Tandy, in Alabama, writes into ask, in your book, Desiring God, you quote Psalm 37 for many

times, most of these references are to support the idea that joy is a command.

What does delight yourself in the Lord mean practically?

It means first, Tandy, seeing him as the most admirable person and reality in the universe.

Ironically, I and Rand, who was an atheist, and wrote Atlas Shrugged, said something I think stunningly true, she said,

admiration is the rarest of pleasures.

Now, in her mouth, I think that was pure cynicism, meaning she's already rejected God, the source of all admiration

and all admirability.

And she can't see many people that she admires, and so she's a cynic.

But all how right she is, that admiration is one of our greatest pleasures.

We love to admire sports figures and music figures and acting figures and admire beauty and admire sunsets and sunrises and mountains and rivers.

We are admiring creatures to the core, and I think we're wired to be satisfied by admiring the most admirable and the most admirable as God, and therefore,

delight yourself in the Lord means, delight yourself in seeing his infinite admirableness.

For me, Jonathan Edwards has been a huge help here.

He has observed that the beauty of Christ, the excellencies of Christ, that satisfy the human longing for ultimate excellence and ultimate beauty and in them ultimate satisfaction.

And those, he said, are seen most clearly when you observe the diverse excellencies or the surprising juxtaposition of seeming opposites in Christ.

So I jotted down a little section from his sermon, the excellencies of Christ, to give to Andy a flavor of what I see when I'm delighting in Jesus.

The person of Christ, he wrote, brings together infinite highness and infinite condescension, infinite justice and infinite grace, infinite glory and lowest humility, infinite majesty and transcendent meekness, deepest reverence towards God and equality with God,

infinite worthiness of good and greatest patience under suffering evil, exceeding spirit of obedience with supreme dominion over heaven and earth, absolute sovereignty and perfect resignation, self-sufficiency and entire trust and reliance upon God.

And he's right. I mean, Edwards is right. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that the devil keeps us from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God, he means the devil is in the business of killing our enjoyment of the beauty of Christ in the gospel.

And the gospel is the place where the cross brings those diverse excellencies together most clearly. So that's number one, delighting in God practically means seeing and savoring the diverse excellencies of God, especially as they are manifest in Christ, especially as he brings them to fulfillment at the cross.

But here's the second thing I'd say. And only I think only have two more. Know, know this God as your intimate caring savior and friend. And here's why I say that. I have often said in many contexts, no one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase his self-esteem.

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