This week is a continuation of a series on prayer designed to lead us closer to Christ, As we begin, we ask the Lord to "teach us to pray." It is our first prayer, our beginning. Taken from Luke 11.1, it is a prayer of desire, our desire for Him. This episode looks at Psalm 37 that speaks of our desire that help us understand exactly what prayer is.
Morning Mercies is a podcast dedicated to the deepening of trust with God, our maker, through a relationship with Jesus Christ. He has become our Master, our teacher, and so we follow Him with our lives, be they what they are. They are brief, and follow the simple format of scripture, meditation, and prayer.
Morning Mercies are posted several times a week on all major podcast platforms, and are presented by Michael Mullen.
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37.4
It seems to me that if we are going to talk about prayer, we need to speak about our desires, for from our desires come our motivations, and the power to keep at something for any length of time. It is also where our affections are.
A desire is what our heart, that place where we make our choices and choose our loyalties, focuses on. If I desire a certain car, like a black jeep rubicon with 37 inch tires, when I see one on the street, I get excited, and say to myself, “I wish I had one of those. My life would be so much better if I was driving that vehicle.” The heart is also where our gratitude flows from. So when I purchase that jeep, and its parked in the garage because its to expensive to drive, I have this feeling of thanksgiving where I rejoice in what I have. Now I hope you can tell I am being a little facetious, for I do not think that a jeep, or any other thing is going to fulfill me in such a way. Yet, its easy to fall into that trap only to be disillusioned when that thing fails in making my inner soul any more content.
Too often we set our desires on things that are temporal, when we are made for eternity. Mick Jaeger once wrote, “I can’t get no satisfaction…” Well he needs to look beyond the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that he had filled his life with. He needed to look to. Something beyond himself, something more transcendent. He needed to look to God. If we would adjust our minds, and align our souls to desire things that would last, I think we would do better. If we would desire our creator we would be filled in ways we could not imagine.
Desire is often talked about in Christian circles as something we ought to overcome. However, to say it plainly, desiring is to be, is to exist, is to be human. Every part of who we are is filled with desire. We desire with our bodies, with our minds, with our spirits. The whole soul of a person is made to desire. Some desires are unruly and can be distracting. Some desires lead us to deep thoughts. Other desires lead us to visions of greatness and beauty. Some desires are essential if we are to learn how to love, and how to receive it. Without desire, when would we have ever called out to God?
Let me say something which you should know: your desire for God is the desire that should shape all our other desires. Saint Augustine said it this way, that our love for God should order all our other loves. If this desire is put in its proper primary place, our lives begin to work as they were created too. If this desire is somewhere down the list in our hearts, we will find our mind and body at war with themselves, and both in conflict with our spirit Our inner life will be characterized by chaos, emotional turmoil, and pain. There is only one place such a heart will lead us to, which is despair.
So, how do we elevate our desire for God in our hearts? How do we begin to delight in Him above all other things? The answer almost seems too simple, but it is to pray. To delight yourself in God implicitly demands that prayer become a center for our living. We need to begin living a prayerful life, and the more we do, the more we will desire to pray, to spend time with Him, and Him alone.
This is always the opposite of what people assume. We believe that our desire to pray will remain the same, that our motivations cannot be changed or increased. Yet the truth experienced by all who commit themselves to prayer is that the more we do it, the more we wish to do it. The desire to pray and the desire to pray more is always growing. As we go through our day we begin to perceive the LORd in the people we meet, and in the events we go through. As a result our desire for him is made more, and we want to be with him one on one. A transformation has occurred, where we see prayer as a great gift, our hearts true delight. This is the true understanding of our passage today, that in making God our delight, the one I am focussed on with all my affections, leads us to receiving the very thing our hearts so desire- Him.
If we are going to speak of desire, there is one more thing I need to make clear. I have come to believe that. The necessity to pray and to pray without ceasing, is not based on our desire for God as mach as it comes from His desire for us. God passionately pursues us, and when this is seen, it moves us to want to pray. Prayer is God’s initiative, and in no ways ours. Therefore prayer becomes a way of life for His disciples. Everything else flows from it. For those who follow after Christ we never step out of this life where prayer is at the very center, even the most necessary thing.