God is not a Vending Machine

Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
(Psalm 37:4-7)

It’s common to see this verse used in a way that it seems like God HAS to give us what we want. Why? Because it’s interpreted by many to read that God has promised to give us what we desire. But that is an incomplete reading – the full context of this verse is not that God a cosmic vending machine, destined to give us what we want after we put in our coin and push the right button. That’s because we read right past the very beginning of this verse: “Take delight in the Lord…”

There are two other verses that will help understand what this means and whether we are truly delighting ourselves in the Lord or not:

“I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8)

“For in my inner being I delight in God’s law.” (Romans 7:22)

How do we delight ourselves in the Lord? By doing what pleases him and putting his law in our hearts. Then, as we are sanctified, he gives us the desires of our heart. Here’s how Matthew Henry put it:

“He has not promised to gratify all the appetites of the body and the humours of the fancy, but to grant all the desires of the heart, all the cravings of the renewed sanctified soul. What is the desire of the heart of a good man? It is this, to know, and love, and live to God, to please him and to be pleased in him.”

So when we seek His heart first then He will fill us with the desires that are appropriate for us.

• We allow Him to work out the circumstances of our lives.
• We allow Him time to help us work out of the longings of our heart are truly what He desires for us, and how they fit into His plan for our life.
• We also allow ourselves to let those desires work out in HIS time, not ours.

He is our heavenly Father who truly desires the best for us. Our part is learning that what is best for us is not always what we think we need.

Imagine what our desires would be if we spent more time meditating on the first part of Psalm 37:4: “Take delight in the Lord…”