Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and no doubt most of us are eagerly awaiting the day to spend with our significant other; or possibly you’re eagerly awaiting the eventual day you will spend with a significant other who is unknown at the moment.
I think we all fall safely in one of those two categories. Either way, there’s a scripture that is used often when talking of matters of the heart in our church world.
“Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4
A lovely and hopeful verse, no? Here’s where it gets tricky: we focus so much on this verse that we forget those surrounding it…Psalm 37: 1-40 is just as powerful, lovely and hopeful – but it isn’t all sparkles either. This particular chapter is named in the NASB bible as “Security of Those Who Trust in the Lord, and Insecurity of the Wicked.”
Ouch. A little more to the point, isn’t it? We won’t go into the insecurities of the wicked, but I do want to focus for a minute on the security of trusting in Him…and the benefits and effects on our personal heartsong.
Let’s drill into one particular portion here that seems applicable at this time of year, starting with verse 3 (thru 9):
Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light
And your judgment as the noonday.
Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.
Cease from anger and forsake wrath;
Do not fret; it leads only to evildoing.
For evildoers will be cut off,
But those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.
What seems to stand out the most here is trust. It’s so much easier for us to say we delight in the Lord – in our church functions, in our Sunday services and even in our small groups – but the trick is learning to trust him with our day-to-day. To allow our heartsong to be one that says “Lord, everyday, let me live, love and look like you.” To make our everyday relationship one with him that is beautiful, that is full of surrender and is one of growth and wholeness in him.
What is a heartsong? A heartsong is the desires of our heart that we see in verse 4 of Psalm 37. It’s the desires that inspire us, the dreams we wish for and the goals we set – the heartsong is the guiding light for the way we live our lives. If we are truly praying for our hearts to look like Jesus than our hearts desires will be direct reflections of His desires for us, for His church and for the greater good of the Kingdom.
Our heartsong will be the determining factor in how we choose to live our lives. It will be the determining factor of how we choose to love other people – whether we know them or not – and whether we love them well. Our heartsong will be the determining factor of what we look like, not just outward appearances of clothing, but what our attitude and body language portray.
Our Creator, our Savior, the lover of our souls desires to have a one-on-one relationship with us greater than any relationship we could have with any person on earth – but in order to do that we have to trust Him. We have to delight in Him. And we have to wait patiently on Him.
He links the treasures of our life to the desires of our heart. Our heartsong is our cry for the treasures we value, the desires that fill our heart and the things that fill our mind, time and space.
Does your heartsong reflect surrender? Or is it time to reevaluate the desires that fill your soul?