I love how John Piper summarizes the point in this short video. We often think we have to choose between the Biblical mandate to glorify God and the human desire to be happy. But the truth is that our happiness can only be found in a commitment to glorify God.
“Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:3-4
The Psalms overflow with praise for the Lord. The psalmists write with gratitude and joy over who God is and all He has done. Psalm 37:4 is one of the most quoted and least understood verses in the Bible (probably coming in after Jeremiah 29:11 and Romans 8:28). This verse is not telling us that if we worship in the right way God will give us whatever we want. If we get our gratitude right or our words right or our heart right, everything in our lives will work out as we think it should. That is simply not the Biblical message, nor is it the point of this verse.
Rather, Psalm 37:4 gives us the heart of God’s invitation: if you want the deepest longings of your heart satisfied you must learn to delight yourself in the Lord. Only there, when we learn to enjoy God, will we find our hearts full and truly joyful.
“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” John Piper
As we learn to delight in the Lord our hearts increasingly desire more of Him. He becomes the desire of our heart. The beauty and wonder of this truth is that we can be satisfied in God even when our earthly lives are miserable. In fact, that is when our joy in God is actually most possible. When we are comfortable and successful in life it is hard to know if we are really delighting in God or if we are happy only because of the gifts He has given us. But when the comforts of life are stripped away the reality of our joy in the Lord is revealed (or not). This is why Paul can say, “Rejoice in the Lord, always” (Php. 4:4). And this is why James can write, “Count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:3).
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
God alone is the source of life, joy, peace and power. Our problem is not that we seek these things too much but that we settle too easily. We struggle to connect with God in prayer, so we settle for the excitement of a football game (either kind). We find the Bible hard to understand, so we turn to lighter fiction. We experience joy in God so infrequently that we look for the small samplings of joy we can find in human relationships and worldly successes, considering those the best we are likely to find.
“O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.” Jeremiah 17:13
Jesus is the fountain of living water. In Him we find the water that truly satisfies our souls. Come to Jesus and drink of the water of life that only He offers. Jesus IS JOY. Connect with Him and you will experience joy. Apart from Him you will be thirsty and find that the wells we dig in this world don’t actually hold water.
Let’s follow the path of the wise men – seeking Jesus, bowing before Him as king and serving Him with all of our hearts!