Verses often taken out of context or misused: Psalm 37:4

“Now that I am a Christian, God will give me whatever I want!” Surely that is what it is saying? It sounds nice, but admittedly I think we immediately know that does not seem right.

It can be a struggle in interpreting the Psalms as the immediate context is not always helpful: There is poetic language, pattern of development, historical reference, specific circumstances of the individual writer, worship aids, several genre types, different types of parallelism, etc. But our fallback is always that scripture is the best interpreter of scripture. 

“Delight” immediately threw me off as it is not a word that I could with confidence explain well. Doing some research; the root of the Hebrew word means “to be soft or pliable” and the word for “to delight” originally means “to bend”. This became “to incline to,” and “to take pleasure in.” Thinking of it as a softened heart, unlike the hardened heart of Pharaoh helped me. 

We know in (Genesis 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9-10, Mark 7:21-23) That the heart is the source of evil that comes from within us.  But God renews our heart (Psalm 51:10, Romans 10:10, Ezekiel 11:19, Hebrews 10:22). And instructs us to guard it by living in obedience (Luke 6:45, Psalm 26:2. This enables us to love God with our heart (Matthew 22:37) although while on this earth we can not love him completely, this progressively grows as we are being sanctified.

What is this verse then saying? As we take pleasure in the Lord, are moldable to His will, learn and obey His Word, and conform more and more to His desires, He gives us the desires that align with His.

This was helpful to me.  Reread the verse but this time take “your”self out of it.  What I mean is, like me you most likely initially read the verse with a little more emphasis on “your”.  This time when you read it put the emphasis on “HE”.