Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 37:4
Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
Delight thyself also in the – Lord. The word rendered delight means properly to live delicately and effeminately; then, to be tender or delicate; then, to live a life of ease or pleasure; then, to find delight or pleasure in anything. The meaning here is, that we should seek our happiness in God – in his being, his perfections, his friendship, his love.
And he shall give thee the desires of thine heart – literally, the askings, or the requests of thy heart. What you really desire will be granted to you. That is,
(a) the fact that you seek your happiness in him will regulate your desires, so that you will be disposed to ask only those things which it will be proper for him to grant; and
(b) the fact that you do find your happiness in him will be a reason why he will grant your desires.
The fact that a child loves his father, and finds his happiness in doing his will, will do much to regulate his own wishes or desires, and will at the same thee be a reason why the father will be disposed to comply with his requests.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 4. Delight thyself also in the Lord] Expect all thy happiness from him, and seek it in him.
The desires of thine heart.] mishaloth, the petitions. The godly man never indulges a desire which he cannot form into a prayer to God.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Delight thyself in the Lord; in his favour and service, and in the study of his word and promises.
The desires of thine heart, i.e. thy just desires, or whatsoever is truly desirable and good for thee; which limitation is necessarily to be understood, both from divers places of Scripture, and from the nature of the things; for it is unreasonable to imagine that God would engage himself to grant their sinful and inordinate desires, and it would also be a curse to them to have them granted.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4. desires (Psa 20:5;Psa 21:2), what is lawful andright, really good (Ps 84:11).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Delight thyself also in the Lord,…. In the persons in God, Father, Son, and Spirit; in the perfections of God, his power, goodness, faithfulness, wisdom, love, grace, and mercy; in his works of creation, providence, and redemption; in his word, his Gospel, the truths and ordinances of it; in his house, and the worship of it; and in his people, the excellent in the earth, in whom was all the delight of the psalmist; and each of these afford a field of delight and pleasure, to attend unto, contemplate, and meditate upon;
and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart; such as are according to the will of God, and for the good of his people; such as relate to communion with him, and to the communication of more grace from him, and to the enjoyment of eternal glory.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
4. And delight thyself in Jehovah This delight is set in opposition to the vain and deceitful allurements of the world, which so intoxicate the ungodly, that despising the blessing of God, they dream of no other happiness than what presents itself for the time before their eyes. This contrast between the vain and fickle joys with which the world is deluded, and the true repose enjoyed by the godly, ought to be carefully observed; for whether all things smile upon us, or whether the Lord exercise us with adversities, we ought always to hold fast this principle, that as the Lord is the portion of our inheritance, our lot has fallen in pleasant places, (21) as we have seen in Psa 16:5. We must therefore constantly recall to our minds this truth, that it can never be well with us except in so far as God is gracious to us, so that the joy we derive from his paternal favor towards us may surpass all the pleasures of the world. To this injunction a promise is added, that, if we are satisfied in the enjoyment of God alone, he will liberally bestow upon us all that we shall desire: He will give thee the desires of thy heart. This does not imply that the godly immediately obtain whatever their fancy may suggest to them; nor would it be for their profit that God should grant them all their vain desires. The meaning simply is, that if we stay our minds wholly upon God, instead of allowing our imaginations like others to roam after idle and frivolous fancies, all other things will be bestowed upon us in due season.
(21) “ D’autant que Dieu est la part de nostre heritage, que nostre lot est escheu en lieux plaisan,.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
Psa 37:4 Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
Ver. 4. Delight thyself also in the Lord ] While others delight in riches and pleasures; as if there were no other happiness but to have and to hold, no sport unless men may have the devil their playfellow. The like counsel hereunto giveth St Paul to his son Timothy, 1Ti 6:12 ; while others lay hold as with tooth and nail on riches, &c., lay thou hold on eternal life; make God thy portion, and thou art made for ever.
And he shall give thee the desires of thy heart
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
THE SECRET OF TRANQUILLITY
Psa 37:4 – Psa 37:5
‘I have been young, and now am old,’ says the writer of this psalm. Its whole tone speaks the ripened wisdom and autumnal calm of age. The dim eyes have seen and survived so much, that it seems scarcely worth while to be agitated by what ceases so soon. He has known so many bad men blasted in all their leafy verdure, and so many languishing good men revived, that-
‘Old experience doth attain
To something of prophetic strain’;
These clauses, which I have ventured to isolate from their context, contain the elements which secure peace even in storms and troubles. I think that, if we consider them carefully, we shall see that there is a well-marked progress in them. They do not cover the same ground by any means; but each of the later flows from the former. Nobody can ‘commit his way unto the Lord’ who has not begun by ‘delighting in the Lord’; and nobody can ‘rest in the Lord’ who has not ‘committed his way to the Lord.’ These three precepts, then, the condensed result of the old man’s lifelong experience, open up for our consideration the secret of tranquillity. Let us think of them in order.
