I always keep a writing pad in my purse to jot down different things. Sometimes I’m recording bits of stories that pop into my mind. Other times it’s a bible verse or sermon notes to review later. More often than not, it’s to write something down so I don’t forget it. I had quite a bit of time on my hands Friday while at the Dr.’s office and I pulled my pad out to write, but instead found myself reading through it. I couldn’t believe what I found inside: Names and phone numbers of new friends since moving here, business addresses that I frequent and of course a few stories. Nothing too unusual until I got to the very last page where I found a list of nine items that I had written and labeled “My Desires.” I don’t remember when or what precipitated my need for this list, but I do know that when I read these nine items of simple, ordinary run of the mill pleadings from my heart, the realization hit me that in the past few years of my life, God had already fulfilled all nine items on my list. You would have thought that I would have been jumping for joy, raising my hands and dancing, but the thing about desires is this: Even though all of those nine were fulfilled, my heart, my mind and my life are now filled with new ones. Desires never finish - good ones or unhealthy ones. All of us have them racing through our pulses as long as we have breath. Sometimes they are met and other times they linger unfulfilled, but it occurs to me that more often than not, most people have no idea what it truly is that their heart desires. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart [mind] is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” When we don’t take the time to understand God and all the desires and needs that He, himself has put inside of us through desires, dreams and wishes, we go through our lives unfulfilled, not even capable of praying prayers for things that will satisfy us. We skirt around life unhappy and grabbing at things that only tease our thirst, not satisfy it. Why? Because to find what it is that truly satisfies us, is to find the author and maker of satisfaction himself. God, “who satisfies your desires with good things” (Psalm 103:5) is the only one who can fill all of our needs, wants, dreams and desires. In Proverbs 11:23 the writer says, “The desire of the righteous ends only in good, but the hope of the wicked only in wrath.” The one true desire that each of us has, whether we’ve realized it or not, is to know God and to experience his everlasting love.
“He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them” (Psalms 145:19).
Do you know the God who satisfies your desires with good things today?