Our heart’s desires

‘He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them’ (NIV)

My family is memorizing Ps 145:19 this week. What a beautiful verse!

God doesn’t want to keep us ever reaching out but never having our desires met. God wants to satisfy. God wants to fulfil the desires of those who fear him. To fear God is to take him seriously. The man who fears God is the man who bows to him as Lord in every area of his life. The man who fears God is seeking to glorify God, and so judges all things based on one measure, ‘Is this what God wants?’ In fact if we are those who fear God we can be certain of this – God is the One who plants desires in our hearts. He plants them there so as to give our lives direction. He plants them there because He wants to fulfil them. It is not good to cast away hope or to abandon our God-given desires. Listen;

‘For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless’ Psalm 84:11 (NIV)

Don’t be confused with the phrase ‘those whose walk is blameless’. It does not refer to those who never err, but rather to those who walk in the fear of the Lord. So the key is to fear Him; to make Him, Lord; to set Him apart as Number One in our heart. Without this we dare not even trust our desires, for they may not be a true reflection of what we are created for. But if we fear the Lord, then we must not shy away from the true desires of our sanctified hearts for God wants to fulfil them. Whether they are desires related to the big issues of life – (like the desire to be holy) or just desires for the ordinary things of life (like the desire to provide for our family). Take me, for instance: I have been praying for years, ‘Lord, I want to know you more, I want to be like Jesus’. Who do you think put that desire in my heart? Do you think He does not hear me? Do you imagine He will not fulfil this desire? Or take another example; a few weeks ago, we as a family desired to pay up all our children school fees for the year. Who do you think put this desire in our heart? Indeed the sum we needed was way beyond our ability to get within such a short time. But we cried to God as a family and He answered and did what looked impossible. He fulfilled our desire.

It says, ‘He hears their cry and saves them’. Our desires must translate into a cry, a prayer for them to be communicated to God. Jesus said ‘What things soever ye desire, when ye pray…’ (Mark 11:24 KJV). In the economy of God, desire must translate into prayer for it to reach God. Prayer is the directing of our desire towards God. Prayer is addressing desire to God. And know that you have not prayed until you have prayed. It does not have to be verbalised but it has to be brought to God. Sometimes we are like those that the Apostle James spoke of ;

‘…You want something but don’t get it…You do not have because you do not ask God’ – James 4:2 (NIV)

We serve a God who calls us to bring our desires to Him. We serve a God who calls us to cry out to Him no matter how impossible what we desire may seem. We serve a God who saves those that fear Him. So, I challenge you, this week, not to throw away your God-given desires but to cry to Him and expect Him to save.

In Pursuit of Relevance

“I will honor only those who honor me, and I will despise those who despise me” 1 Samuel 2:30

In Luke 1 verse 5 we are introduced to two men – King Herod and Zechariah the priest. It goes without saying that the king must have been the more popular and the more important of the two men in their time. But Zechariah was more important in God’s program than Herod the king.

It is not popularity and fame that is important. It is one’s degree of relevance to God and his purposes. Not even relevance to one’s generation is as important as relevance to God. It is easy to make the mistake of equating relevance to men with relevance to God. But even the most popular ministry might not be the most relevant to God. The fact that people still remember a man does not always imply that heaven is still impressed with him. Our goal must not be popularity but being useful to God to our utmost capacity.

What does it take to be relevant to God? We see the key in the portrait of Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth in verse 6 (KJV). “They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments…. of the Lord …”  Righteousness before God is what qualifies and positions a man for relevance to God, not noise, not activities, not great gifts. This couple had a correct walk with God. They were content to walk quietly before the Lord in the light they were daily receiving from him.

It is as we concentrate on developing and maintaining a true walk with God that a true work of God will spring out of our lives. To put the latter before the former is to invite confusion and produce a service that is like Cain’s offering – an offering that God cannot accept or use. It may be large in volume and applauded by men but irrelevant to God’s purposes.

Life is too short and too precious to waste it in pursuing men’s approval and esteem. We must focus on walking with God. I encourage you to concentrate on walking quietly with the Lord. Spend quality time with him and let your intimacy with him deepen. Let him become your pleasure and you his pleasure. Focus on pleasing and enjoying him and he will make rivers of living water flow out of you to bless this dark world.