Ps 37:3-5 Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it. 
	Last week, we looked at the promise of God in this passage in terms of our trust in Him. As we learn to trust Him, our lives will give forth the evidence of our trust in an overwhelming desire to do good, as He has done unto us. We become enamored of His great Love, and it becomes our very nature. We saw that we, by our old nature, can never do good of ourselves. Even when we treat each other in kindness, there is always an ulterior motive, a reason for our sakes which brings forth that kindness. But, as we grow deeper and deeper into our trust of God, our entire motive for life is changed. We are taken from the earthly desires of me and set into the heavenly desire to live unto the glory of the Lord alone. This aspect will be further delineated as we contemplate the next portion of our text.
	For this brief review, however, let it suffice to state that our lives are becoming more and more not our own. They are His to do with as He sees best. That truth becomes our very heart’s desire. As we are learning to trust God, we begin to recognize that we are being trusted by God to be unto His glory. Our lives become more and more filled with those opportunities to bring the Living God Almighty into the lives of others through the circumstances, dilemmas and trials that we face daily. We become an increasing avenue of the delivery of Christ to those in need. Nothing accounted to ourselves, and with no credit taken by us. It is all unto the Lord with a willing heart of obedience to His Word and to the Holy Spirit. We become those servants who are ready to lay down our lives for our Master. Even more, those servants who are, as well, willing to give our lives for the sake of the lost of this realm.
	This is where the Lord is able to cultivate faithfulness in us and unto us. He works mightily in our lives to give the evidence of His loving-kindness and tender mercy. In turn, we become utterly reliant upon Him to be our everything on this earth. We learn to live by His every word and guidance. We become dependent upon Him to get us through, even the day to day sojourn of our lives on this earth. Nothing becomes too large for God to handle, or too small to put entirely into His Hands. We fully realize that apart from God in our lives, we would not survive in this realm.
	This, then, brings us to the opening of this evening’s concern. Delight yourself in the LORD… Here is another of those statements that could be seen as an admonition, a demand of God to His people to do this or else. But, as we have seen, and hopefully, have learned in our lives, God does not treat us with those human expectations of rewards or threats. No, He is more than faithful to show us that the way in which He guides is the best way for our lives to be lived. He enlightens our hearts with the life-blood of Christ and brings about the desire from within us to be unto His glory in everything that we do, say, or think. 
As a quick aside, this aspect of everything we do, say, or think should not be just an expression that we are sharing in our meetings. As the Body of Christ, we are to be the Body of Christ. That means that we recognize His Lordship and we live accordingly. We are infused with the very life of Christ. We should be coming to the point in our relationship with Him and with each other, where we are completely different from this world. There should be a very distinct operation of the Holy Spirit within us that registers when we are doing, saying, and even thinking something that is not perfectly in line with the heart of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. As His life courses through our spirit, there should be a corresponding life force that causes us to act only as we are taught to act, out from Christ. This will necessitate that much of our earthly desires and wishes are eradicated, that the completely new person in Christ is evidenced from within us. The beginning of this may not be as outwardly expressive as it must be inwardly. But still, there should be a registration in our hearts when we are off base. When we treat others with unkindness, there should be a distinct mourning from the depths of our beings. There should be a deep disappointment from our souls as we do and say those things that would not be pleasing to the Lord. We should have a growing sensibility to the things that would please the Father, please the Son, and please the Holy Spirit in our lives. This is not just on Sunday in the services. It must be from sunup to sunset, every day of our lives now that we have accepted Jesus Christ as Our Lord and Savior.
Are we perfect in this? No, but we should be. There should be evidenced that the registration from within becomes evident from without. What the Lord starts and develops within our beings should be seen by others as a deep and permanent change in our behavior and our likes and dislikes. Where once we sought after the laughter and the attention of this realm, there should be evident a great distain for the elements that delight those who do not know any better, who do not know the Lord. We are a chosen generation, a people who are to be separate from the nations of this age. This means that we are to be seen as different in the manner in which we live our lives and conduct ourselves in this realm. 
