A Fresh Look for Timeless Words

Sometimes we need a little help from our friends.

Reframing our circumstances--literally--gives us a new perspective we need as we try to practice gratitude as a way of life. And a fresh take on beloved scriptures keeps the inspiration before us in a colorful, visible way, if that creativity speaks to your heart.

Jen created and offered this rendering of a beloved text free for copying and framing on her site at http://theloganfamily.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/free-art-print-psalm-374/ . Thank you for that!


I contemplated this text previously when considering that sometimes it is--I believe--mistakenly interpreted to mean "God will give you what you want."

I have had to re-frame my thoughts on it.

Let our love be genuine.

Let our heart's desire be fully centered on God, and not on manipulating our thoughts or actions in any way.



For more on my post regarding this text:

Delight yourself in the Lord, and you will receive the desires of your heart. That was how I recalled this verse from memory, even writing it down that way recently in a journal. It would be easy to loosely translate this statement, "If you act like you are delighted in the Lord , then you will get what you are hoping for." That approach is even preached in some churches. However, when I went to the source to find the cite for Psalm 37, I found that it was not written as I had recalled.

"Delight yourself in the Lord,
and He will give you the desires of your heart."

Do you catch the difference? God does the giving! God plants the desires into our hearts! God is able to establish what it is that we long for...what we love....where our heart's desire is. God is able to change our minds and hearts, to do miraculous things in our lives, to recalibrate our very thinking when we live with delight in the Lord.

Are you out of love? God can sow a fresh desire for your spouse or loved one when you think there is nothing left to breathe life into. Out of resources? Let the One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and created all that is show us how to manage or create in another way. Out of time? God does His best work in tight spaces. It is only the 11th hour to us; God has all the time in the world!

Our part is to 'delight ourselves in the Lord' and leave it to God to give us the desires of our hearts. I believe it is then that a circle of sorts completes. We may find that we desire the things of God....that we delight in the things of God....and discover a unity of Spirit and purpose as we live life with the Spirit of Truth abiding within. (See John 14 for more on the Spirit.)


(excerpt from http://meditationsinthenightwatch.blogspot.com/2010/11/fret-not.html )