I. Here is the secret of tranquillity in freedom from eager, earthly desires-’Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’
And, still further, they destroy tranquillity by putting us at the mercy of externals. Whatsoever we make necessary for our contentment, we make lord of our happiness. By our eager desires we give perishable things supreme power over us, and so intertwine our being with theirs, that the blow which destroys them lets out our life-blood. And, therefore, we are ever disturbed by apprehensions and shaken by fears. We tie ourselves to these outward possessions, as Alpine travellers to their guides, and so, when they slip on the icy slopes, their fall is our death. If we were not eager to stand on the giddy top of fortune’s rolling wheel, we should not heed its idle whirl; but we let our foolish hearts set our feet there, and thenceforward every lurch of the glittering instability threatens to lame or kill us. He who desires fleeting joys is sure to be restless always, and to be disappointed at the last. For, even at the best, the heart which depends for peace on the continuance of things subjected to a thousand accidents, can only know quietness by forcibly closing its eyes against the inevitable; and, even at the best, such a course must end on the whole in failure. Disappointment is the law for all earthly desires; for appetite increases with indulgence, and as it increases, satisfaction decreases. The food remains the same, but its power to appease hunger diminishes. Possession bring indifference. The dose that lulls into delicious dreams to-day must be doubled to-morrow, if it is to do anything; and there is soon an end of that. Each of your earthly joys fills but a part of your being, and all the other ravenous longings either come shrieking at the gate of the soul’s palace, like a mob yelling for bread, or are starved into silence; but either way there is disquiet. And then, if a man has fixed his happiness on anything lower than the stars, less stable than the heavens, less sufficient than God, there does come, sooner or later, a time when it passes from him, or he from it. Do not venture the rich freightage of your happiness in crazy vessels. If you do, be sure that, somewhere or other, before your life is ended, the poor frail craft will strike on some black rock rising sheer from the depths, and will grind itself to chips there. If your life twines round any prop but God your strength, be sure that, some time or other, the stay to which its tendrils cling will be plucked up, and the poor vine will be lacerated, its clusters crushed, and its sap will bleed out of it.
If, then, our desires are, in their very exercise, a disturbance, and in their very fruition prophesy disappointment, and if that certain disappointment is irrevocable and crushing when it comes, what shall we do for rest? Dear brethren! there is but one answer-’Delight thyself in the Lord.’ These eager desires, transfer to Him; on Him let the affections fix and fasten; make Him the end of your longings, the food of your spirits. This is the purest, highest form of religious emotion-when we can say, ‘Whom have I but Thee? possessing Thee I desire none beside.’ And this glad longing for God is the cure for all the feverish unrest of desires unfulfilled, as well as for the ague fear of loss and sorrow. Quietness fills the soul which delights in the Lord, and its hunger is as blessed and as peaceful as its satisfaction.
Think how surely rest comes with delighting in God. For that soul must needs be calm which is freed from the distraction of various desires by the one master-attraction. Such a soul is still as the great river above the falls, when all the side currents and dimpling eddies and backwaters are effaced by the attraction that draws every drop in the one direction; or like the same stream as it nears its end, and, forgetting how it brawled among rocks and flowers in the mountain glens, flows with a calm and equable motion to its rest in the central sea. Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul.
And for another reason there will be peace: because in such a case desire and fruition go together. ‘He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ Only do not vulgarise that great promise by making it out to mean that, if we will be good, He will give us the earthly blessings which we wish. Sometimes we shall get them, and sometimes not; but our text goes far deeper than that. God Himself is the heart’s desire of those who delight in Him; and the blessedness of longing fixed on Him is that it ever fulfils itself. They who want God have Him. Your truest joy is in His fellowship and His grace. If, set free from creatural delights, our wills reach out towards God, as a plant growing in darkness to the light-then we shall wish for nothing contrary to Him, and the wishes which run parallel to His purposes, and embrace Himself as their only good, cannot be vain. The sunshine flows into the opened eye, the breath of life into the expanding lung-so surely, so immediately the fulness of God fills the waiting, wishing soul. To delight in God is to possess our delight. Heart! lift up thy gates: open and raise the narrow, low portals, and the King of Glory will stoop to enter.
