What is the desire of your heart? Have you ever thought about it?
God says He will give us the desires of our heart.
Find out more about what that means for you in today's blog post, Your Heart's Desire.
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Be delighted with the Lord then He will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
If I delight myself in the Lord, He will give me the desires of my heart. What a beautiful promise! What do you think about when you read this verse? … I remember reading this verse in high school and it quickly became one of my favorites. I used to think if I loved God and told Him the desires of my heart, that He would then fulfill all my dreams exactly as I imagined them! I equated “desire” with “dream” and my dream, my heart’s desire, was for a godly husband, to have children, to tour the world singing, to have a big, loving family, and a house in the country with lots of land for horses and dogs …nothing wrong with those desires, right? What I missed as an enthusiastic, hopeful, naïve … and dare I say, determined, teenage girl was the whole concept of being delighted in and with the Lord!
What does it mean to delight ourselves in the Lord? To better understand I found it helpful to go to the dictionary … Delight means to be filled with joy, to find satisfaction in, to be thrilled with… So, if I am delighted in the Lord I am filled with joy! I am fully satisfied! I am thrilled with Him! Wow!
Now let’s take this one step further …. Psalm 40:8 says, “Doing Your will, my God is my joy! Your law is in my inmost being!” I don’t know about you, but I used to think of doing God’s will as something I would just never want for myself or my life! I tried to humanize God, and therefore I could not grasp that He alone knows me better than anyone and loves me so much that His will is one that is only and always for my good, my absolute best. Yet David says, “it is my joy!” If God’s will is to be my joy, then His Word must be inside of me! “Your law is in my innermost being!”
It was very helpful for me to learn the Hebrew meaning for “the Law” Law means “teaching and instruction” Ah! God’s law, God’s Word, is His teaching and instruction for me. A love letter, a manual, a guide, on how best to live my life! It is the law of life and liberty! So, let’s put all this together … in order for me to take joy in doing God’s will, His teaching and instruction needs to be a part of me, then when His Word is a part of me, my desires are transformed to His. My desire is for Him. He IS the desire of my heart! And when the Lord is the desire of my heart, I begin to pray for His will … for what He would desire for me!
Only in recent years, a few decades after I read this verse as a teenage girl, that I began to really understand it and to identify with the words of Jennifer Kennedy Dean, “Initially, I responded to His call to delight in Him to ensure the fulfillment of His promise to give me the desires of my heart. I had no idea that He would give me a new heart. (Jeremiah 24:7). I didn’t know that He would begin working in me to reproduce His own heart. When I turned to Him, I found that He Himself is my very great reward. (Genesis 15:1). He is not, as I supposed, the means to my end. Instead, He is the desire of my heart.”
The greatest satisfaction I can experience is in the presence of the Lord! I find satisfaction in His Word, in obeying His Word from a grateful heart, through spending time with the Lord in prayer, through praise and worship in music, through the beauty of His creation, and a myriad of other ways which I feel His presence and His love! Joy is an outflow of the well that resides within.
Finding satisfaction in God takes time and effort on my part … just as any relationship does. But I have learned through the disappointments, storms, heartaches and losses of insisting on my way, my will … the freedom, delight, joy, and peace that results in trusting God instead! There is tremendous freedom in praying His will, then trusting Him enough to let go … believing His will is better than anything I could ever ask for myself or think that I desired!
I just love the poems of Ruth Bell Graham, and recently came across this one … which I find appropriate to share with you here…
Lay them quietly at His feet
one by one:
each desire, however sweet,
just begun;
dreams still hazy, growing bright;
hope just poised, winged for flight;
all your longing – each delight –
every one.
At His feet and leave them there,
never fear;
every heartache, crushing care –
trembling tear;
you will find Him always true,
men may fail you, friends be few,
He will provide Himself to you
far more dear.
Ruth Bell Graham
Sitting By My Laughing Fire
“Whom have I in heaven but You?
And I have no delight or desire on earth beside You.”
Psalm 73:25
Oh, how I want to focus on what pleases God, not on what pleases myself. This is the cry of my heart! … That I would have no delight or desire on earth besides you, Lord! Oh, my friend, may this be the delight and desire of your heart too! I pray that as you seek the Lord and find satisfaction in Him, that you would desire Him above all others, and anything that this world has to offer!
Editor's Note:
This blog is by Freedom to Flourish Life Coaching Founder and Christian Life Coach, Jen Stone-Sexton. She is currently accepting new clients. You can learn more about Jen here.
Jennifer Stone-Sexton © 2022. Freedom to Flourish Life Coaching. All Rights Reserved.
Graphics created by Morgan Howard © 2023 Freedom to Flourish, LLC.
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Photo Credits: Cover: Photo by Ann M. on Unsplash | Photo 2 Created by Morgan Howard |
Photo 3 Paolo Gregotti on Unsplash