Skip to main content

 GOD'S DESIRES

Psalm 37:4

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

This passage from God’s Word has been used, abused, and misused for a long time. Some have abused it by saying that “if” we “delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us whatever our little hearts desires. Some have misused it as some kind of works-formula that if we do this, God is obligated to do that.

I don’t think that is what is being revealed by the Lord to us.

To “delight ourselves in the Lord” is to have Him be the One thing to which we devote the whole of life to. It is to see Him as the source of all goodness and hope. It is to know Him as Life, itself. It is to believe Him to be Who He says He is: our Good Shepherd, the Lord and giver of Life, our armor for the battle, the power and anointing we need to follow Him and keep in step with the Holy Spirit.

Delighting in the Lord indicates the surrender of all we are, all we steward, all abilities and gifts given to Him without reserve for Him to live in and through them as He wills. Truth is, we don’t know HOW to live the new life we have been given in Christ Jesus apart from Him living that new life within and through us. Following Jesus Christ is not our old life rearranged and religiously polished up. It is a brand-new thing. Old things have passed away, having been cut away by the Hand of God in an unalterable spiritual “circumcision” where our old sin nature is cut away, removed.

Surrendering to the love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace of God in Jesus Christ our eyes are opened more and more to see the everlasting, never stopping, overwhelming, almighty love of God for us in Jesus. We need God to transform in us what we have heretofore considered worthy of desire. The flesh, that residue of our old, discarded sin nature, had for years trained and deceived our minds, wills, and emotions and even our bodies into thinking we need more than what God provides. Satan wants us to have divided hearts and the flesh colludes to try and keep sin alive in us. But we are no longer slaves of sin. We are under new management and ownership.

As we seek the Lord and His Kingdom rule over every dimension of life; as we seek the Lord as the one and only thing to which we devote ourselves, we will find Him transforming every aspect of life. We find Him changing our “wanter” and will find Him IMPLANTING His desires in our hearts. The Lord God knows what will result in our becoming our best selves, and as we surrender, I believe we can look forward to Him GIVING US THE DESIRES OF OUR HEARTS…putting in us His own desires so that we might live out the new life He has given us.

God’s desires for us, His will, is the only thing that will give true meaning and purpose to every follower of Jesus Christ. The Lord is the only One worthy of our being delighted in, grateful to, and yielded to in responsive love and faith.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  OUT IN THE OPEN God has not hidden what He has done to redeem humanity. He offers us the only way of true repentance, faith, forgiveness of sin and a new life that is unending. Truth is, though, He never forces repentance, faith, forgiveness and a new life on anyone. He desires a relationship, not the programmed responses of humanoid AI. His love for us has exposed the utter ruin of humanity because of our rebellion and sin. He doesn’t want us to be deceived into thinking that at the end of our lives here on earth we will all get a “participation trophy”. We have all personalized and internalized our rebellion against God. Humanity’s rebellion against God can be shocking horror or the civilized folly or relying on our broken moral compass to bring ourselves back into a state of wholeness. We want to be the ground of truth. We want our emotions enshrined and worshipped by all. The root problem is that humanity is spiritually dead and separated from Life, Himself. Both pride and ho...
Post a Comment
Read more
  PSALM 119:132 “Turn to me and have mercy on me, as You always do to those who love Your Name.” Here is the cry of an understanding heart. The Psalmist is acknowledging that life in all its fullness, the life God intends for us to live out here on earth is only found by God’s pursuit of us, His turning to us that we might turn to Him. The Psalmist knows that “Salvation is of the Lord.” He cries out for the Lord’s mercy to cover Him. He acknowledges that those who know the Lord, those who are known by Him and who love His Name, always find God’s mercy and grace to live out the life that God commands. God provides the wherewithal to do what He has commanded. He gives us the indwelling Power and Person of the Holy Spirit to BE Life within us. It is the Holy Spirit who conforms us to the Image of Christ Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who perfects in us the obedience of Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who makes God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He enables us to cooperate w...
Post a Comment
Read more
 UNDERSTANDING GOD'S MERCY Matthew 13:58 “ And so He did only a few miracles there because of their unbelief.” I have heard it said that somehow the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through the Lord Jesus Christ was somehow limited by the unbelief of the folks in His hometown of Nazareth. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Nothing limits the power of God nor His grace give to sinners to redeem, heal, and restore them to God. What we see is the mercy of God towards broken people. He will not reinforce unbelief. If someone refuses to believe who Jesus Christ is and what He has done, the Lord in His mercy will not reinforce that unbelief by manifesting His healing and delivering power upon the one who does not believe. Otherwise, we broken humans might come to think that we can get from God what we want because we want it, not because we have surrendered our lives to Him in faith. Christianity is not refined paganism where we get God to do what we want because we h...
Post a Comment
Read more