How can we delight in God or anything else when our world is crashing down on us? We can begin by turning to Psalm 119, which uses the word delight six times and shows us the first step in finding it.
I will delight myself in Your statutes;
I will not forget Your word.
PSALM 119:16
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments,
For I delight in it.
PSALM 119:35
The proud have forged a lie against me,
But I will keep Your precepts with my whole heart.
Their heart is as fat as grease,
But I delight in Your law.
PSALM 119:69-70
Let Your tender mercies come to me, that I may live;
For Your law is my delight.
PSALM 119:77
Unless Your law had been my delight,
I would then have perished in my affliction.
PSALM 119:92
I long for Your salvation, O LORD,
And Your law is my delight.
PSALM 119:174
Did you pick up on the common theme these six verses express? The first step in delighting in God is to delight in His Word. Immersing ourselves in the Word of God reveals a God we can delight in. The psalmist takes such a delight in God’s Word that he uses every possible term to express the range of its meaning: statutes, commandments, precepts, law. In the same way, other writers of Scripture delight in God by using His various names. Isn’t that just what people do when they’re in love? They come up with pet names for their beloved, and each name has a special meaning that conveys a particular facet of the delight they find.
Delighting in God’s Word leads us to delight in God, and delight in God drives away fear.
Dedicate Your Life to the Lord
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
PSALM 37:5
Having found our deepest delight in God, we realize that we must give all of our lives to Him. This isn’t a temporary commitment, a halfway intention, or the feeling of a moment. It’s a choice and a contract of the heart. As in marriage, we commit ourselves to that partnership for the rest of our lives.
How does committing to the Lord help us in times of material loss? In committing to Him, we cast all our burdens upon Him. He becomes our life—the place where we bring our problems, our joys, our marriages, our families, our careers. Life and happiness are no longer dependent on financial success or material possessions. It’s now all about Him.
The verse above ends with the phrase “And He shall bring it to pass.” When we put our hope in Him, depend on Him, and respond to Him in faith, He will make our greatest dreams come true by elevating them from the material to the eternal.
God is also the answer when our losses leave us unable to help ourselves:
The helpless commits himself to You;
You are the helper of the fatherless.
PSALM 10:14
When we dedicate ourselves to God, helpless becomes a word without meaning. When we’ve lost our jobs, our houses, or our savings, and debt or bankruptcy stares us in the face, it’s as if we’re crushed under the weight of an enormous sack filled with every problem facing us. It’s a burden too heavy to bear. We can’t take another step. We can’t lift it—but God can. He gently says, “May I take that upon Myself? My shoulders are stronger.” As we say yes, life brightens and becomes joyful.
Cast your burden on the LORD,
And He shall sustain you;
He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.
PSALM 55:22
[Cast] all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
1 PETER 5:7
Why keep struggling with your losses on your own? Why not give the burden to Him? Nothing could be more liberating.
William Carey, the “father of modern missions,” established a large print shop in Serampore, India, where he worked for years translating the Bible into many Indian languages.
On March 11, 1812, Carey had to travel to another town. His associate, William Ward, was working late when suddenly he smelled smoke. He leaped up to discover black clouds belching from the printing room. He screamed for help, and workers carried water from the nearby river until 2 a.m. But it was to no avail; nearly everything was destroyed.
The next day, missionary Joshua Marshman entered a Calcutta classroom where Carey was teaching. He placed a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder and said, “I can think of no easy way to break the news. The print shop burned to the ground last night.”
Gone was Carey’s massive translation work of nearly twenty years: a dictionary, two grammar books, and whole versions of the Bible. Gone were sets of type for fourteen Eastern languages, twelve hundred reams of paper, fifty-five thousand printed sheets, and thirty pages of his Bengal dictionary. Gone was his complete library. “The work of years—gone in a moment,” he whispered.
In that moment he understood the pain of loss. “The loss is heavy,” he wrote, “but as traveling a road the second time is usually done with greater ease and certainty than the first time, so I trust the work will lose nothing of real value. We are not discouraged; indeed the work is already begun again in every language. We are cast down but not in despair.”
William Carey had dedicated his life to God, and he trusted Him to bring blessings in the ashes of his dreams. “There are grave difficulties on every hand,” he once wrote, “and more are looming ahead. Therefore we must go forward.” As Carey moved forward, so did God. News of the fire caused all England to start talking about William Carey. Money for support flowed in. Volunteers enlisted to help. The print shop was rebuilt and enlarged. By 1832, complete Bibles, New Testaments, or separate books of Scripture had issued from the press in forty-four languages and dialects.[5]
Because Carey had dedicated his life to God, he understood what it meant to cast all his burdens on the Lord, even when all seemed lost.
