Crave the Lord’s Delicacies

Every morning is an opportunity for us to experience the blessed life Christ has laid out for us. Each day, our delight can be filled to the brim, not through the mudpies of this world but with a five-course meal laid out by the Creator of the universe. We get more than the shallow promises of the prosperity gospel with its misleading claims of the power of positive thinking wrapped in Christian jargon. We receive far more than the negative buffet of depressing clickbait offered by digital and social media. In Christ, our spiritual thirst is quenched with Living Water (John 7:38). In him, our spiritual hunger is satisfied by the Bread of Life (John 6:35).

This delightful, blessed living is costly but won’t break the bank. You don’t need to make a down payment or monthly installment plan to start experiencing it today. All you need is the Word of God, a readied heart, and a willingness to use your mind for the glory of God. Psalm 1 introduces us to a blessed man who doesn’t live his life according to worldly ways. Instead, “his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:1–2).

True blessedness isn’t found in the treasures of this world. They’ll either vanish shortly after we grasp them, or we’ll lose our grip on them when we close our eyes and enter eternity. True pleasure comes not from minding earthly cares or mindlessly binging on the delicacies of our digital Babylon. Rather than the bread of anxious toil, our souls crave the bread of life (Ps. 127:2). We eat from the King’s table, laid out from end to end with fresh-baked bread, cold-pressed olive oil, flawlessly roasted asparagus tips, and melt-in-your-mouth lamb seasoned with the freshest rosemary, thyme, and oregano. But we must ignore the smell of the ultra-processed, chemical-laden McDonald’s on our way to the palace.

Why Do We Choose Displeasure Over Delight?

Why would anybody choose a lifetime of table scraps, TV dinners, and the occasional bag of Taco Bell over gourmet cuisine at no cost? Some palates are more attuned to inexpensive or lower-quality foods, even if finer foods are offered. I grew up eating barbecue bologna—don’t knock it till you try it!—and I still eat it at my dad’s barbecues to this day. There’s a nostalgic sense of connection to my culture and upbringing. So it is with our souls. Sometimes we choose the latest celebrity gossip or sin-laden movie because that’s what we’ve always enjoyed. Instead of hymns filled with rich gospel truth, we choose shallower types of music that lodge worldly creeds deep in our subconscious.

Another reason is that some of the tastiest and healthiest foods require a mature palate to enjoy them. Sometimes we don’t fully appreciate the best cheeses, olive oils, and wines because we haven’t acquired a taste for them. We can get so accustomed to eating fast food that we can actually prefer the taste of KFC to the well-trained seasoning and spice blends of chef-prepared fried chicken. Our souls are similar. We sometimes say with the psalmist, “Your words are . . . sweeter than honey in my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103). We cherish the glorious, life-sustaining words from the mouth of God, but the fear-tinged articles and envy-inducing photos from our newsfeeds feel more familiar to us, and we opt to scroll our newsfeeds rather than meditate on the Scriptures.

It’s also possible that we simply prefer fast, easy access to the quality of our food. To be in the presence of royalty, we feel the need to shower up, tidy our hair, and throw on a nice dress or three-piece suit. This multi-hour process could deter even the most patient people in our McDonaldized society. Similarly, meditating on Scripture requires that we prepare our hearts to encounter the Lord. We may need an earlier bedtime, fewer snoozes when the alarm sounds, and a phone-free hour to start the day off right. That’s not a complicated set of changes, but it’s also not so easy for most people. It’s not that we don’t want the delight that comes with seeking the Lord’s face—it’s that we struggle to make time and space for such an encounter with the Lord.

Discipline is the Way to Delight

The best way to acquire a taste is to simply begin regularly consuming the delight you’re seeking to enjoy. I remember switching from store-bought bagged Dunkin’ Donuts coffee to home-roasted beans only a couple of weeks old. My experience with coffee had been heavy on the cream to cover the bitter notes of staleness and lower-quality coffee beans. When I tasted the goodness of home-roasted coffee, I didn’t want to mask the wonderful flavor with sugary, artificially flavored creamer anymore. Over time, I acquired the taste for coffee with a splash of half-and-half, and I can even enjoy a cup of black coffee—except for the reflux cough that comes with it.

Was the higher-quality coffee nasty? Not at all. I had developed a palate for lower-quality coffee that needed to be masked by sweetness and fake flavors to make it taste better. Tasting the coffee for itself allowed me to enjoy the variety of flavor notes of the actual coffee. This is what it’s like when we learn to meditate on the Word of God. As we savor each word, we begin to taste the sweet notes of grace and mercy. With an unadulterated encounter with Scripture, we begin to smell the sweet aromas of God’s attributes for ourselves. The bitter notes of sin hit our spiritual taste buds and make us wince a bit, but the justice and love of God at the cross round out that flavor with a smoothness we hadn’t noticed before.

Delight requires dedication. It requires discipline. Tuning out the world to center our attention on the God of the universe seems like it should be easy, but experience proves otherwise. Therefore, we must heed the words of the apostle Paul who said, “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7b NASB). Consistent, diligent meditation on the Word of God will bring us the delights of a blessed life. Just as the top sommeliers—professional wine tasters—must be trained on the facts and the flavors of the world’s best wines, so we must be trained, in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to savor the sweet riches of God’s Word. As he builds self-control in us, we will more readily sit at the King’s feet to cherish him through his Word.

The Lord’s delicacies are not hidden from us, but we must enter the King’s gates and enter his palace to recline at table with him. The more we eat, the more we delight. The more we delight, the more willing we’ll be to go to the highways and hedges to compel friends, family, co-workers, homeless, orphans, widows, drug addicts, and more to come into the palace to eat the bread of the Kingdom with us (Luke 14:12–24). When we have tasted and delighted in the Lord’s goodness and Word, the completion of that delight will come when we share our delight with others.