Will God Give Me the Desires of My Heart?

WE ALL ACHE WITH DESIRES WE HOPE GOD FULFILLS.

For years I desired to be married and God seemed silent. Then I longed for a place to call home—and my husband and I continued to move from city to city.

What are your desires?

What comes to your mind when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep?

Psalm 37:4 offers hope for our longings, but sometimes it seems like just a sweet saying painted on a coffee mug. Especially for my friends who wait for a positive pregnancy test, a job, healing.

If we delight in God, will He really give us the desires of our hearts?

GOD CREATED OUR SOULS FOR DELIGHT.  

The Garden of Eden was a place for pampering oneself in beauty and God’s presence. The Lord walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. I picture abundant flowers of vibrant pink, yellow, and violet. Raspberries tasting like gum drops. The sun blazing with just enough warmth. Pure springs watering the earth and providing crystal cool drinking water. Leopards strolling with zebras.

Nothing hindered exquisite delight.

BUT SIN BROKE OUR DELIGHT.

Adam and Eve chose to turn from delighting in God—to delighting in what they saw and craved—apart from God. They ate what God forbade.

Sin caused a curse and God sent Adam and Eve out from the land of delight to live where hard ground needs toiled—where brother murders brother and women writhe in labor.

Now our delight is broken too. We think that by delighting in our desires, we find peace. Just a little more will make us happy. Just a little less, maybe? Just a little younger, richer, further, closer.

But our efforts never sustain satisfaction. They never quench our soul’s thirst or make us whole.

BUT THERE IS HOPE.

Jesus died and rose again on the cross to heal our broken delight. When our sin is forgiven by faith in Jesus death, burial, and resurrection, we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

We now have the capacity for true delight again.

IT’S NOT JUST SILLY TALK.

I think Psalm 37 teaches us delight and fulfilled desires have a place our post-Eden world. But we lose focus. Like Adam and Eve, we look to anything but God to fix our problems.

Instead we fret. And fret. And fret.

Psalm 37 tells us, instead of fretting:

• Trust in the Lord
• Do good
• Cultivate faithfulness
• Delight yourself in the Lord
• Trust Him
• Be still before the Lord
• Wait patiently for him

DESIRES IN AN EVIL WORLD

Sometimes delighting in the Lord in our broken-by-sin world with our broken-by-sin neighbors and our broken-by-sin selves—takes willful practice.

We have to choose, like Joshua, whom we will serve on a daily basis.

• Will we serve our desires? Or will we serve the Lord?
• Will we place our delight in ourselves? Or will we delight in the Lord?

WILL MY DREAMS COME TRUE?

We can look around or within to know full well that not all our dreams come true. But when we delight in the Lord—when we focus on worshipping Him in spirit and in truth on a daily basis even when the marriage falls apart or the cancer returns—a strange thing happens.

We begin to delight in abundant peace (Psalm 37:11). And God’s desire for us becomes our desire for ourselves.

Then, He gives us the desire of our hearts.