Once more: desire after God will bring peace by putting all other wishes in their right place. The counsel in our text does not enjoin the extinction, but the subordination, of other needs and appetites-’Seek ye first the kingdom of God.’ Let that be the dominant desire which controls and underlies all the rest. Seek for God in everything, and for everything in God. Only thus will you be able to bridle those cravings which else tear the heart. The presence of the king awes the crowd into silence. When the full moon is in the nightly sky, it sweeps the heavens bare of flying cloud-rack, and all the twinkling stars are lost in the peaceful, solitary splendour. So let delight in God rise in our souls, and lesser lights pale before it-do not cease to be, but add their feebleness, unnoticed, to its radiance. The more we have our affections set on God, the more shall we enjoy, because we subordinate, His gifts. The less, too, shall we dread their loss, the less be at the mercy of their fluctuations. The capitalist does not think so much of the year’s gains as does the needy adventurer, to whom they make the difference between bankruptcy and competence. If you have God for your ‘enduring substance,’ you can face all varieties of condition, and be calm, saying-
‘Give what Thou canst, without Thee I am poor,
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.’
II. But this is not all. The secret of tranquillity is found, secondly, in freedom from the perplexity of choosing our path.
This is a word for all life, not only for its great occasions. Twice, or thrice, perhaps in a lifetime, a man’s road leads him up to a high dividing point, a watershed as it were, whence the rain runs from the one side of the ridge to the Pacific, and from the other to the Atlantic. His whole future may depend on his bearing the least bit to the right hand or to the left, and all the slopes below, on either side, are wreathed in mist. Powerless as he is to see before him, he has yet to choose, and his choice determines the rest of his days. Certainly he needs some guidance then. But he needs it not less in the small decisions of every hour. Our histories are made up of a series of trifles, in each of which a separate act of will and choice is involved. Looking to the way in which character is made, as coral reefs are built up, by a multitude of tiny creatures whose united labours are strong enough to breast the ocean; looking to the mysterious way in which the greatest events in our lives have the knack of growing out of the smallest; looking to the power of habit to make any action of the mind almost instinctive: it is of far more importance that we should become accustomed to apply this precept of seeking guidance from God to the million trifles than to the two or three decisions which, at the time of making them, we know to be weighty. Depend upon it that, if we have not learned the habit of committing the daily-recurring monotonous steps to Him, we shall find it very, very hard to seek His help, when we come to a fork in the road. So this is a command for all life, not only for its turning-points.
What does it prescribe? First, the subordination-not the extinction-of our own inclinations . We must begin by ceasing from self. Not that we are to cast out of consideration our own wishes. These are an element in every decision, and often are our best helps to the knowledge of our powers and of our duties. But we have to take special care that they never in themselves settle the question. They are second, not first. ‘Thus I will, and therefore thus I decide; my wish is enough for a reason,’ is the language of a tyrant over others, but of a slave to himself. Our first question is to be, not ‘What should I like?’ but ‘What does God will, if I can by any means discover it?’ Wishes are to be held in subordination to Him. Our will is to be master of our passions, and desires, and whims, and habits, but to be servant of God. It should silence all their cries, and itself be silent, that God may speak. Like the lawgiver-captain in the wilderness, it should stand still at the head of the ordered rank, ready for the march, but motionless, till the Pillar lifts from above the sanctuary. Yes! ‘Commit thy way’-unto whom? Conscience? No: unto Duty? No: but ‘unto God’-which includes all these lower laws, and a whole universe besides. Hold the will in equilibrium, that His finger may incline the balance.
Then the counsel of our text prescribes the submission of our judgment to God, in the confidence that His wisdom will guide us. Committing our way unto the Lord does not mean shifting the trouble of patient thought about our duty off our own shoulders. It is no cowardly abnegation of the responsibility of choice which is here enjoined; nor is there any sanction of lazily taking the first vagrant impulse, wafted we know not whence, that rises in the mind, for the voice of God. But, just because we are to commit our way to Him, we are bound to the careful exercise of the best power of our own brains, that we may discover what the will of God is. He does not reveal that will to people who do not care to know it. I suppose the precursor of all visions of Him, which have calmed His servants’ souls with the peace of a clearly recognised duty, has been their cry, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’ God counsels men who use their own wits to find out His counsel. He speaks to us through our judgments when they take all the ordinary means of ascertaining our course. The law is: Do your best to find out your duty; suppress inclination, and desire to do God’s will, and He will certainly tell you what it is. I, for my part, believe that the Psalmist spoke a truth when he said, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy steps.’ Only let the eye be fixed on Him, and He will guide us in the way. If we chiefly desire, and with patient impartiality try, to be directed by Him, we shall never want for direction.
But all this is possible only if we ‘delight in the Lord.’ Nothing else will still our desires-the voice within, and the invitations without, which hinder us from hearing the directions of our Guide. Nothing else will so fasten up and muzzle the wild passions and lusts that a little child may lead them. To delight in Him is the condition of all wise judgment. For the most part, it is not hard to discover God’s will concerning us, if we supremely desire to know and do it; and such supreme desire is but the expression of this supreme delight in Him. Such a disposition wonderfully clears away mists and perplexities; and though there will still remain ample scope for the exercise of our best judgment, and for reliance on Him to lead us, yet he whose single object is to walk in the way that God points, will seldom have to stand still in uncertainty as to what that way is. ‘If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.’
