Desire & Delight

 

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

~Psalm 37:4

I've always had a hard time trusting in God for the desires of my heart. Actually, I've had a hard time even owning up to the desires of my heart. I always felt like if I was desiring them, they must be wrong. Not necessarily immoral but definitely contrary to what God had for me.

I don't know what created this (though I do know comments like "God has a sense of humor" in relation to people talking about things they don't want contributed), but it ruled me for a long time. I used to pray, "Thy will be done" not as an act of surrender to an Almighty God and Loving Father but as a reinforcement of the distrust I felt towards my will.

I was self-reliant and spiritually insecure.

I had been a Christian all my life, but I looked at my heart as fallen. I believed that God loved me but not that I loved Him.

I didn't believe I was saved. I didn't believe I was being transformed. I didn't believe my desires were good. I believed in God, but I didn't put weight in His promises towards me. And the reason was because my eyes were on myself and not on Him.

I looked towards the Bible passages I hadn't understood or invested in instead of the God who invited me into His Word. I looked at the prayers lost to sleep instead of the God who heard them all the same. My faith was about what I could do for God because I was trying to meet His love with my own instead of accepting that His love covers our whole relationship. He's the one who keeps our covenant, and it was never about me reciprocating but only about me receiving. 

And as God taught me to abide in Him, to receive from Him, to look away from my inadequacies and into His glory, our relationship changed. I stopped avoiding God because I was ashamed of my performance; instead, each failing was a new testament to His grace and goodness. And as our intimacy grew so did my perspective on my desires.

Passages like Psalm 37:4 began to change.

In the past when I'd read passages like these, I fought to believe that God would give me the desires of my heart but never could because I'd assumed they were so contrary to His desires. But one day I read this psalm and finally realized who gave me my desires.

And if my desires are something God put in me because He wants them for me, they are something He will delight to give me. 

The more time we spend with God, the more we delight in Him, the more we receive of Him, and the more our desires are stripped of worldly influence and refined to God's intentions. 

At the root of it, so much of why I struggled to believe God would fulfill my desires is because I was trying to protect myself and foolishly trying to protect my relationship with God. If I believed He would give me my deepest desires and then He didn't, I'd be disappointed and maybe even bitter. I might resent God; it might negatively affect our relationship. In my mind it was better not to trust Him for those desires in the first place. Much safer. And definitely not something problematic that would affect our relationship negatively on its own.

I was afraid my desires would mean more to me than God. I was afraid of trusting and being let down. I was afraid of holding something against God. I was leading with my flesh and not His freedom. 

But He is ever patient and kind. He holds our everlasting covenant, and He will never let us go. He is faithful to teach us over and over again no matter how long it takes us to understand. He always gives us the answer.

If I stopped at a partial picture of delight, delighting in God and not seeing how He too delights in me, I'd likely continue to believe that I needed to give up the desires of my heart to live in God. If I believed that God would fulfill those desires, and I let them become the focus instead of delighting in Him, He would become just a means to an end. A genie in a bottle. And I would feel entitled to and justified in my growing idolatry.

 But when I truly delight in God, I see both Him and myself for who we are. When I trust that He will fulfill my desires, I can let them go. They no longer have to be my focus and pursuit because I know that He will fulfill them in His way and His appointed time. I no longer have to look to the story I see unfolding for affirmation because I know "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" and His ways are always better (Is. 55:8; 9).

I can move both in confidence in who He is and in who I am because He created me and is refining me. 

I no longer have to produce anything in myself but only to receive from Him. 

When I delight in Him, I rest in His presence. I gain peace and confidence for my future because He goes before.

He changes us from the inside. He refines our hearts and our desires. He becomes our deepest desire and greatest joy, letting all else fall away. Lesser desires and joys don't disappear, but we finally understand that they will not satisfy. Our joy can only be found in Him. Our satisfaction is fixed to His steadfastness. Our longings are fulfilled, and our desires can thrive in that fulfillment, beholden to God. As we grow in delight, He withholds nothing from us. He prunes our hearts of bad fruit and roots the desires He's planted in the good.

The gift of reward is secondary to the reward of drawing close to God, and yet we receive both.

We seek Him and all else is added to us (Matt. 6:33).

We have complete access: Seek. Ask. Knock. Receive.

Come again and again and always receive His presence no matter how imperfectly you come. 

Give Him your desires and gain peace, contentment, surrender, and trust as you live in expectancy. You don't have to force anything because He will give you every good thing when the time is right, and His knowledge is better and more gracious than we could ever imagine. And as you draw into Him, trusting Him for your desires, you receive more and more of Him as you wait on Him.

He is a kind Father who will never meet our earnest desires with a cruel joke. He delights to gift you, and He delights in you. 

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"

~Matthew 7:7-11

Oh, God, our delight!