David [00:00:00]:
Two weeks ago we began exploring Psalm 37:4. Psalm 37:4 in the new King James Version says, delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. We began this study by understanding what it meant to delight yourself in the Lord. We learned that delighting in the Lord is a choice, not just an emotion. We also saw that delighting is not a transactional relationship, but is a transformational relationship. And we discuss several ways we can demonstrate our delight in the Lord.
David [00:00:58]:
Those being know him, become one with him, honor him above all else, give him preference, know his way, his lifestyle, his way of thinking and doing, know His Word, his precepts, his instruction, his direction. And then walk in His Word, walk in his way, Live as he directs us. As we delight in the Lord, we come closer and closer to him, and he delights in us. His love flows to us and through us, and his blessings flow to us. Last week we explored what the desires of your heart means. We saw that delight comes before desire. There’s an intention to this order in this verse. Delight then desire.
David [00:02:00]:
Desire isn’t a physical emotion, but a deep, heartfelt yearning and longing of the heart. Delighting in the Lord shapes the desires of our heart as we know him and he comes to know us and we desire him more intimately. God’s timetable is not always ours as we are transformed through delighting in Him. God is waiting for the right season to fulfill our desires. And a key principle that we learned and talked about last week was this Waiting seasons are not wasted seasons, they are shaping seasons. Shaping seasons are ongoing times of growth whereby God’s spirit we are being transformed from glory to glory. Which brings us to today. Today we will look into the key that creates this flow of blessing.
David [00:03:11]:
Psalm 37:4, here in the new King James Version says, delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. He shall give you that word give there means to personally deliver to you or hand to you. Wow. He shall personally deliver or hand to you the desire of your heart. God, who is perfect love, created us for Himself to love. And here’s one of the key characteristics of love. Love always gives. God is a giver.
David [00:04:01]:
It’s just who he is. He gives out of his love. He gives so that we can have. And one of the first things God gave us when he created us, he gave us his nature. God first gave of Himself to all human beings and that we are Made in His image, he bestowed on us his own likeness so that we might enjoy and delight in the uniqueness that is in the person of God alone. Now in the open heaven called the Garden of Eden. And so what we see here is that at the beginning of time, before the fall of man, heaven was open over the Garden of Eden. God came and went.
David [00:05:03]:
So in the open heaven called the Garden of Eden, God gave Himself in fellowship to Adam and Eve. And here’s something that a lot of people don’t know is the Hebrew word there for Eden means this. It means delight, luxury, or pleasure. So that could have been translated the Garden of delight, the Garden of luxury, the garden of pleasure. Wow. That meaning draws out our attention to God’s original purpose for us. He is a good, good Father who created us for his pleasure and delight and created us for his. For our delight in Him.
David [00:05:56]:
He gave us his nature. In doing this, we had the capacity and the opportunity to truly engage with him and relate to Him. Everything about us was designed to experience his world of delight, his world of pleasure, his world of luxury. Hallelujah. Our interaction with him by delighting in him is one of the ways we experience his endless goodness and discover our reason for being. Exploring the nature of God is in some ways a discovery of who we are. Yielding to God’s word and resisting the devil’s plans for us enables us to carry his presence, the Lord’s presence, His nature and assignment into the earth, which is the second thing the Lord gave us. He gave us the earth.
David [00:07:07]:
This world was created for our enjoyment. God gave the whole earth to Adam and Eve. Let’s Read this in Genesis 1:26 28 New King James Version and see what God did here. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.
David [00:07:52]:
Then God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Wow. God gave us the earth and everything in it, and blessed it and said, go out there and enlarge it. Be fruitful and multiply it. Psalm 115, 16 verse 16.
David [00:08:25]:
And the new king James Version says this. The Heaven, even the heavens are the Lord’s. But the Earth he has given to the children of men. Even today the Earth is ours. We have authority here, dominion here, rulership here. It’s ours to steward and used for his glory. With this gift was this responsibility to bring everything outside of the garden into the beauty, the wonder and the divine order that was within the garden. God’s goal here through man, was to see the entire planet transformed into the wonder of continual delight, luxury and pleasure that they experienced in Eden.
David [00:09:20]:
All because of our relationship with the Father. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. We are all a part of God’s family. And this is a family operation. God’s plan to create us his image, then empower us to co labor with him, is to bring him glory. This is one reason we see all the good here on the earth today.
David [00:09:55]:
In giving us the earth, God empowered us to be fruitful and multiply. Being fruitful is producing something, it’s being productive. Multiplication is in taking it to the world. His creativity working in us and through us, has brought us to where we are in this world today. The phrase and God blessed them in the Hebrew means prospered by God. So Adam and Eve was prospered by God when he blessed them, now prospered by God, there means empowered. So God, it could be said, empowered by God. God empowered them.
David [00:10:43]:
God empowered them to advance, to make progress, to succeed and to profit those four things. And if you stop and look around you today, you see that we’ve made advancements, we’ve made progress, we’ve succeeded and we’ve created profit in all of this. I mean, look around. Not only have we advanced, we’re still advancing. Not only have we made progress, we’re still making progress. Not only have we succeeded, we are still experiencing success. We are finding profit in all we have gained and created. All because of what God has given us.
