Wednesday, February 18, 2015

He will give you the desires of your heart

today's readings are Leviticus 6:1-7:27, Mark 3:7-30, Psalm 37:1-11, and Prov 10:3-4

so today the thing that jumped out at me was from Psalm 37. many Christians know this verse by heart. delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.

for many years I wondered what that meant. will He give me what I want? or will He cause me to want the right thing? the phrase can mean either one... what does "the desires of my heart" mean?

the answer, I finally realized (you probably figured it out before I did), is both. God both causes us to desire the right things... and He then helps us to get the things we correctly desire.

an example... I really love Ferrari Testarossas. is that a correct desire of my heart? probably not. they cost ALOT of money... and I don't really need one. so it's probably not something I will ever have.

on the other hand... when I was praying one day, I asked God what I should do in life. like, what should be my main work? He said, to my surprise (I thought He was going to say "teach"), that He wanted me to write. and since then, I've begun to very strongly desire to write well.

this is an instance where He both gave me the thing I SHOULD desire, and then fulfilled that desire by helping me do the thing He told me.

Please continue to give me the desires of my heart, God. in every way.

3 comments:

Laurie said...

Just had a chat with the Big Man about my desires. This whole Lent thing is new to me. It was so easy to replace what I planned on giving up with something that I think is equally as bad. ( it's a food thing. Why give up saltne crackers just to go get something else loaded with crabs?) I guess that's why I'm up at 3 am, he knew I needed to talk to Him and get this figured out. Today will be better, as long as I can stay awake. Thank you for sharing about Ash Wednesday. I never experienced til I taught one year in ElPaso and I wondered why people do it.

jefe said...

I love crabs! ;)

Julie said...

My wow reading was Jesus picking the twelve apostles and giving them powers. I wonder whether He would see me and decide I would make a good apostle and thus I would be who He wanted me to be. Not that I would do everything right but the potential was obvious to Jeses.