Do you delight yourself in the Lord? Or is serving the Lord a pain in the neck? Remember, God opens His hand and satisfies the desires of all of His creatures. Eventually you will get what you truly want so be careful of the desires you have.

The Lord loves the person who rejoices and behaves righteously. "I delight to do thy will." Do you delight to do God's will or do you hate doing it?

The only truly free, fulfilled, and happy person in the universe is the one whose desires are one with God's desires.

When we start out in Christ we have to turn away from many things, situations, and relationships we fervently desire. This is not easy to do but absolutely necessary if we are to make any progress at all in the Christian life.

If we keep doing God's will a change takes place in our personality. We find our thirst for righteousness is increasing. Soon it becomes an all- consuming passion a craving to practice righteousness, to do God's will, to be entirely pleasing to the Lord.

Little by little God's desires become our desires. We learn by experience that when we go against what we perceive to be God's desire for us we end up wishing we didn't. God knows best and He has our good in mind.

If we are intelligent we finally get the point: "If you do what God wants you to do you become a happy camper."

And so you begin to pray: "God, put your desires in my heart. Make me want to do exactly what You want me to do nothing else!"

You know what? God hears that prayer. He works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure. Your will and God's will for you become identical. Isn't that neat? What release! What freedom!

The believer who chooses to maintain his or her own way before the Lord is in a miserable condition. He is bound by his fleshly, soulish desires and follows them. They lead, of course, to increased misery and more fleshly, soulish desires. He not only is laboring under condemnation but is making one unfortunate choice after another. This is the way many believers live maybe most believers!

It is so much easier and nicer to delight yourself in the Lord.

When you delight yourself in the Lord He gives you the desires of your heart. Many of these desires do not come right away, but they certainly shall come, make no mistake about this.

There are two ways to get your desires. One is to take a shortcut. This is what Satan tried to get Jesus to do. The other is to take God's way.

The interval of time between your desire and its fulfillment is where the saints are made. The Kingdom comes only through patience. The believer who finally succumbs to his fervent desires, figuring that God doesn't care, or has forgotten, may seize what he wants but it will be ashes in his mouth before long.

The believer who refuses to yield but puts his hopes beyond the grave, places his treasures in Heaven, will change from an animal to a king with God.

Picture a well-trained dog, starved for three days, confronted with a juicy bone. The trainer watches him drool. Will he advance without the signal? If he does, the training is not complete and the dog may eventually prove to be worthless for any use except as a pet.

Is this what you want to be someone's pet?

Delight yourself in the Lord and wait for Him. You won't be disappointed. When the desire comes it will be a tree of life and He will add no sorrow with it.