Download Your Worry to the Lord
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
PSALM 37:7
Times of economic chaos produce anxiety, and for believers, these times can become a real challenge to faith.
Remember, there are two strategies for facing the future: with fear or with faith. If you’ve decided to follow Christ, that means walking by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7). That does not mean Satan will forget about you. He will try to chip away at your faith by pointing you to the fear of the moment. At this time in our nation, that fear focuses heavily on finances. But fear about money—or about anything, for that matter—is never part of God’s plan for us. As Paul writes, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). Embed this verse in your mind, and bring it to the forefront whenever you feel that first pang of fear.
Many other Bible promises will strengthen your faith and help you overcome the fear of the moment:
Romans 8:35-39 assures us that nothing is able to separate us from the love of God.
First John 4:18 reminds us that God’s perfect love casts out our fear.
Philippians 4:6-7 invites us to lay our anxieties before God by faith with thanksgiving, allowing the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
We need to understand that faith in God does not immunize us from financial failure. As long as we live in this fallen world, there will be no such thing as complete financial security. There is no ultimate security in anything but the grace of God. To be human means that loss, including heartbreaking loss, is always possible. As tough as times are, they can and may become much worse. But faith in God assures us that He holds our lives in His powerful, loving hands, which means no collapses, no losses, and no fears can truly harm us. As the Lord of this universe, He is, indeed, too big to fail.
Because God loves and cares for us, David urges us not to worry,
or as he puts it, “Do not fret.” This phrase do not fret essentially means “relax; don’t react.” It occurs only four times in the entire Bible—three times in Psalm 37 and once in Proverbs.
Psalm 37:1: “Do not fret because of evildoers.”
Psalm 37:7: “Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way.”
Psalm 37:8: “Do not fret—it only causes harm.”
Proverbs 24:19: “Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the wicked.”
The English word fret comes from the Old English fretan, meaning “to devour, to eat, to gnaw into something.” The Hebrew word David used is charah, which has at its root the idea of “growing warm” and “blazing up.”
Here we have a mix of two metaphors illustrating the same idea—a word picture of gnawing and a word picture of fire. In the first metaphor, fretting is seen as a rat inside your soul, gnawing away at your joy and peace. (I didn’t say it was a pretty picture. But it’s a true one.)
The fire metaphor pictures Satan as the arsonist of hellfire, setting blazes of distress inside your heart. Both pictures illustrate the destructiveness of fretting. In Psalm 37 David tells us not to put up with fretting: kill the rats and douse the fires, because fretting will kill you from the inside out.
Someone has observed that the prosperous people of the previous generation known as the “jet set” have now become the “fret set.” Once they were flying high, and now they’re flying off the handle.
One of the most frustrating things about massive losses is that we look around and see evil people prospering—sometimes even because of their evil. It violates our sense of justice. But in Psalm 37 David assures us that justice will be done. God is not yet finished with these people. Five times in this psalm, David gives us reason not to envy the prosperous wicked:
They shall soon be cut down like the grass,
And wither as the green herb.
PSALM 37:2
For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more;
Indeed, you will look carefully for his place,
But it shall be no more.
PSALM 37:10
The wicked shall perish;
And the enemies of the LORD,
Like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish.
Into smoke they shall vanish away.
PSALM 37:20
When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it.
PSALM 37:34
I have seen the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a native green tree.
Yet he passed away, and behold, he was no more;
Indeed I sought him, but he could not be found.
PSALM 37:35-36
As a creative exercise, pastor and author Leonard Griffith transplanted Rip Van Winkle, the beloved Washington Irving character, into 1930s Germany. You remember the story: Rip falls asleep for twenty years, then walks through town to find that everything has changed and no one remembers him.
In Griffith’s version, Van Winkle is horrified as he watches Hitler rise to power and begin conquering Europe. He retreats into the Alps to get away from the terrifying events. There he falls asleep. When he wakes up, the 1950s are underway and the world is vastly different. The Nazis are gone—no more swastikas, no more eager Hitler youth, no more arrogant attitudes of world domination. The masterminds of the Third Reich are all dead or imprisoned or being hunted down.
Rip Van Winkle then understands the words of the psalmist: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a native green tree. Yet he passed away, and behold, he was no more.”[6]
Many in the 1930s wondered why God allowed the Nazis to prosper. He didn’t. He dealt with them by His own timetable, and He dealt with them thoroughly.
There’s another point to be considered here. What if the wrong people do come out on top in this life? Would we really want to trade our kind of security for theirs? Spurgeon wrote, “What if wicked devices succeed and your own plans are defeated! There is more of the love of God in your defeats than in the successes of the wicked.”[7]
Discipline Yourself to Wait on the Lord
Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him.
