I wrote this over a year ago but came across it today again so thought i would share on WordPress.

Today Saturday 28.1.17

I awoke to think about a verse that I had heard about the night before and just found this coming into my head so thought i would share

Psalm 37 v 4

Delight yourself in the lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Do you delight yourself in the Lord? What does this mean? Are you so grateful to God for saving you? Do you love him with all your heart, mind, body and soul? Do you wake in the morning with a smile on your face for it’s another day to be with the Lord?

Think about what Jesus did for you and me, what He did to save us? He knew we couldn’t rescue ourselves, we were all going to spend eternity without him as we were all born into sin. But God in His great love and mercy came to the world He had created. He decided to enter space, time and matter to save us. He hung on that cross for you taking your sin upon himself that you and I can be transferred from the kingdom of darkness to His glorious kingdom of light.

You meant everything to Him that’s why He became a living sacrifice for us.

How can we have a relationship with Him now though as this happened over 2000 years ago

As we know Jesus rose from the dead that first Easter morning. He conquered death once and for all. When you and I eventually die we will pass from here to Gods Kingdom forever, if we are His

But that’s not where it begins. We have eternal life with Christ not just in the future but here and now. It is no longer I but Christ who lives in me. When we accept and believe that Jesus died and rose again, that our sins are forgiven through His death and resurrection His spirit comes and lives in us.  As it says in Romans 8 v9-11 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life^[a] because of righteousness. ¹¹ And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of^[b] his Spirit who lives in you.

1 Corinthans 3 v16 says Do you not know that you are a temple of God and the spirit of God dwells in you.

Christ is in us by His Holy Spirit, leading us, guiding us being a constant presence in our lives. He longs to have a relationship with you . He desires for us to spend time with Him and get to know Him , to hear from him, learn from Him and be guided by Him

Isnt this amazing , if you really sit quietly down and think about this. Who are we that God would do this, that He would lay down His life and be raised again for us to be brought back into a right relationship with Him.

Do you feel like I did for years. Not worthy, not good enough, these are lies  , this is satan feeding us lies. Its not about if we are worthy or good enough its about God so loved the world that He gave his only son that whoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have eternal Life. We are Gods children, we are redeemed, restored, forgiven, justified, a saint and so on

So with all that in mind lets go back to our verse

Do you spend time with your heavenly Father? Do you take time out of your day just to sit with Him, be with Him? To grow your relationship. Do you find yourself longing to have that quiet time and just be with Him. No requests just be in His presence.  Is He your first and last thought of the day?

Do you delight yourself in the Lord?

So if we continue to the second part of this verse it says, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Now that doesn’t mean we can go and ask for a Lamborghini and expect it to be on our doorstep in the morning, however nice that would be, well for some LOL or maybe you would prefer a lovely house by the sea with the sand and ocean outside your window. MMM nice thought but that’s not quite what God is saying here. I am sure you would agree too. Now there is nothing wrong with asking for things and we can ask God to help us especially if it’s a need, we can ask Him to heal, provide etc but what are your real desires? The world desires money, status, temporal things but as Christians our desires change to eternal things.

Do you want to serve Him in a certain area, do you want to grow closer to Him, or do you want to help those in need? Are you looking to further Gods kingdom? Lead worship? Try your hand at some teaching. I think what God is saying here is that when we delight ourselves in Him, we will have different desires from what we used to have. Our desires will change. We used to think worldly but we now think heavenly. Our desires  become more in line with His. We will want to serve Him and be with him more, be His hand and feet and mouth piece in this world. To shine Christs light in this dark world.  It’s like when you are in love, you long to be with that person, please that person, etc.

Just using myself as an illustration here. I was a Christian for a while and not really a very good one, I looked ok on the outside but inside not a lot was going on. I wasn’t growing, I wasn’t spending that time with him. Then I started to think about this seriously, I didn’t want to be like this anymore, I knew there was more to life as a Christian and I wanted that.  It’s like God started to put on my heart one thing after another. Not all at once of course over a period of time, I found myself not wanting to do certain things that I used to do, I started to think more differently as I spent time with God, I found this so amazing that the God of the universe, who is outside time would want to spend time with me and change me.  I have learnt that if God isn’t in something or with you or you are not following His ways then it isn’t going to work and it isn’t worth it. Believe me. Don’t go the long way round and spend 40 years going round the same mountain.

I began to desire to find Him more, know Him more and He miraculously healed me late last year and He brought forgiveness to me for something I had long forgotten, He brought healing, restoration that he had promised he would do. He said to me a few times last year, I will restore the years the locusts have taken and He is doing that bit by bit. I desire to serve Him, not out of duty but out of love, I love the Lord, I want to spend time with him, learn from him, be with him and I don’t want that job or anything if it isn’t from God.  I want to be all that He wants me to be, is that your hope too? My greatest desire is to serve God. I have recently been through another very dark time due to stress and anxiety but God has been amazing and He gave me faithful friends who prayed and walked with me through this time. Just before this happened I prayed one night that God would take all the bad stuff i had and all my worries and i layed them at the foot of the cross. Immediatley i had a picture of Jesus picking them all up, doing something with them and then handing me what looked like a heart, shiny and new. So maybe this time has been precisely that to help me see things differently , trust Him to make all things new? Who knows we are all a work in progress.

So final thoughts on this. We have a God who loves us more than we can ever imagine, who Himself desires that we seek Him, worship Him and serve Him but this has to be done out of our relationship with Him. He has saved us from eternity without Him, he has forgiven us and we do these things out of our love for Him. I don’t know about you but let’s delight ourselves in our Lord and he will give us the desires of our hearts.