...And He will give you the desires of your heart...!

Psalm 37:3-6
Trust in the LORD and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

Recently I attended a class that really put things into perspective for me about how God works in our lives. Above is Psalm 37:3-6. Upon reading it without understanding it, one would draw the following conclusions:

1. He will give us the desires of our hearts – our translation: whatever I can possibly want or desire even outside of the purpose of God for our lives. (ex. I want this specific car or this specific person)

2. He will do what we say and the things that we ask him to do (as if we can give orders to God.)

So clarification came to me the other day. I always wondered about this specific subject, how we go from being people who want what we want to people with God’s heart that only desire to do his will AND how it was that we ended up loving His will?

A small illustration: Before Christ, I didn’t want to be a youth pastor, I never even thought of it. When I accepted him, I still didn’t think about being a youth pastor, I just wanted more of him. Meanwhile I was growing in my love for him, in my worship toward him and in my relationship with him. So at some point I became involved with youth ministry and a passion for working with young people and a love for young people was birthed inside of me and I didn’t even know where it came from.

So here’s the breakdown.
Trust in the Lord. – At some point we have to trust God, which means we wholeheartedly believe with complete faith in him, we acknowledge that his ways are better than ours, and we completely surrender to him.

When we do that, we begin to worship him. Worship being acknowledgement of who God is and giving him the worth that he deserves. The trust factor plays in when we worship him for being who He is even when times are bad! (Worship him no matter what because we trust him).

Delight yourself in him – joy or delight comes when we worship him so much and so genuinely that we begin to see who He really is. We begin to see God as the all powerful, all knowing, all seeing creator and even in the midst of trouble we see him in his greatness; greatness that surpasses the size of our problems and our issues and He makes them all look small. (also, When we worship him and step into his presence, we see the holiness of our God and then that is how he shows us the areas of our heart that are still full of sin, and that is how God purifies us.)

Commit your way to the Lord – This brings about a committed decision to serve and surrender to God. This is where you actually make a decision to seek and follow him throughout all of your life.

When this happens it brings about change in your life. Which brings us to verse 6.
“He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.” – When we worship, he begins to transform us. When we delight in his presence, He begins to mold our thoughts and desires to fit his thoughts and desires and soon enough, our heart becomes like his heart. Then, all we desire to do is what he wants and When we ask him along those lines, for the desires of our hearts, he gives them to us. All the time he is blessing and providing, but along the way he makes us into the best possible version of ourselves.

I never wanted to be a youth pastor, but when I trusted him, delighted myself in worship to him and committed to him, He changed my heart to love others the way that he loves them. Along the way your heart will begin to align with his heart. We become more like our God.