Desire

Psalms 37:4 - Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

It is in the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most human beings live for only the gratification of it. - Aristotle.

I have often heard it taught that what this verse is saying is that God will give you desires for your heart. That God causes and affects your heart to desire certain things that are in line with his desires for you. This is complicated due to the fickle nature of our flesh and a heart that the Lord has told us is “deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9)” and that we are in need of assistance to understand our own hearts. If this is true, then what I confess I desire is in all probability just the surface of my true desire. For to come in contact beyond the surface and into the depth of my desire, I need the holy spirit to reveal it to me (1 Corinthians 2). This leads us to conclude then that what this passage is not saying is that whatever you find your heart desiring, that God has given you that desire.

So why do I have such a vast range of desires? Why am I bent on having them satisfied immediately? I understand that if I have a desire to sell cocaine to minors, that clearly isn’t a desire that the Lord has given me, but what about the desire to have a husband or wife for the single person? What about the desire for having a child for a married couple? What about the desire to make enough money to pay my bills? Is it possible for God to give you a desire that he doesn’t intend to fulfill in this life? If so, why? How does my desire not turn into entitlement? In other words, if the Lord has given me this desire, now he needs to fulfill it, and do so now. It seems that understanding our desire is at the root of all of this. Is it possible, that like hope, desire is something implanted in us, rather than something we have in and of ourselves?

If Aristotle is right in his statement, that the nature of desire is to not be satisfied, and Paul is telling the truth in Romans 8:23 that as a result of the implanting of the Holy Spirit we find ourselves “groaning” as we wait for the redemption of our bodies, then what is this desire inside of us all about? We need to understand what it is all about, for if we don't we are a ship without a rudder, tossed about by the sea. I would suggest we go back to “delight” in Psalm 37. What does it it mean to delight in the Lord?

Eden is defined as "a state of perfect happiness or bliss, a delightful place, a paradise". In the creation account of Genesis 2 and 3 we find a picture the first of humanity experiencing what we "groan" for as Christ followers in this current day. What we are seeing in Eden is the desire of God for mankind concerning the nature of their relationship. Prior to the fall, it was the delight of the Lord and of man that they were fully in relationship with one another; in spirit and in body. It is often easy for me to think of Eden in terms of its content (the beauty, peace, security, no sorrow, work rather than labor and toil, etc). It would serve us better to think of Eden not just in terms of the resulting content, but rather the preceding context that is the cause, namely the presence of God himself.

Is it possible that all of our true desire is liked inexplicably with this truth, that the only experience of true satisfaction and gratification require the full presence of God Himself? That what will be so profoundly great about being reunited to Christ in death will not be the byproduct blessings of heaven but the glory ridden experience of being face to face with God himself. It is easy to see that if this is what I was made for, why I live so many days trying to kill my desire by my vane attempts to satisfy it now. I have “eternity” placed in my heart by him, and I have no way of brining it about. Ecclesiastes 3:11.

As a result we usually do one of two things. Try to kill desire by grasping anxiously at some lesser thing, robbing me of freedom and “nailing” my desire to some attachment that supplies temporary comfort. But desire having been given not manifested, and having its root in God not man, cannot be destroyed, any more than it can be satisfied outside of Him. The other option takes us back to the garden. For we have now, as Christ followers, one of two parts. A new heart and new Spirit (Ezekiel 11:19) We can begin to taste the first-fruits of what we one day experience in full, when our bodies are restored along with this work he has already accomplished in our spirit. It is safe to say, that the only lasting satisfaction I will experience this side of glory will be “in spirit”. Knowing this and staying in step with this truth (Galatians5: 23) then becomes quite paramount for understanding and living out of my true desire. It is only in times when I live minutes, days, hours, weeks, months, and even years out of touch with the holy spirit that my sense of entitlement for the desires of my heart to me satisfied now is the dominating emotion of my life.

It is why when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray; the first request was for the” thy kingdom to come”. When I demand all of my desires to be met by God now, it is safe to say that I have replaced “thy” with “my”. That’s a whole other topic.