Delightful Living: Delighting in the Lord (First Things First Series)

Delightful Living (First Things First): Delighting in the Lord

Psalm 37

✔People of faith want a purposeful life...it’s why we’ve responded to faith initiative

✔We (FOL) are in a process of lining up our lives with the larger plan of God so that our lives are purposeful

✔We somehow think that faith is about getting what we want...

✔Faith is about trusting in a God, Who...

• Is SO vast that God can’t be manipulated
• So Brilliant that His thoughts defy gravity
• So Strong that He needs no help & never-been-seen-before concepts into existence
• Yet...He sees us and considers for partnership in something fantastic

✔God wants to assume that if you’ve bowed your knee to God...you must somehow assume...

• His Vastness/Brilliance/Strength
• What we presume is that He just might have a plan of His own!

• Perhaps faith is about believing God for passion and resources for doing something you were created to do! 

• And that thing is advancing God’s Kingdom (God’s Big Agenda...and not our own.)

**(Phone calls to my cousin John or Rodney...I call and they start in “like I was saying”...or, “you know, Rev....” ITS MY CALL! :)

✔When we think God’s Agenda is about getting was it ours...we have missed the mark...misunderstood God...and are dangerous to ourselves and those around us.

(A friend recently reminded me as I flinched at the enormity of what I’m called to ~ “If you thinks it’s about you, you’ll drag your insecurities into a picture they weren’t asked to pose for. If you realize God is using you for His purpose...you’ll agree to greatness, should that be what the task requires.)

✔People have co-opted scripture for personal gain

• That forging God’s check...signing His name

✔Delight means to charm...be under the influence that is spell-like

• Delight ourselves in the Lord..
• His ways/ His attitudes/ His values

Why is this important? (Psalm 37...People are not to fret...God will avenge,)

➢The context of this Psalm 37 (song) is frustration over injustice!

➢We see things that break our hearts. For David it was bullying (hence his fight with the Giant, Goliath)

➢David’s instruction in this Psalm was “Become charmed by God...and you’ll see what you’re desiring to see.”

Being Charmed has two implications:

1. We’re all “charmed” by something! We’re “charm-able,” We’re all charmed, I’m sure.

1. Become influenced...under the influence of the Spirit and you’ll become a part of the solution!

1. You’ll forget your own agenda
2. You’ll become military-like...trained to save/serve others
3. Your needs become secondary
1. We’ve lost this in the faith community
2. We’ve become a rogue army!!
1. Or...if we don’t become charmed or delightful... or don’t stay that way...we become destructive

1. David neglected his charm and the spell was broken
2. He was free to do as he pleased
3. He coerced married women to sleep with him ( )
4. Scandal: Women became pregnant so the King had her husband eliminated...killed...so that the King could have the women, without the shame or mess.

Phew!!

Psalm 37 Don’t fret over evildoers...they’ll get their reward

David became the abuser of the power and wealth that used to sicken him.

David was considered by God as a “Man after God’s heart” while he was “charmed” or “delighting” in God.

David became destructive, abusive, arrogant, murderous, womanizing...when he allowed the charm to wear off.

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Wisdom Teeth Extraction:

• I didn’t care what the doctors do to me once I was delighted! And I did not want to wake up from the “delightment” 

• When my “delight” wore off...all my pain surfaced

• We have to submit to delightful living...

Challenge:

• We’re delighted by something right now (our possession, reputation, resources, comfort, lifestyle, etc.)

• A person who delights in the Lord (charmed: motived and rewarded by...) is dangerous because they can’t be co-opted

Next: Ask to see your “charm”...then...denounce it & ask to be delighted  by God