A Lesson in Desire

desire

I’ve been meditating on this passage from Scripture:

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

When we break this down, it could be read a few different ways:

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

The first one says that God will give you whatever your heart desires. The second one says that God will deposit into your heart what he desires you to desire. The second version is more faithful and less dangerous, and here’s why:

We have no idea what we should be desiring.

A Lesson From a 10-Month Old

11540_550645410659_63803653_32423156_3006126_n I liken this to my relationship with my son, Finnegan. As he grows older, he will begin to show interest (read: desire) in certain things: toys, whining, popsicles, tantrums, snuggling, saying “no”, being read to, staying up past his bedtime, sharing, not taking naps, and giving kisses to his mommy. Some of these desires are very good. Some of them are very bad and detrimental to his health and well-being.

But how does he know which is which? He doesn’t. At least not yet. He’s 10 weeks old. That’s why my wife and I are there for him. We are there to encourage the good desires (right now it’s smiling. Down the road it will be saying “please” and “thank you”) while discourage the bad ones (eating all of the candy he harvested from a night of trick-or-treating.) As he grows, hopefully he will begin to anticipate what his mom and I will say to the desires that he has. As he learns more and more about us as parents, and more about himself as a person, he will begin to reject the bad desires and engage the good ones.

I think all of us are a lot like Finnegan. We have all these desires and needs and really have no clue what to do with them. Instead of feeling guilty or wrong about having them (say, like wanting to make more money or wanting a chocolate milkshake), what if we asked God to give us back the ones he wants us to have? What if we asked him to give us back the desires of our hearts that he wants us to have?

My guess is that a lot of us would be shocked at the things God wants us to desire. As we take delight in him, we begin to see that he’s much nicer than we’ve been led to believe. We begin to see that our desires are really off in some ways, but are right and true in a majority of other ways. We begin to see that God actually likes it when we’re happy. Go figure.

With that, what do you desire?

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Contributor: Justin Wise

I am a religious deviant who enjoys coffee, collared shirts, spending time with my wife and son, learning about quantum physics and creatively exploring the riches of the Spirit of Christ. Find more here: JustinWise.me

Mikes Sumondong

For me that's the sweetest way of explaining the verse. i can't even trust my own desires for myself. As proverbs would say, any plan I have can sometimes lead to death.