DELIGHT YOURSELF IN THE LORD

Psalm 37:4
Also delight yourself in Yahweh, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (WEB)

When I was a new Christian as a teenager, I assumed that God's desires would be completely opposite to my own deep desires. At one point, I believed that He might send me to a country that I didn't want to go to, and make me marry someone that I didn't want to marry. I know that some of my faulty beliefs came from the immaturity of being a 15 year old boy, but I think we all may be able to relate to such assumptions at one time or another.

As I have grown up (or rather grown down) in the Lord, becoming more childlike in my relationship with Him, I have realized that He wants me to begin to trust my heart. In Philippians 2:13, Paul the Apostle writes... For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. (WEB) When we have a new heart inside of us, God uses that heart to lead us and guide us in the ways He wants us to go.

If we cannot trust the godly longings of our heart, how do we make decisions? Of course the Bible says that there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors, so yes we do need the community of faith to speak into our lives. Yes we do need our desires to line up with Scripture but just because we read a Bible verse does not mean that every verse is applicable to our life situation right now.

I believe that the more we can learn to trust God and live by our hearts, the more that we will see that doing His will is an absolute delight for us! He created us to do the good works that He prepared before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 2:10) so don't you think that doing them should be in line with our heart's desires?

In my travels, I ask many people this question. 'What are the desires of your heart?' And most people, just look at me and say... 'I don't know'. I think the reason that we don`t know what we truly long to do is that we haven`t been given permission to think outside of the box. Some well meaning parent, teacher or boss has always been telling us what to think and what to do.

My prayer today is that we would all come alive with the revelation that when we delight in the Lord our God, He responds by giving us the desires of our heart. May we all become more aware of the desires that have resided in the deepest places of the new redeemed heart that lives within every son or daughter of the Most High.

Ezekiel 11:19-20
19 I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh; 20 that they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. (WEB)