Carl Pollard
“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
- Psalm 37:4
One of the most loved and frequently quoted verses in Scripture is Psalm 37:4. At first glance it can sound like a blank check: “Love God and you’ll get whatever you want.” But a closer look reveals something far deeper and more beautiful. The verse is not primarily about getting what we want; it is about God changing what we want until He Himself becomes the great desire of our hearts.
Psalm 37 is an acrostic wisdom psalm written by David in his old age (v. 25). Its main concern is the age-old question, “Why do the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer?” David’s answer is trust and delight in the Lord rather than envy or anger toward evildoers (vv. 1–8). In this setting, verse 4 is not a prosperity promise detached from reality; it is godly counsel for people who feel overlooked while others seem to “have it all.”
The Hebrew verb translated “delight,” is intensive and rare. It means to be delicate or pampered, to take exquisite pleasure in something. It is the same root used in Isaiah 66:11 for a nursing baby delighting in its mother’s milk, total satisfaction, soft enjoyment, unhurried pleasure.
So David is not commanding gritted-teeth duty (“Try really hard to like God”). He is inviting us into a relationship where God Himself becomes our highest pleasure, our richest feast, our greatest reward.
The Promise: “He Will Give You the Desires of Your Heart.” Grammatically, the second half of the verse can be read two ways, both of which are true and complementary:
1. Causative reading (most translations): When you delight in the Lord, He grants the desires that are now in your heart—desires that have been transformed by your delight in Him. The more we enjoy God, the more our desires align with what He loves to give.
2. Identical reading (favored by many Hebrew scholars): “He will give you the desires of your heart” means He will place new desires in your heart. In other words, the reward of delighting in God is that God Himself becomes the desire of our heart.
John Piper once summarized this second reading: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” Psalm 37:4 is therefore the biblical basis for what has come to be called Christian Hedonism, the conviction that God is not honored by reluctant obedience but by hearts that have found their deepest joy in Him.
To “delight yourself in the Lord” isn’t a feeling we try to manufacture; it is a discipline we pursue by faith:
- Meditate on who God is (His beauty, holiness, love, grace).
- Remember what God has done, especially in the cross and resurrection.
- Pray the prayers of Scripture that ask God to change our tastes (Ps 90:14; Ps 27:4; Ps 73:25–26). Tastebuds change, I used to hate onions…now I love them! Same thing happens in Christ. The longer you seek Him, the more you desire Him. The world loses its sway.
- Fight the fight of faith to see and savor Jesus above all competing pleasures.
When we do, something happens: the things we once thought we couldn’t live without begin to lose their grip, and we discover that the Giver is infinitely more satisfying than any of His gifts.
Psalm 37:4 is not a promise that God will fund every whim of a heart still curved in on itself. It is a promise that if we will seek our pleasure in God, He will make sure we are never disappointed. He will either satisfy our (new, God-shaped) desires, or, better yet, He will satisfy us with Himself.
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
- Psalm 73:25–26
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