The Desires of Your Heart
Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Ps 37:4
This verse is often quoted by people who believe some form of a ‘health and wealth’ gospel. If you do the right thing the desires of your heart will be granted. That makes God a great tool for getting a job or a spouse or anything you want. It seems to me that lent is about taking this verse the opposite way. Instead of God becoming a tool to get the desires of your heart those desires become a tool to get God. When we deny ourselves during lent and turn our hungers toward God then those hungers are satisfied more powerfully by God than they ever could be by the thing we desired. We start to understand that the thing we wanted was just a desire for God. Often it is a good thing being desired and God may choose to eventually give you exactly that thing if you want. Still if we can see the creator behind the creation we will always get to experience God. God does not make you want something that can’t be ordered properly into a hunger for God himself. Lent is a time deny yourself and to let the hunger get strong so we can see exactly how this hunger will lead us to the ultimate satisfaction.