PSALM 37:7
Waiting doesn’t come easily for us. In this age of instant gratification, we’re conditioned not to wait for anything. If the fast-food line is too long, we rush to the restaurant across the street. If the TV show doesn’t quickly become interesting, we surf impatiently through hundreds of channels. If the car ahead doesn’t move the instant the traffic light changes, we hit the horn.
When we face loss, we know we must trust God’s timetable for dealing with it. But what we’d like better is for Him to accede to ours. The fact that we cannot see into the future can convince us that the future is up for grabs. But rest assured, God is completely in control. Though His timing may seem slow to us, from the viewpoint of eternity, it is perfect. God is never early and never late.
When we truly believe this, we acquire the mind of Christ, which enables us to wait on Him with patience and trust. Waiting means . . .
Not lagging behind His leading and direction
Not walking ahead of His leading and direction
Not ignoring His leading and direction
Not fretting about what He is doing or planning for you
The word wait is found two additional times in this psalm:
Evildoers shall be cut off;
But those who wait on the LORD,
They shall inherit the earth.
PSALM 37:9
Wait on the LORD,
And keep His way,
And He shall exalt you to inherit the land.
PSALM 37:34
Waiting is difficult in the face of loss, but it’s a discipline with a huge payoff. Those who wait on the Lord will “inherit the earth” because those pushers and shovers in life’s express line have all burned out, victims of their own impatience. Patient people are happier and healthier, and God will exalt them.
One writer explained that there are two kinds of faith: one based on if and the other on though. The first says, “If everything goes the way I want, then I’ll agree that God is good.” The other says, “Though evil may prosper, though I may sweat in Gethsemane, though my road leads to Calvary—even so, I trust in God.” The first wants instant results; the second has learned the wisdom of waiting, as Job did when he cried out, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).[8]
Almost two hundred years ago, our nation went through economic upheaval: the Panic of 1837. Anna and Susan Warner and their father, Henry Warner, lived in a mansion filled with art treasures, high-class furnishings, and an army of servants. Then came the deluge.
The market crashed and took Henry Warner’s investments down with it. The family lost everything and, deeply in debt, moved to a decrepit old house up the river from New York City. Henry’s financial collapse devastated him emotionally, and he was never the same. The daughters, accustomed to expensive parties and the social whirl, now realized they had to pitch in to work down the family’s staggering debt.
All they could think to do was write. Though they struggled to find a publisher, eventually Putnam accepted Susan Warner’s novel The Wide, Wide World. Success followed. The sisters wrote more than one hundred books, all built on the foundation of the Gospel that warmed their lives. One of the books, Say and Seal, contained a little poem Anna had woven into the story. It began with the words “Jesus loves me, this I know.” Songwriter William Bradbury added music, and now “Jesus Loves Me” is loved throughout the world. Untold millions of children have first encountered Christ through its simple yet powerful words. In 1943, when John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 was sunk in the Solomon Islands, local islanders and American marines sang the song as they rescued the survivors. You may have sung it as a child. I did.
If you had been part of this disconsolate family, standing in the ashes of financial failure and watching as your lifetime possessions were hau
led away, you might have thought that life was unfair. But if you knew the ways of God, you might have known even then that He had special things in mind. From the cold rubble and debris of today’s misfortune, God raises the bricks and beams of tomorrow’s miracle.
Yes, we know that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28), but this long-term promise does not provide a quick fix for the heartbreak of loss. There’s no bypass to avoid it. Yet the promise remains true, and it gives us something to cling to and focus on through the blur of our tears.
The devil may win today, but the God who owns tomorrow “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:11-12, NIV).
Philip Yancey points out that two of the primary days we’ve named on the church calendar are Good Friday and Easter Sunday. One held the worst event imaginable, and the other the greatest. Yet we live most of life on the day between—Saturday—a day we’ve given no special name. Like the disciples, we sit in the wake of life’s heartbreak with no clue that what the morning will bring is brighter than our most brilliant dreams.
Life is about deciding how to live in that interim between cross and crown. Just how much do we trust God? Do we really believe He can take a world that includes genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, inner-city ghettos, capacity prisons, and wipe out losses, then fashion something beautiful out of it? We know what Friday feels like. Is there going to be a Sunday?
Yancey observes that the day of Christ’s beatings, crucifixion, and death is called Good Friday. It only earns that adjective in light of Sunday’s developments. The empty tomb refashions the shame of the Cross into a victory. Easter, says Yancey, offers a clue into the greater workings of God. Our souls rise above the loss of Friday, knowing that blessing will come on Sunday. In the meantime, Saturday becomes a day of waiting.[9]
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