Corrie Ten Boom wrote, “Look around, you’ll be distressed. Look within, you’ll be depressed. Look to the Lord, you’ll be at rest.”
“I wake up sad every day, and have to preach the gospel to myself.”
Psalm 5:3 says, “In the morning, O Lord, you will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to Thee, and I will eagerly watch.”
“I will joyfully sing of Your lovingkindness in the morning.” (Psalm 59:16)
The Commitment Involved
It is important at this point to realize that there is a commitment involved on our part if we are going to delight ourselves in the Lord. The Hebrew verb here is in the Hithpael tense, which is reflexive. It means that you are doing this action for yourself. “Delight yourself” in the Lord. This indicates that there is effort and commitment involved on your part. You must choose to do it; you must give effort, you must turn your mind towards it; you must exercise the disciplines required to achieve it.
C.S. Lewis, in what I consider to be one of his greatest works, his sermon on “The Weight of Glory”, writes that Greek and Latin students, when they are very young, and are first learning the language, have to do the very difficult work of just memorizing words and paradigms, which can very dry and dull indeed. Few people are willing to give the time and attention necessary for the mastery of those languages. But, he said, when they have mastered them, then they have the rapturous delights of reading the Greek and Latin classics in those original languages, which few today can enjoy. But the “rapture and delight” do not come at first; they only come after much discipline and arduous labor that it took to get to that delight.
What we need to understand is that it can be like that in our walk with God, too. When you hear the pastor say: you can find delight by walking with God every day in prayer and in His word, you may go home and begin to read your Bible, and say some prayers, but you don’t find any “joyous rapture” in it! Indeed you may not. Perhaps God may give you a foretaste of joy in those first devotional times – or it MAY be at first for you just like those Greek & Latin students that Lewis was referring to; at first it may just be a discipline for you: you read the word; you start to learn what it means; you sing some songs; pray some prayers. At first it may be merely discipline – but if you are truly a Christian (that is a key factor!), and if you continue in it – then you WILL find delight and joy from your time with Him. And like those students of the classical languages, you will grow to have more and more and more delight, the more you know Him. Our God is Infinite – and the pleasures and joys that He has to offer us are infinite. “In His right hand there are pleasures forever” – the pleasures He has to offer us will never cease! But we my need to discipline ourselves at first to begin to find those delights that are available in Him.
Read the rest of this on Pastor Shawn Thomas' blog.
“The dross of my trials gathered a scum of fears in the fire, doubtings, impatience, unbelief, challenging of Providence as sleeping, and not regarding my sorrow; but my goldsmith, Christ, was pleased to take off the scum, and burn it in the fire. And blessed be my Refiner, he hath made the metal better … now His love in my heart casteth a mighty heat; He knoweth the desire I hath to enjoy Him … Love, love defieth reproaches … I am further from yielding to the course of defection, than when I came hither. Sufferings blunt not the fiery edge of love; cast love in the floods of hell, it will swim above; it careth not for the world’s plaistered offers. It hath pleased my Lord so to line my heart with the love of my Lord Jesus, that … I laugh at the world’s golden pleasures, and at this dirty idol, that the sons of Adam worship. This worm-eaten god is that which my soul has fallen out of love with.” (to William Gordon, p. 101-102)
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