Thus, dear brethren! these two keys-joy in God, and trust in His guidance-open for us the double doors of ‘the secret place of the Most High’; where all the roar of the busy world dies upon the ear, and the still small voice of the present God deepens the silence, and hushes the heart. Be quiet, and you will hear Him speak-delight in Him, that you may be quiet. Let the affections feed on Him, the will wait mute before Him, till His command inclines it to decision, and quickens it into action; let the desires fix upon His all-sufficiency; and then the wilderness will be no more trackless, but the ruddy blaze of the guiding pillar will brighten on the sand a path which men’s hands have never made, nor human feet trodden into a road. He will ‘guide us with His eye,’ if our eyes be fixed on Him, and be swift to discern and eager to obey the lightest glance that love can interpret. Shall we be ‘like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding,’ and need to be pulled with bridles and beaten with whips before they know how to go; or shall we be like some trained creature that is guided by the unseen cord of docile submission, and has learned to read the duty, which is its joy, in the glance of its master’s eye, or the wave of his hand? ‘Delight thyself in the Lord: commit thy way unto Him.’
III. Our text takes one more step. The secret of tranquillity is found, thirdly, in freedom from the anxiety of an unknown future. ‘Best in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.’
But remember, brethren! that the peaceful confidence of this final counsel is legitimate only when we have obeyed the other two. I have no business, for instance, to expect God to save me from the natural consequences of my own worldliness or folly. If I have taken up a course from eager desires for earthly good, or from obedience to any inclination of my own without due regard to His will, I have no right, when things begin to go awry, to turn round to God and say, ‘Lord! I wait upon Thee to save me.’ And though repentance, and forsaking of our evil ways at any point in a man’s course, do ensure, through Jesus Christ, God’s loving forgiveness, yet the evil consequences of past folly are often mercifully suffered to remain with us all our days. He who has delighted in the Lord, and committed his way unto Him, can venture to front whatever may be coming; and though not without much consciousness of sin and weakness, can yet cast upon God the burden of taking care of him, and claim from his faithful Father the protection and the peace which He has bound Himself to give.
And O dear friends! what a calm will enter our souls then, solid, substantial, ‘the peace of God,’ gift and effluence from the ‘God of peace’! How blessed then to leave all the possible to-morrow with a very quiet heart in His hands! How easy then to bear the ignorance, how possible then to face the certainties, of that solemn future! Change and death can only thin away and finally remove the film that separates us from our delight. Whatever comes here or yonder can but bring us blessing; for we must be glad if we have God, and if our wills are parallel with His, whose Will all things serve. Our way is traced by Him, and runs alongside of His. It leads to Himself. Then rest in the Lord, and ‘judge nothing before the time.’ We cannot criticise the Great Artist when we stand before His unfinished masterpiece, and see dim outlines here, a patch of crude colour there. But wait patiently for Him, and so, in calm expectation of a blessed future and a finished work, which will explain the past, in honest submission of our way to God, in supreme delight in Him who is the gladness of our joy, the secret of tranquillity will be ours.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Delighting in the Lord
Delight thyself also in the Lord;
And he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.Psa 37:4.
1. The anthem, O rest in the Lord, taken from Mendelssohns oratorio Elijah, is composed of words which many persons imagine to be a text accurately quoted from the Bible. This is, however, nowhere to be found as Mendelssohn quotes it, but is a compilation of two separate verses. Scarcely any music could be sweeter to an anxious and weary heart than this pathetic song, O rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He will give thee thy hearts desire. It seems cruel to say a word to detract from the gracious comfort and hope conveyed by the words. Yet we shall be gainers and not losers by greater accuracy and truth, and shall find the promise He will give thee thy hearts desire none the less fulfilled. Mendelssohns made-up text is amply true, was true for him in fact as it has been true to so many of us in our varied lives and in the fulfilment of our hearts desires. Yet there is a higher truth still, and to that the Psalmist gives expression here. Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
2. The text might be correctly paraphrased, Delight in the Lord, and then thou mayest trust thy desires; they will be the forerunners of blessings, the beginning of their own realization. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Delight thyself in the Lord, and thou wilt desire strongly only what is in harmony with His will, and best for thyself. All thy wishes will be brought into subjection to His will, and thou wilt crave only those things which He is ready and anxious to bestow upon thee.
