What's the Desire of Your Heart?

What do you want in life? Are your goals realistic? What if you never got that thing? Would your life have been a waste? For instance, when I was young I wanted to be rich, and I've heard the same thing from my kids at times, namely a desire to be a millionaire. Now, for me, it wasn't necessarily that I wanted money, but there were things that I wanted that I couldn't get because I didn't have enough money. So, therefore, I wanted to be able to buy whatever my heart desired.

For others, their heart desire might be that someone would love them or that they would have a relationship with their dream man or woman. Another person's heart desire might be to be famous, to have thousands or even millions of likes on their Instagram post or Tiktok video. Heck, I can understand that, because even in writing articles or blog posts, I wonder how many people I can reach.

What I've realized as I've lived a little bit of life now is that, money, things, people, fame, pleasure, etc., are only temporarily satisfying. They break, get lost, go away, get forgotten in history, and/or die. They don't, they cannot, really fill my heart and keep me satisfied.

So this morning as I was reading in the book of Psalms 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart," I was contemplating how the first part of the verse connects to the second part of the verse. God can give us the desires of our heart, but he doesn't promise to give us just anything that we might want. Rather, He will give us himself if we delight in Him. When He becomes the desire of our heart, He gives us Himself. 

But is God worth it? Can He really satisfy our hearts and keep us satisfied? In the Psalm right before this, it says, "How priceless is your unfailing love. Both high and lower among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house. You give them drink from your river of delights, for with you is the fountain of life. In your light we see light" (Psalm 36:7-9). 

But how can we know that this is true? I mean, sure, God is saying this about Himself, but is he really telling us the truth? In this case, there really is only one way to find out. As Psalm 34;8 says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him."  Honestly, you can go through the process of trying everything out, like the teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes did, to see if those other things will satisfy you, but I would recommend starting with the one true God, who is eternal and wants relationship with us. 

We know this because he reaches out to us in the person of Jesus Christ who came to repair a broken relationship so that we could delight in the Lord. We could experience His love. He actually gives us a new heart and helps us understand how to delight in the Lord so that the desire of our heart, the eternal desire, the hole in our heart can be filled.