An Inkling
The scripture says it many ways, but this one is particularly lovely: Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4). On first reading we take that to mean that God gives us what our hearts desire. But there’s another way to read it – that God transforms what our hearts desire. Not only does he give us what our hearts desire, he gives us new desires for our hearts! In other words, he fixes our “wanters.”
Most of the time people do what they want to do. Occasionally people will discipline themselves to do what they should do even if they don’t want to do it. But that usually doesn’t last very long. Witness the shelf life of New Year’s resolutions. It’s when we really want to do something that we find a way to do it, and we keep at it.
I was reminded of this last week on our Kazakhstan trip. One of our team members, Tim, went because he really wanted to go. And he had to want to go strongly, for there were dozens of reasons not to go – e.g., it cost a lot of time (half of his annual vacation), it cost a lot of money, it took him apart from his wife and two teenagers, and the trip came at a pressure-packed time in his banking job. But Tim went. People do what they want to do. And what Tim really wanted to do was lovely indeed – to see and to bless the two children that he and his family sponsor.
We can tell people what they ought to do, and occasionally they will do it. This was the Pharisees’ approach, and they were perplexed that their directives didn’t work better. (Actually the “ought to do it” approach didn’t work so well in their own lives either, despite their careful efforts to project the image.)
Jesus took a different approach, the Psalm 37:4 approach. He wanted the delight of our relationship with the Lord to reform our desires – to fix our “wanter.” And so he described our new life in him with images like this: The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field (Matthew 13:44). The man doesn’t see it as a burden to sell it all so that he can acquire the treasure; rather he joyfully does, despite the cost! People do what they want to do, and so Jesus strategically shapes what we want to do, wedding freedom and obedience in a union of great joy.
May it be that our delight in the Lord would give him full access to our “wanters.” They need fixing! Upon repair, those wanters put us to doing some amazing things, some Jesus things – and we’ll not let anything stop us.
Imagine that!
Keith
