This week I decided to share “snippets” from my daily devotions and my life on desires of our hearts rather than a longer devotional blog. I hope they’ll be a blessing to you.
Last Saturday the key verse in The Upper Room devotional guide was Psalm 37:4, Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Then the title of my In Touch devotional was What Do You Desire? I love it when God does this and the Holy Spirit calls it to my attention!
The In Touch devotional began by saying, “If you were asked to name the desire of your heart, would you know what to say? The author goes on to say that we have a seemingly endless list of things we want…But what about our true desires?
“If we’ve never taken the time to meditate prayerfully on this issue, then we may not even know what our heart’s desires are…” He ended with “Are you able to articulate your heart’s desire today? …The Lord desires for you to align your desires with His will.”
I knew immediately what the desire of my heart is without meditating on the issue. The desire of my heart is for all our children and grandchildren to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and desire to be obedient to His will above all things.
One of my favorite verses that I claimed for our children, grandchildren, foster children and nieces and nephews for years is Isaiah 54:13 AMPC which says, All your children shall be disciples [taught by the Lord and obedient to His will], and great shall be the peace and undisturbed composure of your children.
I believe that all our children (in which I include their spouses) and grandchildren (and spouses) have received Jesus and all of them except the youngest have been baptized. I’m so thankful for that, but I want Philippians 3:10 to become their heart’s desire and their experience:
[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [Jesus], [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly…(AMPC)
I don’t want any of our children or grandchildren to be satisfied to be token Christians shaped more by the culture than by God’s Word and their relationship with Jesus. I love and accept them whatever their present spiritual condition, but I will never stop praying for them to become more and more like Jesus.
Two days later, one of my daily Bible readings took me to II Corinthians 16: 9. For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. God’s Word is clear here. This promise is only for those whose hearts are fully committed to Him (notice that the emphasis is again on the heart).
Verse nine indicates that God is actively looking, searching for those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. I want Him to find that when He looks at the hearts of Donn and me and our children and grandchildren.
Verse seven in I Samuel 16 says, The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Again, God’s Word is so clear. We may fool a lot of people by our outward appearance but the Lord isn’t one of them. His gaze penetrates our hearts and sees our true spiritual condition.
On Thursday, February 21, before I had read these Scriptures, I was looking at Events on Facebook to find out if there was anything Donn and I wanted to do. I was so excited to discover an Andrew Peterson concert at Grove City College. We’d never seen him in concert, and I love his song Is He Worthy?
However, when I clicked further into the Event, it said, Tickets are Closed. Would we even be able to get tickets? The next day I called a phone number listed on the Event. The gentleman said there weren’t many tickets left, but the doors would open at 6:30 p.m. (concert at 7:30 p.m.) If we arrived before that time, we should still be able to get tickets.
I told Donn, “I would love to tell Merle and Cherri about this concert because I think they really love Andrew Peterson. But I wouldn’t want them to drive over from Cleveland and then discover there are no tickets. (Our friends had moved to Cleveland from Grove City some years ago.)
My heart’s desire was to attend this concert with Merle and Cherri, but I couldn’t risk inviting them under the circumstances.
Donn and I went to Gove City, ate at Eat ‘n Park, and left before 6:00 p.m. to go to Crawford Auditorium. There weren’t many people there yet, and we got a good parking space. Donn went up to stand outside the building until the doors opened. When he discovered the outer doors were already open, he came to the car to get me.
When we entered the building, we were first in line for tickets, and then first in line at the inner doors. I struck up a conversation with the usher when suddenly someone hugged me from behind and said, “Well, look who’s here!”
The voice was familiar but surely it couldn’t be… To my astonishment, I turned around to see Cherri standing behind me!
“Oh my goodness,” I said. “I can’t believe it! I wanted to call and tell you about this concert because I know you love Andrew Peterson, but we weren’t sure we could get tickets!”
Long story short, the McAnallen’s were in Grove City to visit family that weekend and knew about the concert. Seating at the concert was “first come, first served,” so we were able to sit with them and another couple from the small group that used to meet in their home. What a complete and total blessing.
As I read the scriptures and devotionals the next day about desires of our hearts, I realized God had known the desire of my heart was to enjoy that Andrew Peterson concert with Cherri and Merle. In spite of the fact that the concert eventually sold out, we both arrived at the right time so that we could connect and sit together. Very unlikely in the natural, but not difficult for the Ruler of the Universe, who is intent on giving us the desires of our hearts!
Heavenly Father, thank you that you see our hearts and delight in giving us our heart’s desires when above all else, we delight ourselves in you. Amen.
Me and Cherri McAnallen