desires of my heart

Henri Nouwen wrote, “Those who think they have arrived, have lost their way…An important part of the spiritual life is to keep longing, waiting, hoping, expecting.”

Today my heart and mind are tired and weary from waiting. I am worn out from hoping and longing. Yet I must continue. These are my feelings, but my feelings do not determine my faith and confidence in God. While I am weary and tired, I have to maintain desire for more of Christ. I have to continue to desire for God’s action and presence. If I cannot do this, I am utterly lost.

When my desire to pray is lacking, I have to pray for the desire to pray. If God gives desire to the human heart, and He gives if we ask according to His will, then I have to ask for more desire in the dry and weary places.

E.M. Bounds wrote, “Prayer is the oral expression of desire…the deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer. Without desire, prayer is meaningless mumble of words.”

When that desire runs out, I have to pray and ask for more. I never fully arrive, and I certainly need more and more of Christ in my understanding, my looking, my speaking, my thinking.

There is no desire within me to seek God’s will in my life. You will very rarely find me looking or asking, “What is God’s will in this situation?” Even in the hardest decisions, I will rarely ever ask God for His will to be revealed to me.

Seeking God’s will is a waste of time!

To seek God’s will is a focus on the wrong thing. It is a preoccupation with the wrong element of the equation. It all comes back to the passage which tells us:

“Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”

“So PC, are you saying you don’t seek God’s will and instead you just ask God for stuff and He gives it to you…whatever you desire?”

Kind of….but not at all…

This passage tells me this:

Don’t seek God’s will; seek God, and His will will happen.

This passage tells me that if I quit worrying about seeking God’s will and start seeking GOD in personal intimate relationship, His will will happen. This passage tells me, first, to delight myself in the Lord. SO I need to be with God and enjoy my time with him. I have to spend time at the heart of God…relating to Him intimately.

Then this passage tells me if I fulfill the first part, He will give me the desires of my heart. God will give us desire. We do not create our own desire. Our desire will not be our own…IF…we maintain the first part of the passage. If we can say we have followed the first part of delighting ourselves in the heart of relating to God intimately, God will instill desire within us. This means if we maintain intimacy with the heart of God, whatever desire we have can be followed.

Ozzie Chambers writes, “To be so much in contact with God that you never need to ask Him to show you His will, is to be nearing the final stage of your discipline in the life of FAITH. When you are rightly related to God, it is a life of freedom and liberty and delight…and all your common-sense decisions are His will for you…”