Stop Wanting Your Desires?

"Take delight in the Lord,
and He will give you your heart’s desires."

Psalm 37:4

 

 

I confess, I struggle to do this. All of this. The "adulating" this. The "daughtering" this. The "friendshipping" this. The "employeeing" this. The "delighting in the Lord" this. I'm not good at it. Any of it. And I find it especially difficult when it seems that He's giving the desires of my heart to everyone around me. The truth is, its not everyone, but it's certainly a fair amount of people. And they're all living the dreams I've always had. To be in love, to get married, to start families. To find their person, and do life with them. So many engagements, weddings, and baby announcements in the last few days, my heart is overflowing with joy and excitement for these people I LOVE. And I am so HAPPY for and WITH them, but I confess sometimes the nagging flesh whispers, "its not fair." Most of these people never seemed to particularly pine after these things, although I think I can safely say most of them eventually wanted to get married. So why is God letting them have this, when its what I have prayed for? I wanted to get married young (by young I mean by before now.)

 

My fleshly advice to myself has been to beat my heart into no longer wanting it.

Stop.

Asking.

Him.

 

But that's not what I see in Scripture, and I'm glad that's the case. He tells us to ask, and He tells us to delight in Himself.

 

I read somewhere about the best way to kick an addiction. Clearly having a desire is not the same thing as having an addiction, but it can be, and the concept applies. The article said the best way to help someone over an addiction isn't to just deny them that thing, it's to encourage something else. When you constantly deny yourself, you create a martyr attitude, and then justify the addiction yet again by saying "it's not fair, therefore I deserve this." how counterproductive. chase. something. else. But what you choose to chase matters. Addictions are life draining, so what are you chasing that's life-giving?  I can't beat my heart into no longer desiring to be married and to be a mom. It's not going to work that way. But I can learn to desire something so much bigger, so much better, and so much more, than these earthly, fading things. I can learn to delight in the Lord. And when my delight is Him, what I desire is Him.

 

What a comforting thing to know, that I can choose to delight in and long for the One that will never come to an end.