DESIRES

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4

For some strange reason, as a child and a young person, I believed that God would make me do what I didn’t want to do, for example, send me to China as a missionary! Somehow, I had the idea that God was a killjoy who definitely did not want me to enjoy life. I tried very hard not to have any desires in case He sent me in the opposite direction.

It is only as I have grown in my understanding of God’s character that I have come to realise that many of the desires we have are His way of directing our lives in His chosen pathway. God builds into our genes the gifts and talents that fire our desires, and bring us the pleasure and fulfilment in life that He wants us to have.

I have discovered that, instead of trying to squash my desires, God actually plants desires in my heart; He puts them there when He wants me to change direction so that, as I follow my heart, I fall in line with His will.

I have also noticed, in my study of John’s Gospel, how Jesus aroused desire in the people He interacted with, one on one, so that the appetite to know the truth He was explaining moved them towards faith in Him.

Take for example, His meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well outside Sychar. She came to draw water in the middle of the day because her lifestyle and the guilt and shame she felt, cut her off from the village women. Jesus’ request for water startled her. No Jewish man ever initiated a conversation with a Samaritan woman, especially one with questionable morals. Little by little He led her towards a desire for the water He was offering her. Although she still did not understand the spiritual implications of His offer, her blunt request, “Give me this water,” opened the way for Him to expose her heart. His instruction, “Go and call your husband,” caused her to blurt out the admission, “I have no husband,” and opened the way for her to recognise the real reason for her thirst.

Nicodemus is another example of awakened desire that prompted him to seek an appointment with Jesus. Unlike the other Pharisees who refused to recognise Jesus’ divine nature, Nicodemus saw something in Him that made him both curious and hungry. Hidden in his comment to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God…” was a question, “We are both teachers. What do you have that I haven’t got?” Jesus explained, gently and simply, the process by which Nicodemus, too, could enter into the realm of life in the Spirit and enjoy the same power of the kingdom of God in which He operated.

Instead of being afraid of or squashing your desires, allow God to shape them into your future.