Now, this world will attack that as snobbish and lofty and stuffy in its ceaseless efforts to throw disdain and ridicule upon the name of Christ. This world interprets everything based on what would please self. The Lord, however, sees this as being put to death in order that Christ will reign more and more abundantly in our lives. And, as He reigns more fully from us, He will have the continued and further access to rescue those souls who do not comprehend what is truly part of the life of Christ. He will have the means to express His selfless love to the world. Where this world sees danger that needs to be snuffed out, the Lord evidences a Love for the lost of this world. It is a love that freely gave Himself unto death to comfort and to free those in vile torment and anguish. Do not be deceived! To live forth from Christ, in line with His guidance, is not an elevation of us over others. Rather, it is the complete willingness to be of servitude to those in dire need. As we read in Phil 2:5-8, Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient (even) unto death, yea, the death of the cross. 
Because of Christ, we can no longer participate in the things of this age. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, we see those desires of this age for what they are - death traps and deceptions to distract from the Lord Jesus Christ. We stand against all those elements in the purity of Christ with only the love of Christ welling forth unto those in such dire straits. This is a complete death to ourselves that Christ might live. It is not for us, but from Christ in us as the continued expression of the Love of God for this World in the giving of His only begotten Son.
The reason that I speak accordingly is that there is much going on within me on this point. The Lord is giving an indication, a very deep and forceful indication, that selfish desires and preferences are not part of His plan for His people. To be of service, we cannot set others apart as unworthy to be loved. We cannot set our preferences above the needs of others. Who we are matters not! There is no glory for us in anything we are called to do. Every focus must be on the glory of God alone! All that we are must be because of His work and only His work. What we make of ourselves is meaningless in the grand purpose of the salvation of God operating from us unto others. This is a deadening and radical departure from all that we hold dear in ourselves. It is a complete loss of everything that this world values for the single hope that Jesus Christ will be honored. Honored in all that we say.  Honored in all that we do. Honored in our every thought. 
This, then brings us back to the phrase Delight yourself in the LORD;… It is in the Lord that we find the focus of who we are and who we are to be. He is so faithful to work His mighty desire of love for the peoples of this earth into us. As we learn to obey, as we learn to read and value His Word, as we yearn to know Him more and more each day, we will find that He is the delight of our hearts. As a brief illustration, again from that which seems to be developing in our lives, Laura and I have discovered something that we probably should have known years ago. We just thank the Lord that it is being worked, by God’s Grace and Love and Mercy, in our lives at this point. We used to take trips with the idea of getting away from everything. That would sometimes even mean getting away from the demands of the Lord upon us. We sought rest and quietude in the good dining and comfort of a fine place to stay. We would take a break from our morning prayer and scripture reading for that period of time. It was not that we turned our back on the Lord. It was rather that we were not placing the value on Him and His Word that should always be in our hearts. 
It was, however, on a recent trip, that we discovered that we had much more rest and joy as we continued with the reading of scripture and prayer to begin each morning. We engaged in setting the Lord above even our vacation. We are learning that even in our free time, we need to seek to please Him and refresh ourselves in His Word and in prayer. We need to continue our joined conversation with Him. Those that were with us were invited to join in with us each morning. As that took place, there developed a great kinsman ship with each other in the Lord. We found that we thoroughly enjoyed our time together as never before. We were refreshed in the Lord. We were blessed by His Hand upon us. We found complete delight in the fellowship that we shared with each other. We have never experienced such joy in our getaways as we experienced in our joy in the Lord. We delighted ourselves in Him first, and then everything else became a pleasure. 
Does this mean that if we read scripture each morning, we will find ourselves swooning in delight that whole day? Hardly! It is not a formula. It is not a how to. It is not a means to make our time together better. No, it is a heart that finds delight in the things of the Lord. It is a desire to know Him in greater depth and service. It is a linking together of hearts that crave to know the Lordship of Jesus Christ as our life, rather than as a duty. There is a great difference when we find that it is God who is our delight in life. Many, many things that once seemed so important are set by the wayside. And we find that our valuation of the things of God increases beyond measure. 
