Delight in God’s Word

Has someone ever asked you about how your time in God’s Word was going? Did you start answering them like you were presenting the self-evaluation portion of your performance review at work, talking about your productivity, schedule, goals, key takeaways, or areas for improvement? Or maybe your brain panicked, and you heard the voice in your head pleading, “Think, think, think. Surely you learned something in the past 46 days that you can tell Angela. And while you’re at it, make it catchy.”

Maybe it’s the self-imposed pressures and expectations we place on ourselves. Maybe we’ve confused the purpose of reading God’s Word. Or maybe we’re trying to impress people with how much we’re reading or how much we’re learning. Whatever the reason, it’s worth asking ourselves, when did we lose the delight?

More than just presenting a command to delight in Scripture, today’s psalms show us a full picture of what the process of delighting can look like. It’s more than an attitude adjustment or perspective shift. And it’s not simply mustering up feelings of delight in our own heart toward Scripture. Delighting, according to today’s passages, comes from a lived experience.

Psalm 1 presents delight as the result of a contrast. “How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked…! Instead, his delight is in the LORD’s instruction” (Psalm 1:1–2). Though many of us wouldn’t wish to make a habit of repeating our sin, we can see the Lord’s grace extended to us in it. Disobedience provides perspective. It gives us a chance to experience for ourselves that the instructions in God’s Word won’t fail us like our own plans do.

But delight comes from more than just a contrast. Delight comes as we live out the words of Scripture. Psalm 119 presents delight as springing up from “those whose way is blameless” (Psalm 119:1). There’s joy to be found in obedience. It’s in our obedience that we have a chance to experience what it looks like for the Word of the Lord to prove true. To prove to be better.

We study Scripture and live out the truths being written in our hearts, not so that we can give a full report to whoever asks but so that we may be people who have seen and experienced that the Word of God proves true. That’s where delight is found.