Delight yourself in the Lord and do good;

          And He will give you the desires of your heart.  (Psalm 37:4)

We love this verse, its full of promise and hope and all the wonder of God and His goodness and love towards us.  But we screw it up.  The operative word in this verse, the one that trips us and causes us grief when we’ve got a “desire of the heart” that we want God to give us is the word… “G I V E”

We do NOT like to wait for God to give us anything.  What we really want God to do is “allow” us to have what we want, and “allow” us to manipulate our life circumstances to achieve whatever it is we want in our hearts.  We DO NOT under any circumstances want to play a passive role in achieving the “desires of our heart…”

We get our educations, and careers and plan our pregnancies, marriages, our children’s educations, careers and THEIR marriages.  We do our BEST to arrange our lives to suit the desires of our hearts.  And its not that they are bad desires or wrong desires, its just that the Scripture says … “And He will GIVE you the desires of your heart.”

All you have to do is align yourself to God, get your life in right order to Him… I think the verse is, “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you…” (Matthew 6:33) and then when God knows you’re ready, He will give you the desires of your heart, in a way that will not corrupt you, or lead you astray from Him, or ruin you.  You will not falter by replacing Him with a new god, you will not stumble in the way of your life and not be tempted to live away from God because of the life that is going on around you.  You will not become vain and puffed up, proud of what “you” have accomplished in life.  He knows these things, because He knows us better than we know ourselves.  You will live fruitful in the kingdom, and joyous in your life.  He actually will give you the desires of your heart, if you will wait for Him to do so.

OOOOOHHHH!!!!!!!!!!  We don’t like to wait do we?  And aligning the life you live to God is difficult at best, and seemingly impossible on the challenging days.  BUT… its worth what it takes to live a life with God.  Its worth the wait, to have what God wants for you, when God wants it for you, because God doesn’t withhold from us to punish us.  We get it soooo wrong.  We wait, and in the waiting we are shaped, if we will turn our face to God in an open way, to receive what God has for us at that moment, instead of turning to God full of secret resentment in our hearts, because we do not have what we’ve desired.  Do you know you desire some things that would utterly destroy you?  No, you don’t know that, but God does.  The only reason God will NOT give you the desire of your heart is because He knows the content of your character, and if granting the desire of your heart is going to mess with your place in eternity…He’s not up for it. 

And you know what?  He knows these things.  And I can trust God to always do what’s best for me, even when I won’t do what’s best for myself.  See God loves me more than I love me.

More along this line tomorrow…much love, Anita