Desires of your heart

It's 5 days out from leaving for Ukraine, and I have all sorts of strange feelings.  Mostly revolving around the fact that I'll be leaving my family for such a long period of time, and I'm not sure when I'll see them again.  Why am I not sure? Well it all depends on what God does in my life over the next 3 months.


I've been praying for a long time about whether I should stay in Ukraine to find a job there and continue volunteering at the orphanage in my free time, eventually to transition into some type of more permanent missionary work.  We'll see, it all depends on where God leads me.


Something else I've been reflecting on is what the desires of my heart are.
When I think about this verse:  Psalm 37:4
"Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart."


A lot of people read this verse and are thrilled with it!  They may think that whatever I want, God will give me!  But I don;t think that's the way god intended us to look at this verse.  Why?  Well, when you read Jeremiah 17:9 - "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" we learn that the human heart, naturally, is in a bad condition.  If our hearts are deceitful, doesn't that mean that our heart's desires are also deceitful?


So looking back to Psalm 37, what does it mean to me when it says, God will give you the desires of your heart?  Well, the earlier part of the verse says "delight your self in the Lord"

"Delight" means "To take great pleasure or joy."  So if I take delight in the Lord, I am taking great pleasure in Him and who He is.  If I delight myself in the Lord, I can also understand Him better, and know the desires of His heart for my life.  If I delight myself in the Lord, I will desire to do what pleases Him!  So, His desires then become my desires, and these are the kind of desires that He will be very pleased to grant me!  (It's hard to explain, but that's the way I think about it based on Scripture) 

So if I constantly delight myself in my God, then He will give me the desires of my heart, because they are His desires, and His desires are always good "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28

So now I need to seek out the desires of my heart, assuming that these are really God's desires.  So what do I do? I pray often and ask God to make His desires the desires of my heart and I pray for His wisdom so that i may be able to see the next step I should take in my life.   Everyday I look to God's word, and that, and prayer, and the more reliable ways to seek wisdom from God.

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." Psalm 119:105