In today’s “gimme” society, we often think we know what we need better than God does. We read verses, such as: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). We focus on the last part of this verse and conclude that God is supposed to give us the desires of our heart. We decide what it is we desire, and then we sit back and expect God to provide it. We walk around longing for relationships, material things, worldly success and anything else we believe that we cannot live without. We expect God to fill our requests right now, without another moment of waiting.
When He does not provide our desires in our timing and the way we want them,
we get discouraged. We doubt God. We accuse Him of not loving us. We question
the Word. We quote verses at God all day long, reminding Him of His
promises. We think that God is supposed to give
to us whatever we desire. We beg, harangue, bargain, demand, threaten and cry
out for God to give us what we want. When He does not come through for us, then
we get disgruntled, quit going to church and reading our Bible and we go out
and pursue our carnal desires on our own.
This discontentment arises because we overlook the first part of this verse. We
are to delight in the LORD, not in what He will provide for us. We are to love
Him for Himself, not for what He can give us. We try to manipulate God to
provide us with what we want. We forget that He may not want us to have it. We
may want something that is not good for us and that will thwart God’s purpose
for our life. We fail to remember that God has a perfect plan for our life, if
we would just walk in it.
Our desires often become idols in our life. We want them so badly that we concentrate on nothing else. These desires cripple us from being any use to God in any way. He has to wait until we lay these idols down before He can provide what is best for us. Sometimes, this takes years. We would receive what we need so much sooner, if we would just delight our self in the Lord, derive our joy from His presence, and be grateful to Him for what He already provided.
God already
clothed us with garments of salvation and arrayed us in robes of righteousness,
which are even finer than those worn at a wedding (Isaiah
61:10). We can pray like Jesus did, "Lord, not my will, but Yours
be done in my life" (Luke 22:42). This
prayer never fails. When we surrender our will to His, then God can provide us with everything
we need, even things we did not even realize that we wanted.
If we wait patiently for God’s timing and rest in His love with peace in
our hearts, then God will always provide what He wants us to have, and it will
be better than anything we ever desired. When we rise above the tyranny of our sinful nature,
and allow God’s Spirit to work in our behalf, He controls our lives in thought,
word and deed. Then, our greatest delight
is to rest in the LORD, and our soul rejoices in God, not in what He provides.
Prayer:
Father God, You told us not
to set our hearts on food that spoils, but to seek food that endures to eternal
life, which Jesus will give to us (John 6:27). You told us that fruitful branches are filled with the fruit of Your
Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). The unfruitful branches do not have Your Spirit
living in them. They do not belong to You at all (Romans 8:9; John 15:5). Help us to prove by the way we live that we have repented of our sins
and trusted in You to provide us with every good and perfect gift, exactly when
we need it (Matthew 3:8, 7:20; James 1:17).
Thought
for the Day:
God
amazingly gives us just what we want, especially when we aren't even looking
for it.