My room is mostly packed now- boxes scattered around the house, clothes needing to be transferred into the waiting vehicle, homework assignments already demanding attention, and a list of goodbye’s I’d honestly rather not say anytime soon. I guess that’s what happens when you pack up “life” and “home” of 22 years and move it somewhere else. A lot of change, a lot of transition.
This past week I have been meditating on Psalm 37. I need to confess, I have always had a “problem” with this particular psalm. I can’t count the number of times someone has quoted to me Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart” and then proceeded to tell me how when they just “trusted that God was really enough” He gave them exactly what they wanted. This still frustrates me to this day as I hear people saying, “Well when you love God He just gives you what you want.”
I got up early on my last day at camp with my deliciously brewed fresh coffee, and headed into my time with the Lord. My mind has been in a million different places this week thinking of all I need to get done, and I distinctly remembering an argument in my heart arising with the Lord, “How about we deal with my bad theology another day Lord? How about a nice, happy psalm that doesn’t bother me so much, and then I can get back to worrying about all the things I need to do. Great plan, huh?”
And being the loving Father that He is, He took me to Psalm 37 anyway. In this beautiful chapter of 40 verses, I counted at least 15 commands given by the Lord.
Trust in the Lord, do good, dwell in the land, befriend faithfulness, commit your way to Him, trust in Him, be still, wait patiently, refrain from anger, forsake wrath, fret not yourself, turn away from evil, wait for the Lord, keep His way, be not envious.
In the midst of a chapter about the Lord giving us the desires of our hearts, there are a lot of things He tells us to do in the process. I see many themes running across the verses: waiting, turning away from sin and running to the Lord, and trusting Him with the process. I was struck with how much we all love to focus on the second part of verse 4 “and he will give you the desires of your heart” rather than the first part “Delight yourself in the Lord.”
Delight yourself in the Lord. That statement must beg the question, “Just who is this God that demands delighting in?” And may I just suggest friend, so often He is NOT the “God” we have created or invented in our foolishness. No, He is far more beautiful. Far more faithful. His goodness so much deeper than we can fathom.
He is the God and we are the people of Romans 1. This beautiful God who has revealed Himself ever since the creation of the world, and we the people who have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for idols and trinkets.
We who have said “I’ll take the desires of my heart God, but not You.”
I’ll take the salvation thing because I want out of hell, but I refuse to be a part of You refining me in any way.
I’ll love you when things are going well Lord, but when they start to go crazy, I think my plan will work better than yours.
I’ll love and pursue trinkets. But forget Your glory.
And I would confess that I do this countless times every single day. I would trade the glory of this most beautiful God who demands delighting in, for trinkets.
Trinkets.
According to the dictionary a trinket is defined as “anything of trivial value.”
Anything, anything compared to the infinite beauty of personally KNOWING this Yahweh God of the Bible- is a trinket.
And oh, how in great pain have I discovered how much I love my trinkets.
I love my schedule, I love my relationships in my life, I love my room- a place of retreat and memories, I love my ministry, my church family, my car, my cup of coffee in the morning, my cell phone and computer, my pictures….my list could go on and on.
But all of this, though good as some may be- are trinkets compared to KNOWING Jesus Christ intimately. And perhaps THAT is the promise of Psalm 37:4. That if you deeply pursue knowing Him above all other things, above all the trinkets- if that becomes the thing that takes over our lives and turns them upside down, then through that our desires will be so morphed into His that we will delight in ALL that He gives us.
And so maybe, as terrified as I am of starting over in a brand new city, and as much as this doesn’t seem to fit into my “desires”, as I follow Jesus there and know Him in a deeper, most intimate way than I ever have- being in Chicago will start to tug at my heart strings as much as Eureka has. And I’ll find it as a very sacred place where Jesus met me and did some really beautiful things in my heart. And I’ll look back at that “transition” that seemed so overwhelming at the time, and I will smile as to how God changed my heart and revealed His glory to me in a brand new way. And I’ll raise my hands and thank Him for taking me through those waters.
And may this God replace in my heart:
My fears for a steady assurance in His promises
My unbelief for an unshaken hope in His goodness
My closed-fisted hands for empty hands raised to praise a Glorious King
My “control” for complete abandonment to His purposes and ways
My tears for the oil of gladness
My heaviness for a garment of praise
My complacency for a deeper desire and pursuit to know Him
The “me-centered” story I so often create for the God-centered
AW Tozer once said that the most important thing about us is what we believe about God. And oh, the utter importance that we believe the RIGHT things about our Loving Father. I would encourage you to take time to meditate on the entire chapter of Psalm 37. I don’t think this chapter is really focused on us in any way-rather it’s about this beautiful God who invites us to trade in our trinkets to passionately delight in HIM, pursue His glory, and marvel at depths of His faithfulness to His children.
He makes some phenomenal promises for those who choose to trade in trinkets for glory. And may I suggest that those promises are far better than us getting what we think we want.
We get HIM. That’s the greatest promise ever made.
Trinkets or glory?
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