The Desires of My Heart

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The messages I have heard in Chapel the past three days have all dealt with a similar topic: God and our desires. I will unashamedly admit that there are some days in my school’s daily Chapel service that I completely zone out, or other days that I just get preoccupied with making sure that my students are behaving and staying awake, but the past three days I have been intently focused on the message, because it’s been one of those topics that has hit really close to home, so close that it was kind of scary.

This is a topic that I have been dealing with personally in a major way recently, and an area I have always struggled with. I remember reading a book a few years ago (the author and title now escapes me) about God’s will. The author’s basic claim was: live your life in accordance to the Bible’s teachings and in a way that honors God and you will, subsequently, be fulfilling God’s will. Pretty simple, right? It is, but there are periods in my life when I struggle with this a lot. It doesn’t always seem that simple.

But I’ve been reminded of this simple truth the past three days, and unfortunately it has been a tough pill to swallow, and a pill that has left me with a lot of questions this time around. Questions like: how do I know if I am “seeking God’s kingdom first?” What does that even look like? How can I stop trying to control the things I desire and trust that God knows best? How can I get rid of my inclination to view life as a big game of chess where I make a move and then wait to see if God’s next move will, essentially, “checkmate” my desires. How can I stop “laying out fleeces” that only leave me disappointed anyway? Like I said, it’s a tough pill to swallow.

This evening Ryan and I drove past a local church and I couldn’t help but look at their sign. I love noticing church signs because nine times out of ten they will say something just ridiculous. This one did say something slightly ridiculous, but also something that hit me where it hurt. The sign read: Positive Thinking Gets Positive Results. While I was able to laugh at the absurdity of that being on a church sign considering that the Bible teaches nothing of the sort, I also could not help but laugh at the fact that this is how I usually approach the things I desire, i.e. if I try to be a good person and stay upbeat and do all the things I think God wants me to do then surely I will get what I want…right? Of course if that is the case, why are there still things out there my heart desires that I have not received? Clearly there is more to it than positive thoughts, and that’s the cud I’m still chewing on.

My evening only got more interesting, though when we ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The bill came, along with our fortune cookies – my favorite part! (the cookies, not the bill) As I said already, I tend to play games with God, playing little mind games, laying out fleeces, etc. I always do this with fortune cookies. It’s not that I believe they are a real prophecy or something, but I like to see how well I can make them fit in with whatever is going on with my life at the time. SoI broke open my cookie, all ready to see what it had to tell me about a current desire I have been obsessing over, only to discover that my cookie was empty! No tiny slip of prophetic Chinese wisdom in sight! I couldn’t help but glean a deeper meaning from this. I mean here I have been drinking up these Chapel messages the past three days, letting my heart marinate on what I know is true but find so difficult to believe and implement, only to have the rug pulled out from under me! God wasn’t even going to let me have the chance to mess around with stupid mind tricks and games. He showed me with a fortuneless fortune cookie!

But it’s okay. I need to remember the lesson of the fortuneless fortune cookie more often. The plan of my life is not something mapped out for me in invisible ink, waiting for me to find the magical substance that will make it legible. I need to get rid of that way of thinking altogether! I need to learn to trust God with every breath, every step, and most certainly every desire. What a task that is.

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