Your Heart’s Desire

“May He grant your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!”

Psalm 20:4

If you grew up in certain church circles or denominations, you may have been taught, ever so discreetly, that you cannot trust your heart. That you are sinful from birth and maybe your heart is not trustworthy. Yes, we can be deceived, but if we continue to believe that post-Jesus, we are still always acting in sin, then we’ve missed the point of the cross. Jesus truly makes us a new creation.

As new creations, He conforms us more and more into His image. As we surrender and trust Him with more and more of our hearts, He heals traumas and wounds and sickness. Through sanctification and the washing of His word, the Lord truly transforms us and who we were B.C. is not the A.D. version of us now. We are set free from our old ways and given new life, new pathways of life, and new hopes and dreams in life. And as we learn to trust God’s heart, we need to learn to trust our own hearts too.

After all the refining fires we’ve been through, what would it look like to believe that the desires of our hearts might actually be God-given, God-dreamed, and dare I say even good and trustworthy to put some hope into? Can you hope for things to come? Can you get your hopes up to heaven and ask the Lord for the desires of your heart? The big things you can barely mention to others in whispers. What if those desires of your truest heart became your fervent prayers?

I have a few desires that burn deep within me, yet I notice that I sometimes hush them, steady them, try not to give them too much attention.

And yet, God’s word says, “May He grant your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!” Can we even begin to step into this hope that God himself longs to fullfill the dreams and desires of our hearts? That those may be His dreams and hopes given to us to fulfill His good plans on this earth? I’m just dipping my toes in this well of possibility today. That maybe we don’t need to hush our dreams so staunchly. Maybe we need to encourage them to grow, through prayer. And maybe the risk of hoping is worth it.

Lord,

you know the desires of our hearts and the plans we dream of. I surrender them to you today, and I ask you to fulfill them. For the glory of your Name and your kingdom, bring them to pass. And if my desires fall out of line of yours for me, then mold them and make them align with your heart for me and my purposes in your kingdom. Above all, keep the greatest desire of my heart to fall more and more in love with you.

In Jesus’ name, amen