What Are Our Desires?

"Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." ~Psalm 37:4

I have read this many times in my life. Most of those times I heard something to the extent of "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will answer all your prayers" or "and He will give you all the things you want" or "and He will make your dreams come true".  Or some variation of that idea. I can't be the only one; that is what the verse seems to be saying at a first glance. And as a kid, that makes the most sense.

Luke 11:9-10 presents a similar idea : "'So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.'"

Again, a first thought was probably like "So if I pray for it, I'll get it" or "If I look for these friends, or these designer boots I'll get them, because I want them. No; I need them".  Or whatever things we felt was missing from our lives when we read these verses.

First looking at them, these two verses seem to imply that if we pray better or love God better or read our Bibles with more purpose, that God will in-turn love us more and give us everything we want. Which is definitely not the case. Sorry. His love for us never changes- it is always great.

During church a long time ago, the true idea of this Psalm was explained to me/ my class, and it made sense once I heard it. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, we learn His love and truths, and ultimate control and understanding of the whole universe, and we come to know His heart. When we delight ourselves in the Lord, He changes the desires of our hearts.He molds our wants and desires, shaping them as we draw near to Him, to look more and more like His desires for our lives. When we delight in the Lord, with our hearts in-line with His and His will for our lives, His desires become our desires.

So when we are close to God, the things He wants for us become what we want as well. Getting the desires of our hearts becomes a whole lot easier when they're not our material desires, and when we remember that God already knows our hearts. <3