Do blessings equal God's favor?

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

There is a prominent misunderstanding in culture and in churches today that says, "If God is pleased with you, then you will be healthy, wealthy, and prosperous.". Some may even try to use today's verse to support such a claim, but to do so would be to twist the meaning of what God was saying through David. Psalm 37 is an exhortation for those who read it to trust in the Lord. Time after time, David exhorts his listeners/readers to dismiss circumstances and trust God. The phrase "good guys finish last" is the worlds way of saying, "Don't wait for God, don't trust Him to give you what you want or need! Go out and take it for yourself!" The world evaluates somebodies worth by what they have, Christians should value peoples worth based on what God paid for them, or I should say, Who God paid for them. God values every person who has ever lived, He loves them and He wants to bless them. Just because someone has money and nice things does not mean that God has blessed them and the opposite is also true, just because someone has nothing doesn't mean that God has forsaken them.

Another often misused verse is in this same Psalm, "Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart." If you "delight" yourself in God, then what are you going to desire? Won't you desire what God desires? This isn't saying if you delight yourself in God, then He will bless you with a new car and house and money, etc... When we truly delight ourselves in God, we don't care about those things, we want to see people come to the Lord. We want to see lives changed by Jesus. We want to give whatever we can to further God's kingdom, and if He gives us things (money, house, car, etc..) it is to be used to bless others with. In Psalm 37, David testified to the fact that the lost seemed to have it better than God's people, but he knew better. It may look like the lost around us are having all the fun, but don't be fooled, their lives are nothing to be envied. This life on Earth is all the heaven that a lost person will ever experience, this is as good as it will ever get for them, but this life on Earth is all the hell that the saved will ever experience, this is as bad as it will ever be for us!