There are many beautiful psalms in the Psalter, but I am disposed to think that this psalm is the most beautiful of them all. There is a strain of old experience in it, of ripe and mellow wisdom, of thoughtful and tranquil affection, which at once stirs and calms our hearts. I can never read it but it calls up before me the figure of a venerable and kindly old man, who has seen much and endured much, but has at last won for himself a sacred tranquillity and peace which no change and no alarm can disturb; who, now that he is old, does not forget either that he has been young or what his hot, eager youth was like; and who, in the calm evening of his days, draws upon the accumulated stores of his knowledge and experience for the benefit of those in whom the fires of youth still burn hotly, and tries to save them from many a conflict, and many a defeat, by teaching them the secret of peace.1 [Note: S. Cox, The Birds Nest, 238.]
There is a passage in Wordsworths Prelude which expresses both the craving and its satisfaction, with all the poets high seriousness and moving simplicity. He had risen, in his unrest of mind, before the dawn. In the grey light of the morning, he brooded over his life and its meaning. As the sun rose and flooded meadow and stream and the far-off shining sea with light, and as the birds awoke to song and the labourer came forth with quiet and honest content to his work in the field, all the stillness and charm of the scene fell upon him with refreshing and renewing power.
Ah! need I say, dear Friend! that to the brim
My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly
A dedicated Spirit. On I walked
In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.2 [Note: W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 219.]
I
Practising the Presence of God
1. Delighting in God means, to begin with, realizing the presence of God. If men will not sometimes think of God, He will become merely a name to them. If they glance toward Him only now and again, and with an unobservant and undesiring eye, He will become strange and shadowy, and will remain unknown. We do not become sure of God by mustering up the arguments for His being and His purpose in the world. No heart ever stood up in a passionate conviction of Gods presence because it had been told that His footprints were marked upon the rocks. No mind was ever driven by the logic of history to assent with a deep persuasion to the personal providence of the Almighty. These things have their place and their power. They are byways of evidence in which a believing heart will sometimes walk. But the only certainty which can satisfy the mind and stir the heart is an ethical and a religious, a moral and a spiritual consciousness of God. Faith is an opening of the eyes that we may see. It is in prayer that we rise most swiftly and most convincingly into this faith which sees. It is in prayer that we have the sure consciousness of God. Even although a man may kneel with a haze over his mind and a chill upon his spirit, he will not kneel in vain.
In the beginning of Brother Lawrences noviciate, he spent the hours appointed for private prayer in thinking of God, so as to convince his mind of, and to impress deeply upon his heart, the Divine existence, rather by devout sentiments than by studied reasonings and elaborate meditations. By this short and sure method, he exercised himself in the knowledge and love of God, resolving to use his utmost endeavour to live in a continual sense of His Presence, and, if possible, never to forget Him more. When he had thus in prayer filled his mind full with great sentiments of that Infinite Being, he went to his work appointed in the kitchen (for he was cook to the Society). When he began his business, he said to God, with a filial trust in Him: O my God, since Thou art with me, and I must now, in obedience to Thy commands, apply my mind to these outward things, I beseech Thee to grant me grace to continue in Thy presence; and to this end, do Thou prosper me with Thy assistance, receive all my works, and possess all my affections. When he had finished, he examined himself how he had discharged his duty: if he found well, he returned thanks to God; if otherwise, he asked pardon; and, without being discouraged, he set his mind right again and continued his exercise of the Presence of God, as if he had never deviated from it. Thus, said he, by rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith, and love, I am come to a state, wherein it would be as difficult for me not to think of God as it was at first to accustom myself to it.
As Brother Lawrence had found such comfort and blessing in walking in the Presence of God, it was natural for him to recommend it earnestly to others; but his example was a stronger inducement than any arguments he could propose. His very countenance was edifying; such a sweet and calm devotion appearing in it as could not but affect all beholders. And it was observed that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and his heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquillity of spirit. The time of business, said he, does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.1 [Note: Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God.]
2. Delighting in the Lord implies sympathy with His mind and character. It means that His pure and holy character is the absorbing object of thought, that in the contemplation of it the mind is free from all suspicions, all hard thoughts and rebellious feelings; that, while it dwells on this high theme with reverence and with awe, it also finds in it a source of deepest joy.
Five years before he left us, one who has since his death been much in mens minds had an illness which was of a very critical character. For some days he said nothing, and he was supposed to be quite unconscious. After his recovery he referred, one day, to this, the presumably unconscious, part of his illness. People thought, he said, that I was unconscious, but the fact was that although I could not speak I heard all that went on in the room, and I was well occupied. To the question, What were you doing? he answered, By Gods mercy, I could remember the Epistle for the fourth Sunday in Advent, out of the Philippians, which begins, Rejoice in the Lord alway. This I made a framework for prayer; saying the Lords Prayer two or three times between each clause, and so dwelling on the several relations of each clause to each petition in the Lords Prayer. How he did this he explained at some length, and then added, It lasted me, I should think, four or five hours. To the question, What did you do after that? he answered, I began it over again. I was very happy: and, had it been Gods will, did not wish to get better.2 [Note: H. P. Liddon, Passiontide Sermons, 271.]
