Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.”
That is a verse gone wrong.
You know, a piece of Scripture quoted at you, or worse yet spoken from your mouth, as a source of encouragement when in reality you (or I) have ripped it out of context and slapped it on a Hallmark card for the sake of sounding spiritual. I realize most of the time this isn’t done maliciously, but friends, we are doing each other and ourselves a disservice when we treat Scripture as a go to one liner for any given situation.
Case in point: My current relationship status is single.
Spend five minutes around me and you’ll know that being a wife and momma are two very important things to me. At the ripe ole age of twenty-three, following a devastating breakup, I felt like I was starring down the barrel at an eternity of maid hood.
A bit dramatic?
Yes. But you see I had this plan; graduate college, get married right away, and start having babies by the time I was twenty-four. Time was ticking and I was already behind on my plan.
I’ll give you one guess as to what verse has been quoted to me more than I can count.
If you guessed Psalm 37:4 then you would be correct.
At first the verse did its job of comforting me but then it took a bad turn right into the land of confusion and frustration. I was delighting; going to church, reading my Bible, praying diligently, and only listening to Christian radio (I figured the more I “delighted” myself the faster He might respond. Can you blame a girl?). Here’s the thing. My husband, my heart’s desire, well, he hasn’t shown up yet.
Clearly I was missing something so I decided to look at this Scripture for myself. I planned on breaking it apart until it revealed
You know that word desires, turns out He wasn’t referring to my husband.
The word “desires” in Hebrew means petitions or requests. The heart represents the inner working of man or your soul. So these desires are really the cries from within our soul, the things we truly want. Honestly, I don’t think we know what they are until we are walking in them and then it opens our eyes.
David is writing this Psalm. From the beginning he is struggling with watching other’s walk in success and blessing when they aren’t necessarily doing “what is right.” I don’t know about you but this was extremely comforting to me because even the “man after God’s own heart” found himself questioning the Lord and comparing himself to others.
Why am I not married? Why do I have to endure singleness well into my 20’s when others don’t? What’s wrong with me?
It’s the verse after 4 that was key for me. “Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He will do it.” This word commit is not in the sense that you see what’s in front of you or what is required and then you agree to it. Commit in Hebrew is the word “galal” which literally means to roll away. It is this idea of casting whatever the burden is onto someone who can handle it. It is complete surrender. It is the only way to receive those elusive desires we mistakenly talk about.
Back to my plan: I have fought God on this a lot. I have resisted, cried, pleaded, and lay silently in His presence searching for answers.
I have said I want to be that girl that lives completely surrendered to Him. That I would go where He asks and do what He wants, but I wasn’t doing anything to live that out. In reality I was sulking and trying to manipulate God into giving me what I thought would make me happy.
I’m still not sure what would make me happy.
What I do know is that I’m willing to commit (hello World Race) to find out what that might be.
