was referring to the deepest desires of the human heart. Not yearnings for money or sex, power or pleasure—all temporal thrills that leave us hungering for more—but a consuming passion for God and the things of God.

This is David’s point in Psalm 37. God never pledges to satisfy the superficial longings of our worldly nature. Today’s promise isn’t a divine formula to get that new extended cab pickup or the 3,500-square-foot home on the lakefront.

No, to “take delight in the Lord” means to hunger for his presence, for his will and for his glory. When God is our focus, our desires change. We find ourselves wanting what God wants. And that’s when we discover our lives being filled with lasting pleasures.

GOD’S PROMISE TO ME
• When your desires are righteous, you can be sure I will grant them.

MY PRAYER TO GOD
God, I want to delight in you. Forgive me for the times I get overly busy and excited about things that don’t matter. I want to enjoy your blessings, Lord, but I want to enjoy you and seek you more than anything else. Stir up the holy passions that you’ve implanted within me so that the things I want most are the things you want most to give me.