Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4, ESV
This year my New Year’s resolution was to work on my problematic indecisiveness. Having options is not always a good thing for me. So, I spent the first part of the year, making decisions, using various methods. Some of them were hilarious but effective. In the end, I had a carefully composed plan for the next 5 years of my life. Then, everything changed on March 13, 2020.
When I woke up on March 13, I found a whole new world filled with people desperately trying to find bleach, water, and hand sanitizer. Those were things were last minute purchases to add to a stockpile at home, now they were disappearing from shelves.
In Madison, NJ at every single store, including the gas stations, we were in long lines worrying as we mentally counted the number of staple items at home. We were waiting on store clerks to tell us that we were in luck because the store did have that one item that we could not live without as we prepared for something none of us had ever experienced.
Today, August 24, I have come to accept that the things I’d plan are no more. Now, I have a new normal and with it a barrage of decisions that I didn’t anticipate. What am I to do? How do I decide?
The answer was in Psalm 37:4, which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires[1]of your heart.”
Most of us read this as a guarantee that all that we desire will be granted if we take delight in God. As I was studying the passage for today, I learned that in Hebrew, the word translated as desire, also means, request or petition. The answer was in that tiny detail.
I re-read the scripture and substituted the word desire with petition. My heart did indeed have a petition. It was crying out, “God help.” That’s when I heard the voice of God say, “God will read your heart to hear your petitions, requests, and desires.” In other words, I am not alone in this new normal trying to make new decisions. God will “give” me those decisions.
Maybe that’s you and you are trying to figure out what’s next? Where to go? What to do? How to do it? I encourage you to consider the promise in Psalm 37:4 and allow God to “give” you the desires, petitions, requests of your heart by reading your heart.
[1] Desire: in Hebrew, mish·’a·lot, which means “request, petition”