Nougat 19

Yesterday, one of us raised a question about today’s Holy Nougat. It is my hope that our reflection will be beneficial to others of us.

“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭37‬:‭4‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The question was

What does it mean to delight ourselves in God, and How do we do so?

For reference in the moment, I reverted to Matthew 6:33, which says ‘above all else, prioritize learning the ways of God …’ And to a great extent, it is so. For when we delight ourselves in God, our priority is God’s kingdom. But there’s more.

The transliteration of the original offers the word ‘pliable’ as a synonym for delight. We could then hear, (you are to;) ‘make yourself pliable to YHWH…’ or, ’be like putty in God’s hands’. I thought of parents with children. In Jamaica, we sometimes say a favorite child has the parent wrapped around their little finger. Usually that child has strong negotiation power with the parent. Given that we are the ones who are to delight ourselves in the Lord, it feels however like we ought to respond to God’s desires.

And that also took me to reflection on romantic relationships, particularly young love, where one partner has stars in their eyes, and is willing to do what the lover says, always quotes the ‘cute’ things their lover said, etc. Using the analogy, we could see that as we delight in God, our desire to please is amplified and by extension, we could say ‘God have me soft enuh!’

The blessed distinction between the average romantic young love and our relationship with God is that our love begins as a response to God’s love. We prioritize God when we realize how precious God is to us. However, when we think about all God’s done for us through the course of time, we can conclude that we are willing to ‘submit’ to God, to do whatever God says. It means that we have to discern what God desires, so that we might be compliant.

And there’s the ‘annoying’ sweet talk, when couples Love on each other all the time. In a relationship with God, we can consider that as praise and prayer. One of the epistles says ‘pray without ceasing’. It’s the same thing! Of course, we expect young lovers – at least in my time – to be constantly remembering what the love said or did. They are often bragging about the that best Lover of all. Isn’t that also equal to testimony or bearing witness?

So, are we delighting ourselves in our Lord, and if so, what’s keeping us from doing so?

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May all we seek be found in Christ