My message today is on finding delight in advice.
Throughout our lives, we will live and listen to a lot of things. We listen to people–we listen to the media; we listen to teachers; we (or at least some of us, unfortunately) listen to the noise of social media–in a way you are listening to me right now. But we need to be very careful about who we listen to. The quality of our whole lives depends on the influence of the advice we hear and take. My mom used to say to me, “Never take the advice or listen to anyone who themselves did not listen to the Lord.” I also learned that I needed to love receiving the advice of those who loved and cared about me.
We cannot have or live the life possible to us when we live only on the advice we give ourselves. We must allow for something or someone else to help us know what we do not know. In Psalms 37:4 scripture gives us this advice: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” This scripture is telling us that our attitudes should be to find our relationship with the Lord the most delightful thing. I have come to love loving Him; that is my attitude and simple delight toward Him.
But there is something more with this scripture than just advice. The most well-meaning person giving us advice cannot bring that advice to its intended conclusion. Only the advice we get from the Lord can do that. With this scripture we are told to delight ourselves in Him and He shall give us the desires of our heart. Consider what this means: advice with a delight as a reward. When we learn to delight in our relationship with the Lord, He returns our delight back toward us in the form of His own delight with us and with the heart and attitude we have toward Him. He does this by searching our hearts when we don’t know it and then giving us the desires that He finds there when we don’t expect it. He loves to do this. Our delight in Him comes back to us as His delight with us.
You may still be missing the significance of what this means. Some of us may find delight in a quiet evening, or a favorite book, or a child, or in a favorite food. Our attitude toward having those things is always joyful. Spiritual delight is like dancing before Him when He may not be looking. It’s never accepting hurt because you Love Him or love others. It’s like signing of Him when only you can hear yourself. It is living like heaven is right here on earth. When He is our ultimate delight, our attitude and our heart are always toward having Him. And when we set our hearts to face Him this way, He delights to give us the desires of our hearts, even those we have not offered to Him in prayer. Yes, when we delight in Him, He gives us many of our desires before we ever ask. You will have very few unanswered prayers when you learn to delight in Him. So learn to find delight in taking advice from the Lord. Delight yourself in Him today, and He will give back to you His own delight in you.
Live a Delivered Life. Love you.
Live Delivered 