As another personal example, it seems that the Lord has begun to work in me the recognition of the futility of who I wanted to be. Lord willing, there is a work in progress within me. That work has been startlingly evident in a manner that many of you would find less than important, but which has been a great challenge in my life. I have never been much of an outdoors person. I have found myself in great dislike of much that many others find to be thrilling and exhilarating in God’s creation of nature. My preference has always been inside, with an air-conditioner running full blast and comfortable surroundings. As we have been putting the Lord absolutely first in our time together, I have been finding myself participating in much more of the outdoor beauty of God, that I once cursed. Is this work complete? No. I still have those times of dislike of sand and bugs and dirt. However, I am finding that my attitude toward those I am with suffers me to put that aside in order to be in fellowship with them. On a recent trip to Monterey, I found myself sitting at the beach everyday with Mom and Dad and Laura and Bekka and Andreas. Not only were we sitting out in the sun, but we were concentrating on the Word of God in a Bible Outburst game. We played it for hours as many people wandered by. We had a great time outdoors with each other and with the Lord in our learning and our laughter. Now, prior to this tremendous work of God, I must admit that I would have complained and would have demanded that we leave as early as possible. Rather, because I knew the others were thoroughly enjoying it, I tried to make that time last a bit longer each day. To me, that was a miraculous work of God on my attitude for that trip. My prayer is that the Lord has the freedom to continue to work on my attitudes to the point that the only thing that matters is that He has the freedom to use even the beauty of His nature to bring about further fellowship with Him.
This is the rub, if you will. It is not a question of likes or dislikes; it is a question of the attitudes with which we approach them. Two attitudes have been very evident in me over the course of my life. One is that we can utterly refuse to participate in something because we have distaste for it in the selfishness of our heart. We set our feet in concrete and refuse to give in. I am learning that we need to ask the Lord to set aside that self desire and rather manifest His delight in our fellowship one with another. 
The second selfish attitude that is being assaulted by the death knell of the Lord is that of going along with the plans, but doing it with a martyr complex. I am doing this thing because you are making me do it even though I hate the very thought of it. I’ll go along to keep you from hating me, but I refuse to enjoy it. Then, the whole time of being together, we grouse and grump or are completely sullen. What a concrete expression of selfishness that is. 
Instead, we need to learn to set aside our likes and our dislikes. We need to learn to seek after what would please the Lord in our time together. So what if everyone else wants to do something that we really do not care for, we are there together. We have spent time together in the Word of God each morning. We have fellowshipped with each other in prayer. Now, we choose to fellowship with each other and with God in being together in this activity or that venture. So it is not what I want. It is what the Lord wants and I will delight in it because I am learning to delight in Him.
Oh the joy of the Lord that is found in learning to trust Him and to delight in Him as He deals with our attitudes of self. He is so faithful in using family and friends to bring our selfish attitudes and desires to the surface, exposing the filth that He needs to cleanse from our beings. He uses our loved ones to break asunder our hearts of stone, and to implant hearts of flesh that crave to delight in Him, especially in our every dealing with our loved ones.
The Lord is very faithful to bring us to the point of becoming delighted in Him. One of the Biblical examples is found in 2 Chron 15:15 And all Judah rejoiced concerning the oath, for they had sworn with their whole heart and had sought Him earnestly, and He let them find Him. So the LORD gave them rest on every side. This was a people who had lived in war from the onset of their expulsion from Egypt. There was very little time in which they would find peace within their borders. They were attacked on all fronts, even from within. In this passage, however, because they sought after the Lord with all their heart, God made His presence known unto them and gave them a period of peace in which they could find their delight in Him.
This is so indicative of what the Lord does in our hearts and lives. When we are seeking after our own means, after our own glory, after those things that we want from this world, we find ourselves entrapped and surrounded by all manner of doubts and fears and attacks. We are never at peace. We are constantly running here and there in a vain attempt to find some place of shelter. Finally, when we have exhausted ourselves and have no other place to turn, God calls to us in His Grace and Mercy. We begin to sense that we are missing something, so we start to seek after Him to make Himself known to us. We begin to set aside those earthly desires that so easily beset us. We start to place our focus on those things that are of value in Him. As we seek wholeheartedly after Him, He does not hide Himself from us. Rather, He reveals Himself in all the fullness of Our Lord Jesus Christ. If we seek Him earnestly, He will be found in surety and in comfort and in rest. What better call is there to find our delight in Him than to seek Him with all our heart? We need to set our beings upon all that He desires; asking Him to become our only desire. 
