God Wants To Give You The Desires Of Your Heart?
By Rob Wiltshire
Ever heard this statement? God wants to give you the desires of your heart?
I imagine if you have been around church circles for a while you’d be familiar with a phrase that’s somewhat similar to that.
Often it’s used in the context where someone’s trying to work their way through a decision.
The conversation goes: “I don’t know what I should do, nor what God wants me to do. Should I keep at this, or should I leave that and do this?”
Then the phrase is dropped like: “what does your heart/desires tell you to do? Because God wants to give you the desires of your heart.”
Here’s the problem; some desires aren’t healthy.
Most children if allowed would eat junk food for every meal, would watch T.V without ceasing. Ask most people early in the morning if it’s their desire to go to work, and chances are you will get a no!
A God whose sole interest is meeting the desires of our hearts, is most likely a god who we’ve made in our image. And most likely that god will never ask us to do something we don’t want to do.
Jesus has this conversation with his disciples in Luke 9:23-25
23 If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross each day and follow me.
Kind of confronting isn’t it.
If you want to — if you claim to — be my followers, you must forget about yourself.
But what about my desires, don’t they matter?
Yes, they do, but not every desire is a Godly or healthy one.
The truth is God does want to give you the desires of your heart, but first He wants to give you His desires.
Jesus continues the conversation in Luke 9:24-25 by saying;
24 If you want to save your life, you will destroy it. But if you give up your life for me, you will save it. 25 What will you gain, if you own the whole world but destroy yourself or waste your life?
An unfortunate reality is, so many of us move through life trying to do all we can to give ourselves the best life possible, and in the end it all falls apart. There are countless stories of people who spend their lives trying to gain financial excess and assets, and in the end lose everything that is truly important to them.
All of this happens because of a pursuit of desires we were never supposed to purse.
Jesus wants to give you His desires, because it’s His desires that will keep you healthy, keep you happy, keep your life moving forward in the right direction. His desires will keep your relationships together. His desires if you follow them will grate against yours. But in the end, His desires will leave you with life.
God wants to give us the desires of our hearts, but that first starts with us forgetting about our desires and searching for His. That begins with us offering to God our lives. And that is a daily choice.
How about right now you pause and have a conversation with God, asking Him to fill you with His desires.