A Heart's Desire

Trust in the LORD, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
Delight yourself also in the LORD,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.

- PS 37.3-5, NKJV

Motives. Talk about evasive. Have you ever tried to come clean with why you're doing something? It's amazing to me how much I do out of my old nature. Out of fear or anxiety. Out of self-preservation. Out of doubting God. Out of selfishness, Out of unhealthy conditioning. Out of people-pleasing. Out of plain old pride.

It's funny how things tend to get clear pretty quickly when the Lord brings His light into my shadowy basement. But if I'm honest here, I have to say that He doesn't always get the access to my basement as much as He wants (or needs) to be invited there! And so many of my motives just go unscrutinized, moment by moment, even day by day. And, of course, it's pretty scary when you see how ugly your own motives can be. But then, every once in a while, you see something else. You see that somewhere in your new, true heart, pure motives are actually at work in you. And they're changing some important things from the inside out.

Last Friday night, Jesus was in my basement again. Only this time, He was showing me some stuff beyond the shadows, right at the core, that weren't altogether bad. No - in fact, what He was showing me was something altogether... good. They were things near and dear to me. Things I have hoped for; longed for; prayed for; dreamed of. Things that made my heart come alive with passion and energy. Things that were so real to me and such a part of who I am and who He made me to be that they were practically just an extension of my very life. Some were larger and some smaller. Some of great impact and some with meaning just for me. But none of them - not a single one - had come to fruition in my life yet. Because the room Jesus was in now was a most sacred space. it was the room of my desires.

And as He brought so many of my heart's wishes and longings and stories into His light, He said something to me. Something I couldn't really even accept - at first. He told me that every one of those dreams and desires and motivations was good and true and right and had been brought into that room... by Him!

Now I don't know how this makes you feel. But I'm in tears right now as I write this. Because somewhere in the places where I have tried to understand and do the will of God - somewhere in the subconscious reaches of my inner world - I have always struggled to square "my" desires with His heart. Take any of them and we'd have the same redundant conversations: Was the whole "heart message" something He wanted me to share, or was "qualified" enough to be trusted with? Was I living in His desire as a pastor of a church? Did my desire (largely still unfulfilled) to be able to lavish beautiful things on my wife line up with His will? Or being able to eventually take an actual vacation with my family? Or just desiring to start writing songs again (which I have been unable to connect with for some time)? And I was serious. Because to me, unless a desire came from God's heart, it might become an idol to draw me away from Him (and I don't say that piously, but as one who has been drawn away too many times to ever want to consciously go there again!)

And so, here's Jesus telling me that all of the things I have held in my heart have been from Him. And you must understand something at this point. I know the difference (usually) between a movement of my deep heart and an externally driven emotion, appetite or impulse. And so I had some reasons to believe my own heart by now in these areas. But my confidence had been so badly shaken due to all of the pruning and healing God has done over the past 6 or 7 years that I have become timid in these sorts of things. And yet here I was, being hit with a tidal wave of joy in knowing that these innermost desires were not of my own fantasy-making or fleshly drives. They were, in fact, from God Himself.

And here is where hope begins to rise up as the tears begin to fall down. God has not forgotten me. And He still has a dream that I'm a part of! And it's the dream that's resonating in me and has been in various forms all my life! And so now there's this rush of joy and freedom and goodness and a sense that I am once again caught up in the dance of life among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And so enraptured and flooded with hope, I become energized to once again pursue those desires with everything in me.

Right, Jesus?

Jesus?

Father....

Wait, where did you go? You just showed me what I've been so unsure of. You've opened my eyes again. Given me life again. Got my heart back on track again. Now why I don't feel you... did you leave? Didn't you mean it? Don't you want me to have this joy? Don't you want these things for me? Don't you want me to run after... after...

It's then that I saw it. Psalm 37 (above) says that to delight in the Lord means that He will give you the desires of your heart. My delight in Him had brought those desires alive in me. But what I hadn't seen yet is that they weren't to be pursued to bring them to fullness inly life. He was to be pursued. Because the same delight I had in Him that made those desires fill my heart will be the same delight in Him that will allow Him to give me those desires in my life as His gift to me!

In other words, this is all grace. Nothing for me to pursue. Except Him. And nothing for me to do. Except what He tells me. And do you know what? After this epiphany, Jesus was there again. and now we were talking about motives. And He made something clear to me. Something my heart has always known but that I never could have delineated without His Spirit. And it is just this: we who are His sons and daughters have a new heart. And we have access to His heart. Our true desires are all from Him. And yes, we do have motive issues around desires, but this is when we derive those desires from the outside - the flesh - instead of from our true hearts.

Where we fall down is in two places: first, in the distortion or bending of our desires because our soulish hearts are still broken, which leads to a contamination of our God-given desires. Secondly, we fall down where, once we recognize a desire, we run out on our own to fulfill it. We try to earn it and work for it. To make it happen. And at that point, guess what? We're done. Blown up. Because the very fulfillment of that desire belongs exclusively to the Lord. And so we frustrate His grace. And ultimately ourselves.

And maybe that's why so many of our desires are still in the basement. We were moved by them deeply at one point in our lives, and so we moved. Moved to get it done. Apart from God, we took on something that was made for a dimension that we can't operate in alone. But we tried right? You tried and I tried and everybody tried. Except God. Cause we didn't pursue Him once the dream was in our sights.

So just call it what it is. Idolatry. And every pursuit of a desire instead of God further damages our hearts and contaminates our desires. And after quite enough of all this, we simply bury the desires. We decide they weren't even from God to begin with. And then we lose heart.

But Jesus came Friday night. And He told me He was there to give me my heart back at a whole new level. And so I'm learning again about that dance of the Spirit. To move in step with Him. Because it is the dance of the heart that enables me to flow in what He's doing. And as I feel those movements, within me, I respond to Him. I delight in Him. And He lives His dream through me. And in His dream are all my desires. And He's the One Who will fulfill them - every last one!

And that's a beautiful dance that I can't wait to really, finally learn. Because it's His dance in celebration of my desires!

Live Courageous!