This is why the passage continues with the phrase… And He will give you the desires of your heart… When we trust in the Lord with all our heart; when we see Him in all His faithfulness; when the Holy Spirit implants that heart which chooses to be completely faithful to Him; when we delight in Him and all the things that He brings into our lives; when we can offer thanksgiving unto Him for all the work that He is doing in our lives, that is when we receive the desires of our heart. 
How can we be so certain of this promise? It is because the desires of our heart will be those same desires of His heart. We will be one in accord with Him and with each other, in Christ, as to what we desire. As Christ only desired that which would please the Father, and as the Father only desired that which would glorify the Son, so are we included in this glorious reality. We find that our desires become that of Christ, to please the Father completely in our lives. As His desire is the glorification of His Son, so too are our desires set in the same focus of completely glorifying Christ. Our lives become centered in the joy of pleasing the Father in complete obedience to His Word and to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Because we value His Word, we desire to know it and to learn more and more about Him through the study of His Word. This is fully pleasing to the Father since His Word is the revelation of the Son. Since it is through the Holy Spirit that the Word is made life in us, we desire to honor Him in all that He guides us into. We long to obey Him with all our beings. We are wrapped together in the same desires that motivated God to so love this world. He sent His Only Begotten Son to rescue mankind from the sin and depravity which prevented our immediate access to Him. That same love now permeates our lives and we desire to bring Christ to the lost of this world for their salvation unto God. 
I realize that this is all intertwined in tight ropes of God’s immense Love, but that is what we desire after all. We long to know Him in all His fullness. We desire to see that He is glorified above all the heaven and earth with every breath of His creation. We seek to have all our brethren know the love that we know in Christ. We share together in that heart that is willing to lay down our lives for others as Christ laid down His life for us. Because we delight in the Lord, our desires are focused upon His delight in us. That is only possible as we are completely unto Him. And, this is seemingly the most important aspect of this entire promise, His desires are certain to be accomplished. He will have that which His heart is set upon. That includes our complete placement into everything that He has purposed in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior!
This is the difference in what we desire in Christ and what we desire in ourselves. Those things that are earthly desires are futile. They will never satisfy or ease the cravings of our self-beings. They will soon be replaced with other desires which inflame our senses and our thoughts into disobedience and depravity. Even when it seems that we have gotten most of our earthly desires, the result is often not really what we wanted. There is a caution that exemplifies this truth, “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it” which indicates that what we wish for is often done with little understanding of the full implications of our desire. That is what is true of our earthly desires.
When, however, our desires are after the Lord in all His fullness, we have no such hesitation or lack of fulfillment. He always meets the desires of our hearts after Him with all His Love, and Grace, and Mercy. He does that which He chooses to do on our behalf, and we are always completely thankful for the result. Even if it does not seem to be something to thank the Lord for in our earthly understanding, His way of meeting our desires after Him is always fully accomplished. It is done to His glory and to our best interest in His Heart. We often do not understand until much later in our life, as His understanding and His revelation of what was truly the issue becomes evident. Then, when the truth is in plain view, we thank Him with all our hearts that He did exactly that which He accomplished in response to our heart’s desire after Him.
This is the spiritual outcome of His Word for us contained in Rom 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. And in Col 2:2+3, Paul writes, My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding , in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It is in Christ that we must have our desires completely focused! It is in Christ that we must look to find the understanding that transcends any earthly wisdom! It is in Christ that all the promises of God find their complete and absolute fulfillment! It is in Christ that we will receive all the desires of our heart! It is in Christ and Christ Alone that we have everything. Let our desires, the full desires of our entire beings, be set in Christ for His glory alone! Let us proclaim the truth that all Glory is to be unto our God, Father, Son and Spirit, now and evermore!
Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it.