Sweet and Noble Desires

God wants to grant you the desires of your heart. All you have to do is get in touch with your heart’s desires and bring them to God!

As we continue learning about what it means to “pray in the Spirit,” we’ve focused on a rich promise in God’s Word: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4, ESV).

God isn’t a magic genie granting the wishes of your flesh. God is too good to give you something bad just because you ask for it. He is a Father who wants fellowship with you that is so intimate that your desires become increasingly conformed to His.

Simply put, God wants more for you than you could ever want for yourself. God’s intentions toward you are more benevolent that you can imagine. Therefore, it is an expression of God’s love that He wants your heart to conform to His. He would like the desires of your heart to become as wonderful as His own desires for your well-being.

Your deep redeemed self, your inmost heart that has been washed by God, has beautiful, sweet and noble desires. When those heart desires outweigh the flesh’s desires, you are aligned with the truth. There, in that deep alignment with the truth of God, your heart can bring desires to the Lord that match God’s own desires for you.

That sort of prayer, the Spirit-enlightened presentation of your blood-washed desires, is the most powerful sort of all. God draws your best desires back unto Himself so that He can demonstrate His love for you by partnering with your intercession to pour out blessing upon you.

God doesn’t delight in giving you the desires of your sinful nature (the flesh); He delights in giving you the desires of your heart. And, in Christ, your heart is clean and new and noble. Thus, the desires of your heart are also God’s desires. When you pray that way, God LOVES granting your desires. It’s an extraordinary thought, but surely that’s the Gospel!