Delight and Desire part 2
The Kingdom economy does not work on an, "If then" statement. It's NOT, "IF you delight yourself in the Lord, THEN He will give you the desires of your heart." The truth of the matter is... the Lord IS the desire of your heart, and it's only by delighting yourself in Him that you can experience that desire. And this is a very good thing because according to Proverbs 13:12, "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." See, when you want something but you can't get it, you get heart sick. You lose hope. You give up. And that's what religion forces us to do so many times. It's like Jesus told the rich young ruler: One thing you lack. There's always one more hoop to jump through. Until eventually you get the mindset that it's not worth it to even try. That's what's so wonderful about the Lord. He finished the work. He gave us the desire of our heart--which is love--when He gave us HIS heart! Look at the word, "desire." In Proverbs 13:12 it is number 8378 in Strong's Hebrew Concordance and it means, "a longing; by implication delight (satisfaction)." So what we see is that our desire IS our delight. Our desire is to delight ourselves in the Lord! And only BY delighting ourselves in Him can that desire come. Which is not to say that we have to "fake it 'til we make it." I'm telling you, the only way (the only REASON) we can delight ourselves in Him is because He takes such delight in us! We've got is so backwards where we're trying to scare people into loving God. "Turn or burn." "Get right or get left." Love isn't love if it comes from fear of punishment. In fact, perfect love casts out all fear. We don't love because we're afraid we'll get in trouble if we don't. We love because He first loved us. We don't delight in Him in order to get the desire of our heart. We delight in Him because He IS the desire of our heart, and He has fully satisfied that desire! Our verse in Proverbs says when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. And who is the Tree of Life but Jesus? And what does the Tree of Life give us but the fruit of the Spirit? And what is the fruit of Spirit but love? The thing we all desire--at the most basic level--is love. Man was created with a God-shaped, love-shaped hole inside of him. And because of the cross--because of the Holy Spirit (our love receptor)--we now know that that hole is filled with the only thing that could fill it. The only thing that can fill a God-shaped hole is God. The only thing that can fill a love-shaped hole is love. That's what the cross was all about; saving us from our sins--our unbelief, our belief that we had to earn God's love. The Holy Spirit reveals to us that God always has, and always will, love us. That's the Tree of Life that we feed upon. That's where our appitite is satisfied. We don't have to look for love in all the wrong places because we can go straight to the source. We can boldy approach the throne of grace to find grace to help in times of trouble. We can call out, "Abba, Father," and know that Daddy hears us. Because we know that Daddy loves us. Our heart isn't sick... it is fully satisfied!