The Desires of Your Heart

"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4 (NIV)

What are the desires of your heart? Is it filled with desires for good or for bad? Whatever they are, be assured that the Lord will either fulfill the good ones or will allow you to fulfill the bad ones on your own. If we delight in the Lord, we will long to be pure in heart and righteous before Him. But Satan will make sure that we remember the evil desires of our hearts, even after our salvation is assured. John MacArthur writes "Satan will take all the garbage out of your past and try to drag it back through your mind so that you relive it." (The Vanishing Conscience) And the book of Romans says "for although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen." (1:21, 24-25) Jesus preached against the evil of the sinful mind. He told the Pharisees that they were as whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside but filled with uncleanliness and rotting flesh on the inside. (Matthew 23:27-28) The sins of our hearts are as bad or worse than the sins of our action, for they have no accountability other than God and our own conscience. MacArthur writes "do you realize that the difference between a sincere, Spirit-controlled, devoted, godly, obedient Christian and a defeated, weak, struggling Christian is what takes place in the mind?" (The Vanishing Conscience)

So what fills the mind of a godly and devoted Christian? The Bible says clearly that a true Christian delights in the Lord and the ways of Christ. Second Timothy says "flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." (2:22) Matthew Henry writes "the more we follow that which is good, the faster and the further we shall flee from that which is evil. The keeping up the communion of saints, will take us from fellowship with unfruitful works of darkness." (Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary) We must be ever reminding ourselves of how our actions and our thoughts are affecting our personal relationship with God. If we are as the Pharisees and "appear" to be holy yet our minds are filled with sinful thoughts, we are as guilty as the one who openly and publicly sins. Peter writes "but in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord." (1 Peter 3:15) If we set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts as well as in our minds, we will flee from all transgression. Our goal should be "keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." (1 Peter 3:16)