Psalm 16:11 - You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Of all the things that people search for in this life, it would seem that this verse covers the top three. Everyone wants to know what direction they should go to have the best life they can have. Everyone wants to find joy and keep it. Everyone wants to experience more pleasure. You would be hard pressed to find a person who didn’t care about finding these three things, and because everyone wants these things, we strive after them through any means we can find.

Unfortunately, we tend to get more confused and lost than find any real answers, and this causes more problems down the road. This will inevitably happen when we look for these three things in what is temporary. You may think you have found the right direction in your life through some self-help book, and feel life from it for a time, but then you discover that what you’ve learned in that book doesn’t hold true when life gets really hard. You may find joy in family, but what happens when conflict comes that rips the family apart, or what happens to that joy if the family member who gives you that joy passes away?

It goes without saying that the pleasure we experience in this life is equally fleeting. You may feel pleasure when watching a movie or reading a good book. You may have pleasure when eating ice cream or taking a warm shower. We experience pleasure in all kinds of ways, and it’s good that we do because God created us to be able to have pleasure. He created us to have life, to have joy and to have pleasure, but when we look for these three things in the temporary world alone, we will ultimately be let down and disappointed.

If nothing lasts forever in this life, then the only way to find these three things is by looking outside of what is temporary. What we see in this psalm is that God is the answer. If you want to know what direction you should go so that you would have life, then look to God. If you want fullness of joy rather than partial joy, look to God. If you want pleasure forever, rather than pleasure that is fleeting, you will only find it in God.

There is something very important that we see in this psalm about these three things, and that is that there is a fulness to them. The path God leads you to is the path to life. The joy that God gives is a full joy. The pleasures God provides for us are eternal. This is important to see because even though God may bring us life and joy and pleasure through the things of this world, we know that it is not the things in and of themselves that provide those things in richness, but only God who can do that.

If you want these three things today, you must go to the Lord. He will lead you on the path of righteousness which leads to life. He will give you a joy that is beyond understanding and that will exist in you even in the most difficult circumstances, and in His greatness you will find a pleasure that goes beyond what this world can give. Hope in him for these things today, and you will find them. Seek him first, and all these things will be given to you.