Heart's Desires

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

I used to think that verse meant that if I loved God and if I delighted in Him, God would give me what I really wanted. I mean, that's basically what it says right?

But I have (slowly) come to realise that if that was all that I ever understood from that verse, I'd be missing out on a whole lot. And if I try to delight myself in the Lord because I want things or so that I can have my heart's desire, then I'm really not delighting in the Lord.

The entire psalm, one of the many written by David, talks about patience and trust in God. David's words came at a time in life where he was trusting God to make things right. His delight was in the Lord not so that the Lord would be on his side, but because he knew that the Lord was faithful to his people.

But David was a man who went all in (and all out) when it came to God. When he took delight in God, God became the desire of his heart. That's why David also wrote the words "my soul thirsts after you in a dry and weary land"(Ps 63:1) and "one thing...will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life" (Ps 27:4). In his wholehearted pursuit of God, his desire turned to God only. All the other things that might have crowded his heart, clamoring for his attention were silenced. Once his focus was on God, none of those things mattered, yet they were all taken care of.

AW Tozer writes this in The Pursuit of God: 

The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the "and" lies our great woe. If we omit the "and" we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.

And David isn't the only place in the Bible where God shows us what our hearts desires should be. David's words here foreshadow those of Jesus which came several hundred years afterward: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt 6:33), and those of Paul years after that "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice." (Phil 4:4)

It is in taking our delight in God, pursuing God, making God alone the cry of our hearts that we can truly receive, or even understand the fullness of true prosperity, which is not limited by the extent of what our minds can perceive. Delighting in God, desiring God is a positive feedback loop where in wanting God and getting Him, we want Him all the more.

So truly take delight in the Lord, and make Him the desire of your heart. Pursue God, seek Him, for God has never yet forsaken the righteous. Let us work on changing the desires of our hearts

Be blessed and shine with new heart's desires!

Hymn-ful Sundays! "O the Bitter Shame and Sorrow"

This week's hymn is by Parisian Theodore Monod, who wrote these words during a series of consecration services in England. Monod was the son of a pastor in the French Reformed Church, and became a pastor himself, serving in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Discontent is a Deadly Murmur

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Genesis 3: 1-6 

Aaahhh...the serpent. Everything was perfect before he came. God had given Adam and Eve free reign of all of Eden, dominion over the earth. Then the serpent came and messed it all up. How? He led Eve to believe that she was missing something by not eating from That Tree. She was content until the serpent introduced the possibility that there was something more, that she might be missing out.

Hymn-ful Sundays! "As the Deer"

This week's hymn is by Martin J. Nystrom, and is another newer one (written in 1981). The format is hymn-like, but it's mostly sung as a praise and worship song. The lyrics were inspired by the words of Psalm 42.

About the writer: Marty Nystrom is an American songwriter, who has written more than 70 songs and sung as a worship leader on several albums.

Seven Ways to Pray: 2. Desires

If you want to catch up, read the introductory post for Seven Ways to Pray for Your Heart, which contains links to all the other posts in the series. Also, you can find Jon Bloom's original post here.

This week, we focused on desires. One of the things we prayed about was asking God to make our desires the same as his desires. As children of God, you would think that this was automatic, but as human beings, we were born into sin, and its desire for us can blind us to God's desires for us, and for us. [Not a typo!] We see this as God warns Cain in Genesis 4:7, and as Paul laments the human condition in Romans 7:11-23.