HOW TO WANT WHAT HE WANTS
Psa. 37:4
Morning Meditation 2/26/17
Verse 4 says, “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”
One of the great secrets of prayer is praying according to His will. 1 John 5:14-15: “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” The verse gives great assurance to the believer that he has access to God through prayer and that his prayers will be answered. But there is this qualification. The prayers we pray must be according to His will. James says, “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts”(James 4:2-3).
James says that some of you have needs that are not being met because you are not praying. There are others of you who know to pray and are not getting answers “because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” Prayer is a key to the Christian life. A Christianity without prayer would be dead. The whole idea of the Christian life is that Jesus our Saviour is alive and is Lord. We can come to him for worship and talk to Him. We can bring our needs to him with a guarantee that He is alive and will give us favorable attention: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:15-16).
Prayer is a vital connection that we have with God. Since it is necessary for us to pray according to His will to get our prayers answered, how can we so lives as to want what He wants? Out text tells us.
David said, “Delight thyself also in the LORD . . .” The word “delight” translates “anag” and means, “to make merry over, make sport of.” The Lord should always be in our thoughts. David said in Psalm 16:8, “I have set the LORD always before me . . .” People of the world crave sports. It is something that dominates conversation. People will spend money that they don’t have to attend the games. Now to work this definition onto our text we need to visualize a person who is fanatically given over to sports and it is the delight of his life. Now we are not thinking of sports, we are thinking of a person with the same attitude toward the Lord. He talks about the Lord, he builds his life around the Lord like the sports fanatic does his game. His delight is in the Lord. To forbid this person from talking about the Lord would be like telling the football fanatic you can’t discuss football or mention the scores. It would be like taking the joy completely out of his life. When the believer so enjoys the Lord that this is where his delights come from, then we begin to understand what David is saying here.
I have read the biography of Praying Hyde several times. He was a man of prayer. When Hyde prayed things changed. He would spend hours at a time on his knees. When he would arise, the glory of God seemed to be shining through the skin on his face. He delighted in the Lord.
The words “and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart”describe a result. The desires of the heart will be a gift of God. There are two ways to look at this. First, and the most commonly accepted interpretation is that this is a promise that the Lord will give us what we want. The second, and the meaning I think, is that He gives you the desires you have so that what you want is what He wants. Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Jesus was always in the will of His Father. John 5:19-20 says, “Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.” The Son as the God-man delighted in the Father and was constantly being told by the Father what He wanted to do. Some of the time it was to heal, at other times it was to control the winds and waves of the sea. What Jesus asked for in prayer was always prayer that the Father wanted to answer through Him. And it was always miraculous! God does not act normal! He acts like God. Now when He does it in answer to our prayers, He simply lets us in on the process.
The next question is would He do it if He did not find someone to believe Him? God can act apart from man. We know that God is independent of creation. He existed before creation and there is absolutely nothing in creation on which He depends for His existence. God does not need creation’s support. But God has chosen to work through man, therefore, our obedience in prayer is necessary. Ezekiel 22:30 says, “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.” God said, “I sought for a man among them . . . and I found none.” What does that mean? It means that God destroyed the land because there was no one that would prevent His judgement through intercessory prayer. This is a mystery but it is true.
How do I know what to pray for? I want to suggest two ways:
First, we must make a choice to make the Lord our delight. I overheard a young man ask one time, “Is there going to be anything in heaven besides worship?” The young man was not being sarcastic. He just did not enjoy worship that much. I’m not judging him as to his salvation. Not all saved people enjoy worship services, i.e., the teaching of the Word and the preaching of the word. They do not enjoy “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19). A carnal Christian is one who walks after the flesh and not after the Spirit. He has chosen the path of disobedience. He does not delight himself in the Lord.
On the other hand the Spirit filled believer has one primary goal in life. He has discovered that the path of obedience is the right one to take. He has accepted that his hope in Christ goes much much further than this life. He realizes that he is loved of God. He has DEVELOPED a prayer life that is more than just asking for things. It is one of worship. Jesus said to the church at Laodicea, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). What does Jesus mean when He says, “I will come in to him, and will sup with him?” The word “sup” is speaking of gathering around a table to have a meal together with the laughter, joy, and fellowship that goes with it. Can you imagine what it would be like to invite Jesus into your home for a meal and enjoy the personal individual fellowship? Jesus makes this offer. Have you ever gone to your knees in prayer and had this kind of fellowship with Him? It is an experience that words cannot describe. It has to be experienced to know. Could we say it is DELIGHTSOME?
When David said, “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” the Holy Spirit was revealing through him the way to want what He wants. This is the secret of answered prayer. John said, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”
If you have not learned to delight yourself in the Lord, I challenge you to begin this day. Get alone with Him. Take your Bible because it will be through the medium of His Word that He speaks to you. Then as you read His Word, believe that He is there, and that while you cannot see Him, He is right there with you. Make sure that you deal with everything that He points out in your life that is displeasing to Him. The moment you confess those things that He points out, they are there no more. The blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin. And it is important to remember that you cannot be more right with God than the blood makes you. You will discover as you do this on a regular basis that you will look forward to it. It is better that any thing you have ever experienced in this world. And as you find in Him your delight, you will also find that you will be wanting things. And as you ask for those things, you will get them. God will be answering prayer like you never experienced before. There is no struggle over whether a request is right or wrong. Then it will dawn on you that what you want is what He wants and He wanted you to pray for it. You are in the main stream of eternity where God is while you are still alive on this earth. You are enjoying an eternal existence in a different dimension. Your eternal life has become operational and you discover the experience of God.
May the Lord bless these words to our hearts.
In Christ
Bro. White
