For then you will have your delight in the Almighty, And lift up your face to God.
Job 22:26
Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
Psalm 37:4
“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words,
Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high places of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken.” Isaiah 58:13, 14
You know what these four verses have in common?
Which means "Pliable, soft, live in enjoyment of". While I understand the enjoyment part, I would not have connected pliable or soft with it. And, yet, God did say that when we surrendered our hearts to Him, he would remove the stony heart and replace it with a fleshy heart. In other words, our hardened sinful hearts would be replaced with a heart that is pliable, soft, more easily moldable, shapeable into what He desires our hearts to be.
But just how do we get to the Delight part of this walk? Not all of what God wants to reveal to us in His Word is going to be revealed all at once. When I was reading Isaiah 58:13 the other night, the Holy Spirit opened it up to my understanding.
- Turn away my foot from doing my pleasure on God's holy day. Don't go where I want to go, go where God wants me to go. Choose to walk where God wants me to walk.
- Call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable. Whether we call the holy day of the Lord the sabbath or Sunday, we are to call it a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable. A pleasant day to be in God's presence. It is a day to honor God with our presence, fully surrendered and committed to doing what He wants us to do on His holy day; not what we used to do or feel pressured to do just because "everybody else is doing _____". Choose to spend the whole day with God.
- Honor Him, not doing what I/we want to do, nor finding our own pleasure, nor speaking our own words. Whereas, once upon a Sunday, we looked forward to family time or sports time or however we would spend our Sundays, now that we belong to Him, our Sundays are not our Sundays: Sunday belongs to God.
Romans 12:1 tells us to surrender our bodies a living sacrifice. While it is talking about a surrendered life in Christ, it also concerns our lifestyles. No longer do we do, nor behave how we lived when we were sinners, but now we live according to the terms of our surrender to God. We chose Him as the Savior and Deliverer of our souls. Now we choose Him as Lord of our lives; we willingly sacrifice what our flesh wants to do and submit to what the Spirit of God wants us to do. And when we truly, honestly love the Lord our God, then we become quite willing to turn over every aspect of our lives, including how we spend our Sundays.
For me personally, this will include shutting off the television on Sundays. There is not a whole lot on the idiot box that honors God on any day of the week, much less Sunday. And I will taper off on computer time, as well. But that is what is changing in my home. How you choose to spend or change your Sunday/sabbath is between you and God. My hope is that as you open yourself up to God, He reveals Himself to you. And He will; His Word says so and God does not lie. “They that seek Me early shall find Me.” Proverbs 8:17