3. Delighting in God means holding close communion with Him. Communion is that quiet, intimate, tender intercourse with God in which we may ask nothing, confess nothing, and cease even from thanksgiving. We simply speak face to face with God as a man speaks to his friend. Communion may pass beyond speech into a calm and absorbing and yet strangely wakeful silence. God is not content always with silence only. He loves, we may truly believe, to hear the human voice rising and falling in the accents of prayer. Samuels childish treble when he cried, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth, was sweeter to Him than the perfect music of a boys clear young voice in a choir to its leader. God misses His little human praise, with its doubt and fear trembling in every tone, when we pray only with the inner whisper of our thought and meditation. But there are times when the spirit of prayer may be too swift and too tender for words. Every man is a possible mystic in the best sense of that word, for every man may enter into that intercourse with God in which the hours pass by in the silence of a perfect confidence.
Wesley, in his Journal tells us again and again that when worn and ill he cast himself without words on the bosom of God. Chalmers declares that, when greatly wearied and distressed in mind, he gave himself up to quietism, and was much refreshed. These were both men of strong practical wisdom, and not moody and dreamy recluses. We must not think that when Christ continued all night in prayer to God He stretched out the arms of His petitions and thanksgiving in words which fell upon His own ear. We can be sure that His time was passed in still meditation. He rose into a rapture in which there was no speech, a silence that was felt and loved of God. To Him the Father was
A presence felt the livelong day,
A welcome fear at night.1 [Note: W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, 181.]
I see that every good and wise man who is held up to my admiration and imitation in the Bible desired nothing less, and could be satisfied by nothing less, than communion with God. Every word in the Book of Psalms, in the Gospels, in the Epistles, and in the Prophecies tells me this. They wished to know God, not in a vague, loose sense, but actually to know Him as a friend. Starting with no preparatory notions of God, but ready to receive everything He told them, they welcomed each new dispensation only because it told them something more of God; because it enabled them more intelligently, more practically, more literally to converse with Him. I observe that all their sorrow arose from the loss of Gods presence, all their joy from the possession of it, all their pleasure in expecting heaven from anticipation of it. I observe that they shrunk from the contemplation of no side or phase of Gods character, that His holiness and His mercy were equally dear to them, and that, so far from viewing them as separate, they could not admire one without the other. They could not delight in His love unless they believed that He would admit no sin into His presence, for sin and love are essentially hostile; they could not adore His holiness unless they believed that He had some way of removing their sinfulness and imparting His own character to them. The plain, obvious study of the Bible tells me this.1 [Note: Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 132.]
4. Lastly, delighting in God means entire surrender to Gods will. The highest attitude in prayer is not desire, or aspiration, or praise. It is surrender. In surrender we open our whole being to God as a flower opens itself to the sun, and we are filled, up to our measure, with His Divine energy. It is because man can be filled with the fulness of God that he has been chosen of God as His instrument in the world. In one true sense God set bounds to His power when He created man. He placed a further limit on Himself when He committed dominion to him. God now works through man, and if man will not work the works of God, the works of God remain undone.
Esther.But that must be the best life, father. That must be the best life.
Rufus.What life, my dear child?
Esther.Why, that where one bears and does everything because of some great and strong feelingso that this and that in ones circumstances dont signify.
Rufus.Yea, verily: but the feeling that should be thus supreme is devotedness to the Divine Will.2 [Note: George Eliot, Felix Holt.]
It is best to limit oneself to what is strictly necessary, to live austerely and by rule, to content oneself with a little, and to attach no value to anything but peace of conscience and a sense of duty done. It is true that this itself is no small ambition, and that it only lands us in another impossibility. No,the simplest course is to submit oneself wholly and altogether to God. Everything else, as saith the Preacher, is but vanity and vexation of spirit. It is a long while now since this has been plain to me, and since this religious renunciation has been sweet and familiar to me. It is the outward distractions of life, the examples of the world, and the irresistible influence exerted upon us by the current of things which make us forget the wisdom we have acquired and the principles we have adopted. That is why life is such weariness! This eternal beginning over again is tedious, even to repulsion. It would be so good to go to sleep when we have gathered the fruit of experience, when we are no longer in opposition to the supreme will, when we have broken loose from self, when we are at peace with all men.1 [Note: Amiels Journal (trans, by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 115.]
Blindfolded and alone I stand,
With unknown thresholds on each hand;
The darkness deepens as I grope,
Afraid to fear, afraid to hope,
Yet this one thing I learn to know
Each day more surely as I go,
That doors are opened, ways are made,
Burdens are lifted or are laid,
By some great law unseen and still,
Unfathomed purpose to fulfil,
Not as I will.
