"Living While You're Waiting"
By Steve Backlund
“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4)
I teach much about the difference between faith and hope. Faith is very specific in its beliefs, while hope is more general. Faith says, “God is going to do this.” Hope says, “I do not know exactly what God will do, but good things are coming.” This attitude of hope is encapsulated in Psalm 27:13, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
that I would see the goodness of the Lord.”
Faith people with low hope levels are waiting for something to change in order to fully live and enjoy life to the fullest.
Faith people with high levels of hope are living fully, while they are waiting for their desires to be experienced. Their attitude is this: “While I wait for this desire to happen, I will thrive. And, even if this desire never happens, I will thrive no matter what happens. I am adaptable and have many ways for God to bless and use me.”
“Delight yourself in the Lord.” This is a personal thing we do with God. Delight means to feel or express joy or triumph.
In Psalm 37:4, the delighter is delighting with unfulfilled desires. Even though they want to see things that have not happened yet, they are delighting anyway. They are “living” while waiting.
I used to overemphasize faith and underemphasize hope. This caused me to delay my joy. Most of this was subconscious, and I was not even aware I was doing this.
The Greek meaning for hope is elpis. It means “the confident joyful expectation that good is coming.” That sounds a lot like delighting.
The more hope we have, the more excited we will be about the future. The less hope we have, the less excited we will be about the days ahead. Delighters are excited to see what God is going to do.
“And He will give you the desires of your heart.” When we delight with unfulfilled desires, we dramatically increase the likelihood of having our desires fulfilled. Delighting while waiting is a sign we are ready to better steward the greater blessings in our lives. Jesus said you can't put new wine in an old wineskin because it will burst the old wineskin. In other words, the new thing (we could call it a desire fulfilled) will actually cause more harm than good in many situations.
Let’s go deeper into why delighting is a key to seeing desires fulfilled. Psalm 100:2 says, “Serve the Lord with gladness.” Regular gladness is one of the main indicators that we have passed the tests at the level that we're at. We all have reasons why we should be “non-glad” concerning our current responsibilities, assignments, callings, and life situations. We all have times where we struggle emotionally with these, but continually letting go of gladness means we have not understood the true nature of faithfulness.
“He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10). “Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities” (Luke 19:17). One of the laws of the spirit is this: if we are faithful at the level we are at, we will be given more (more influence, more resources, more favor, etc.) Faithfulness though is not just showing up, but it is how we think when we show up. Certainly, showing up when we don’t feel like it is part of maturing, but it is truly only the first step in faithfulness. When we take the next step of living life full of faith (faith-full), we are ready for more and will be given more. Delighting in the Lord now is an important component of faithfulness.
Let’s not wait for something to change to increase our delight in the Lord. I bless you with grace to take your delighting to a higher level. If you are a level two delighter, you can go to four. If you are level eight delighter, then how about reaching for stratospheric level ten? It will make a difference in us, and it will release the fulfillment of desires being realized.