David [00:11:32]:
It’s not from our own strength, our own ability, our own creativity. It’s because God blessed mankind. God prospered mankind. God empowered us to advance, to make progress, to succeed and to profit. God gave us this earth, the power to maximize it for his glory. Hallelujah. Then the third thing the Lord gave us, he gave us life. He gave us life.
David [00:12:12]:
God gave us a world full of beauty, a world full of provision. A world full of purpose. Life, breath and everything else are divine gifts. The life we’re living today is a divine gift. Isaiah 42, 5, and this is from the amplified classic. Thus says the Lord, our God, he who created the heavens and stretched them forth. He who spread abroad the earth and that which comes out of it, he who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. Every day he’s giving us breath and life.
David [00:13:02]:
He created us. He formed and fashioned the earth. He gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. He breathed the breath of life into man. His breath became our breath and his life has become our life. And that’s true for every person on this planet. Acts 17:25 in the Amplified says this. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he lacked anything.
David [00:13:37]:
For it is He Himself who gives life and breath and all things to all people. We’re not self made. We are sustained daily by God’s gifts. He gives us all things. Every person on this planet is living and breathing because of God’s gift of life to them. Whether they believe in him or not, whether they follow him or not. It’s because of him that we are all here and all alive. Hallelujah.
David [00:14:18]:
God loves us and he’s sustaining us and this whole planet. Now the reality is this. If His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, were to leave this world and God was totally gone from this world, this environment, we wouldn’t be able to exist any longer. It’d be chaos. It would all cave in. Everything would die and be gone. What we see here is even after the fall of mankind, God has continued to demonstrate his love for man by giving life and breath and all things to all people. Everyone.
David [00:15:04]:
Everyone. Why? God is love. Love, much like faith, cannot be idle. It is active. Love is always flowing. Love is always active. Love is always being moved to pour into others, bless others, work in others. God, our Father, so desires to be in relationship with us that he gave us the greatest gift of all.
David [00:15:43]:
This gift was not given out of obligation, but out of his passionate love for us. And we see this talked about in John 3:16. God gave His Son Jesus Christ. John 3:16 in the New King James Version says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that He gave his only begotten Son. John 3:16 in the Amplified. I love the way it says it here. For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that he even gave up his only begotten, unique Son. So that whoever believes in, trusts, in, clings to, relies on him, shall not perish, come to destruction, or be lost, but have eternal, everlasting life.
David [00:16:47]:
Wow. Let me read that again to you. Listen to this. For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world, that he even gave up his only begotten, unique Son, so that whoever believes in, trusts, in clings to relies on him, shall not perish or come to destruction, or be lost, but have eternal, everlasting life. Through Jesus we receive forgiveness of our sins and thereby we receive eternal life and sonship. As I said a moment ago, we are part of the family. Family. The family of Jesus Christ.
David [00:17:38]:
The family of God our Father. And we are joint heirs with Him. The blood of Jesus restored us to the place of delightful sons and daughters of the King, so that ongoing fellowship with the Father God is possible forever and all, always, throughout eternity. No end. As we have seen, the Bible makes it quite clear that fullness of joy is found in the presence of Our King. Psalm 16:11 New King James Version it says this, you will show me the path of life through in your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures ever more. Hallelujah.
David [00:18:37]:
Hallelujah. Praise God. His nearness is our joy, and our nearness is his joy. Hallelujah. Joy is an expression of someone who has found pleasure, delight, pleasure and delight. And delight finds pleasure and joy in knowing the Lord. And out of his delight, pleasure and joy in knowing you from his love he will give you the deep hidden longings of your heart. That’s my translation of Psalm 37, the deep hidden longings of your heart.
David [00:19:24]:
Hallelujah. Romans 8:32 in the new King James Version says, he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things. Listen to that last statement there. Also freely give us all things. He’s giving us what? What Christ came to do for us. He gave freely. We didn’t deserve it. We didn’t have to earn it.
David [00:20:03]:
We don’t have to work for it. We just had to believe and receive. And he freely gives us all things. With Christ Jesus. The cross is the ultimate proof of God’s giving nature. His heart’s desire is to freely give us all things as we trust and rely on Him. His gifts are perfect, they are free. They are full and large.
David [00:20:39]:
They are beyond measure. God is a giver, and he desires to give to you because he loves you. Today we get to live the ultimate dream. Not only is he with us, he lives in us. Delight also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. God loves you. Receive what he has for you. Let’s bow our heads in prayer.
David [00:21:25]:
Father, we thank you for your word to us today. I thank you, Lord, that your word declares over and over your heart and your desire to love us and give to us, to bless us, to do more for us than we can imagine, as you said in Ephesians, more than we dare ask or think infinitely beyond. Our highest prayers, thoughts, hopes, dreams, imaginations. Father, God, you’re right there wanting to work in us and through us, with us, for us to see your heart, your purpose come forth through us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you’ve given us. Thank you for all your blessings, Lord.
David [00:22:27]:
Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father, for giving us a privilege and opportunity to partner with you and sharing your goodness and your mercy with all of the world. And we thank you for it, Father. We praise you for it. We praise you for it. We praise you for it. In Jesus name, amen.
David [00:22:52]:
Hallelujah. Delight in the Lord this week, every day, find some way to delight in him and then share it with somebody else. Testify of God’s goodness to those around you. Pastor Conia is coming now with a closing thought and a prayer. God bless you. Have a great weekend.
