Pleasure and Joy

The world is constantly offering us fleshly ways to find joy and pleasure. With 54% of practising Christian adults accessing pornography with some regularity[1], it is clear that so many of us are seeking, searching for something to either make us feel better or at least to not make us feel at all, to stop the pain and discomfort. 

What David points us to in this psalm, is not that our desire for joy and pleasure is wrong, no, but that our appetite is too small. We are trying to satisfy these desires in places that only offer scarce joy and fleeting pleasure. And the more we try and run after these things, the more the balance swings to suffering and pain in the end (v4).

So where does David suggest we find this fullness of joy and pleasures for evermore? He hints at it at the end of the psalm - ‘in your presence’, ‘in your right hand’. But he makes it even clearer near the beginning of the psalm as to what this means, in verses 2 and 3 - ‘I have no good apart from you’, and, ‘the holy ones in the land, they are noble, in whom is all my delight’. If we want to find real, lasting joy and pleasure, we need God and His people. This is where our good, our delight, our joy and our pleasure will come from. Both now and into eternity.

Our joys and pleasures orient our time, our focus, our money, our convictions, our efforts. What we say no to, what we say yes to. David calls this ‘the path of life’ (v11). The Lord, and the people He dwells amongst, the church, is where this path of life is to be walked. What will it look like to surrender to this path? What gods and idols do you need to stop pouring yourself out to, in order that you may walk this path and find true pleasure? What will it look like for you to live in the presence of the Lord and delight in His people?  

[1] Barna Group (2024), Beyond the Porn Phenomenon

Linden Simmons
March 2026