“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” — Psalm 37:4 (ESV)
Dream
God longs for His children to dream. He longs for us to set aside time with Him to wish and wonder about what life could be. I fear that many Christians have lost the art of dreaming with God out of a misunderstanding of His heart. While God most definitely has a will for our lives, He also longs for us to dream with Him so that His desires become our own. While He most definitely has perfect plans for us, He longs for us to want His plans that we might co-labor with Him rather than being dragged by Him like an ill-tempered child into what’s best.
May we make time today, with the new year upon us, to dream with God that our hearts may be filled with His longings and desires.
The chief way in which God wants to lead you is by planting dreams in your heart and then satisfying those dreams. Psalm 37:4 (ESV) says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Our Father longs for us to be so delighted in Him that we would want what He wants. He longs to fill us with right desires and then satisfy those desires in His perfect timing and in His perfect way. He longs for us to trust Him as our good Shepherd to such a depth that we joyfully follow Him wherever He leads.
You see, Psalm 37:4 is more about delighting ourselves in God than getting what we currently think we want most. It’s more about the pursuit of Him as our chief joy than anything we could receive from Him. God alone knows what’s best for us. He alone has the perspective and wisdom to shepherd us to a truly abundant life. And we will never follow someone we don’t trust has our best will at heart.
To make God our chief joy is to surrender our lives to the overwhelming goodness and grace of an omnipotent, omnipresent and fully-loving Father. God is both willing and able to lead us into the fullness of abundant life. He is both willing and able to fill us with right longings and desires if we will simply open our hearts and trust Him.
Until we center our hearts, and therefore our lives, totally and completely around the goodness and will of our Heavenly Father, we will never experience all this life has to offer. The gateway to living filled and satisfied is simply enjoying God and allowing our hearts to become like His.
Know today that your Heavenly Father longs to dream with you. He longs to hear what it is you most desire. He longs to have conversation with you about what’s best. And He longs to be your chief joy, that the greatest cry of your heart is to delight yourself in Him and receive whatever comes with fully restored, unbridled relationship with Him. May your day be marked by a filling of new desires from your loving Father.
— Craig Denison, First 15
For more information on First15 or to subscribe to get First15 in your inbox daily, visit first15.org/subscribe.
If you would like to submit a reader devotional, please email all submissions to
devotionals@sportsspectrum.com.
