The desires of our heart

Psalm 37:4

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

This past week at CITYChurch we looked at James 4 and talked about how we approach God in an offensive manner when we tell Him what we are going to do, and expect Him to help.  God desires for us to approach Him with an open heart, asking how He wants to use us.  

Sometimes, when talking about such ideas, it may seem that God does not care what we want.  That is far from reality.  He made each of us unique.  He made us to connect with His creation in certain ways; to have peculiar personalities; and to have personal desires.  

So how do we unite these two ideas?  How do we celebrate the desires that God has put in our heart, but not go too far and dictate to God what we are going to do?  

This, along with most of the difficult aspects of following Jesus, comes back to our heart.  There are a lot of people out there who complain that they are not getting the desires of their heart.  They think God is a liar, or that He is not real, or at least that He doesn't care about them.  Some of this comes from the fact that we often forget the first part of Psalm 37:4; take delight in the Lord.  

James has said over and over that a heart that is not surrendered to God is full of evil, demonic, bad stuff.  If our heart is still in our own hands, if our desire is still to look out for ourselves, then our desires will also be evil.  They will be dangerous.  They will actually be harmful to ourselves and to those around us.  God will never give us the desires of our evil, un-surrendered hearts.  

The evil in our hearts masks the heart that God gave us.  When we surrender to Him, are baptized into Jesus saving sacrifice, have our sins forgiven, get the gift of the Holy Spirit, are made a new creation by Him, and are moved from hell bound to ransomed child of God we begin to discover our true heart.  The heart that is the way we were intended to be.  It is this heart whose desires God will give to us.  This is the heart that leads us back to the Father.  The desires of that surrendered heart can be trusted, and God will Himself delight in giving us those desires.  

Following Jesus does not mean we can't listen to our hearts.  It simply means that we need to let God begin healing our heart first.