Blindfolded and alone I wait;
Loss seems too bitter, gain too late;
Too heavy burdens in the load
And too few helpers on the road;
And joy is weak and grief is strong,
And years and days so long, so long:
Yet this one thing I learn to know
Each day more surely as I go,
That I am glad the good and ill
By changeless law are ordered still,
Not as I will.
Not as I will: the sound grows sweet
Each time my lips the words repeat.
Not as I will: the darkness feels
More safe than light when this thought steals
Like whispered voice to calm and bless
All unrest and all loneliness.
Not as I will, because the One
Who loved us first and best has gone
Before us on the road, and still
For us must all His love fulfil,
Not as we will.1 [Note: Helen H. Jackson, Verses.]
II
The Satisfaction of Desire
1. Nothing more disastrous could happen than that God should gratify the desires of all men. If God were to permit for one short hour that all human desires should be satisfied, it is impossible to calculate the dire confusion and pitiless despair that would prevail. Ignorance would unsettle every natural law; selfishness would break down every barrier; oppression, lust, and rapine would leap forth with fury. It is true that prisons, hospitals, and workhouses might disgorge their occupants, poverty might leap into affluence, and diseases and devils be cast out of suffering humanity. The slave might snap his fetters, and many an oppressed sufferer might rush forth to freedom and to life; but amid the widespread despair excited by the greatest curse that had ever fallen on humanity, the prayer would ascend, O God, take back our liberty; bind us once more by Thy laws; Thou, and Thou alone, knowest what is best for us. Fence us round with Thine ordinances; restore to us Thy government; let us know once more that Thou alone canst speak, and it shall be done; Thou alone command so that it shall stand fast!
The fables, the philosophy, and the experience of all nations, are crowded with lessons that men are blind, and ignorant, and selfish, and know not what is best for them; that they cannot enumerate their mercies; that the overruling of an infinite Mind and Will is the only refuge for their ignorance, the only hope of the race. He must be a bold man, or a fool, who would dare to take his lot into his own government, and be the master of his own destiny. The same principle will apply equally well, if we suppose our merely human desires to be made the measure of Gods benedictions to usof the spiritual blessings which are of the greatest necessity for us. Some are longing for more power to work, when probably God sees that they want more patience to endure, more power to feel. Some are ever yearning after new truth, when God sees that their need is to understand more fully the truth already within their reach.1 [Note: H. R. Reynolds, Notes of the Christian Life, 115.]
2. When we delight in God, we are freed from the distraction of various desires by the one master attraction. Such a soul is still as the great river above the falls, when all the side currents and dimpling eddies and backwaters are effaced by the attraction that draws every drop in the one direction; or like the same stream as it nears its end, and, forgetting how it brawled among rocks and flowers in the mountain glens, flows with a calm and equable motion to its rest in the central sea. When we possess God, all other desires are put in their right place. The presence of the king awes the crowd into silence. When the full moon is in the nightly sky, it makes the heavens bare of flying cloud-rack, and all the twinkling stars are lost in the peaceful, solitary splendour. So let delight in God rise in our souls, and lesser lights pale before itdo not cease to be, but add their feebleness, unnoticed, to its radiance. The more we have our affections set on God, the more shall we enjoy, because we subordinate, His gifts. The less, too, shall we dread their loss, the less be at the mercy of their fluctuations. The capitalist does not think so much of the years gains as the needy adventurer, to whom they make the difference between bankruptcy and competence. If we have God for our enduring substance, we can face all varieties of condition, and be calm, saying:
Give what Thou wilt, without Thee I am poor,
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.
Some men make themselves God, without knowing what they are doing. The deity they appeal to is really their deeper, higher self. When they feel Gods approval, it is really their own self-praise. When God reproaches them, it is their own self-rebuke. When they go apart from the world to hold communion with Him, it really is an entrance into their own self-consciousness. To other men some good fellow-man, more or less consciously and completely enlarged into an ideal of humanity, answers the same purpose, and is in reality their God. To still others, a vague presence of a high purpose and tendency felt in everythingTennysons one increasing purpose, and Arnolds something not ourselves which makes for righteousness. This fulfils the end and makes the substitute for God. But none of these supply the place of a true Personality outside ourselves, yet infinitely near to us.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks: Memories of his Life, 457.]
