Got any Desires?

If you have known me for a reaallllyyyyy long time, like since the previous century, you may remember this truth that God taught me way back in the early 90s.   I had a job that I enjoyed immensely as the Dean of Student Development at what was then Bartlesville Wesleyan College.  My fourth year there in that position God began stirring my heart about the country of Mexico and I ended up leaving my job, selling everything I had, and moving there for a couple of years to help a Bible college get accredited.

As I was raising my own support to head there, I used this verse from Psalm 37:4:

Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

Prior to that summer, I had always interpreted that verse as saying that if we will delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us what we desires -- the desires of our heart.  But I came to understand that if we delight in him He will give us the desires themselves.    The more we delight in Him, the more the desires we have align with His desires and the more they lead us into adventurous, radical, 100% outlandish places that give us the fulfillment we can't even imagine.

The first desire that He gives us is a desire to know Him, a desire FOR Him, a desire to have Him be the center of all that we are.   But then He goes farther and gives us the desire to serve others, the desire to pursue His dreams, and the desire to make our lives count the way that HE wants to make them count.