3. To delight in God is to have a desire for spiritual good; and the desire for spiritual good never goes unsatisfied. No man ever prayed but in the moment he was a better and a wiser man. To go into the sanctuary of God is to understand. To let our requests be made known unto God is to gain the peace that passeth all understanding. As we pray, our sins are set in the light of Gods countenance. We see the beauty of holiness. We behold the beauty of the Lord. We open the sluice-gates of the soul, and the swelling tides of Gods love and grace flood within. New penitence, new resolves, new endeavours are born in the depth of the will. That truth is written large in the history of every saint. Prayer is a mode of power within to learn the mind of Christ. His words and deeds become memorable and significant to us. We sometimes receive a more vivid insight into what He was, and did, as we serve Him in the toilsome duties of life. But when we pray, then those spiritual changes which are vital, determining, eternal, take place within. F. W. H. Myers, in his poem on St. Paul, so full of the seers insight into the history of the soul, has set this truth in impassioned verse. He is speaking of Pauls shame at his failure, and he conceives him in the pain of his penitence, seeking the presence and the peace of Christ.
Straight to Thy presence get me and reveal it,
Nothing ashamed of tears upon Thy feet,
Show the sore wound and beg Thine hand to heal it,
Pour Thee the bitter, pray Thee for the sweet.
Then with a ripple and a radiance thro me,
Rise and be manifest, O Morning Star!
Flow on my soul, Thou Spirit, and renew me,
Fill with Thyself, and let the rest be far.
4. When we delight in the Lord, our desire is not so much to have as to be and do. We cease to crave exclusively for temporal good, for personal and physical gratification, for the supply of what we call our wants, and we crave, instead, to be what our Creator and Father wishes us to be, and to do what He wishes us to do. Delighting in the Lord does not mean ceasing to be human, ceasing to have wants and natural lawful desires for success and happiness; it means that all these native and lawful wishes become subordinate to a higher desire still, so that, for its sake, we are willing to forgo all the rest. We may be hungry and thirsty, yet our meat and drink will be to do the will of Him who sent us here and to finish His work. We may be poor and needy, but we shall esteem the words of God and obedience to His law better than thousands of gold and silver, or, in other words of the Psalmist, more than our necessary food. We may be hungering for a love which is out of our reach, or sorrowing for the loss of a love that can never return, and yet find in God a love passing the love of woman. We may be toiling all day, and our very sleep may be broken by festering care, by even a holy anxiety to bring our work to completion, and yet we shall find something better and higher than success in the knowledge that we are working for God and doing our best and so earning His approval. If the greatest and supreme of all our delights is in being and in doing what God wills, nothing can frustrate His purpose to give us our hearts desire.
Christianity seeks not to cramp mans nature, saying to him constantly, Thou shalt not; but it leads on, up to freer air and wider space, wherein the soul may disport itself. It is God we follow. Obeying God is freedom. Our souls are like closed rooms, and God is the sunlight. Every new way we find in which to obey Him we throw open a shutter. Our souls are as enclosed bays, and God is the ocean. The only barrier that can hinder free communication is disobedience. Each duty performed is the breaking down of a reef of hindrance between our souls and God, permitting the fulness of His being to flow in upon our souls. It is when we remember the greatness of the nature which God has given us that we come into a full understanding of our relations to God. At some time every man comes to realize the meaning of the life he is living; the secret sins hidden in his heart rise against him. Then we would hide ourselves from God if we could. But the only way to run from God is to run to Him. The Infinite Knowledge is also the Infinite Pity.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks: Memories of his Life, 630.]
Literature
Conn (J.), The Fulness of Time, 117.
Cox (S.), The Birds Nest, 238.
Houchin (J. W.), The Vision of God, 31.
Mackey (H. O.), Miniature Sermons, 1.
Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, ii. 245.
Reynolds (H. R.), Notes of the Christian Life, 111.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, viii. (1885), No. 32.
Christian World Pulpit, xxvii. 93 (H. W. Beecher).
Church of England Magazine, xxxi. 139 (J. Ayre).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Delight: Psa 43:4, Psa 104:34, Job 27:10, Job 34:9, Son 2:3, Isa 58:14, 1Pe 1:8
and: Psa 21:1, Psa 21:2, Psa 145:19, Joh 15:7, Joh 15:16, 1Jo 5:14, 1Jo 5:15
Reciprocal: 2Sa 7:3 – all that 1Ki 10:13 – all her desire Job 22:26 – shalt thou Psa 4:7 – put Psa 10:17 – Lord Psa 20:4 – General Psa 73:25 – Whom Psa 81:10 – open Pro 10:24 – the desire Pro 11:23 – desire Pro 16:3 – thy works Isa 58:9 – shalt thou Isa 64:5 – rejoiceth Mar 11:23 – whatsoever Phi 3:1 – rejoice 1Ti 4:8 – having
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 37:4. Delight thyself also in the Lord In his favour and service, and in the study of his word and promises; and he shall give thee the desire of thy heart Thy just desires, or whatsoever is truly desirable and good for thee. This limitation is necessary to be understood, both from divers places of Scripture, and from the nature of the things; for it is unreasonable to imagine that God would engage himself to grant their sinful and inordinate desires, and it would also be a curse to them to have them granted.