“Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4 is one of those verses that is supposed to give you comfort. It’s a verse that I’ve bookmarked, memorized, and passed onto others as an encouragement time and time again. Yet for some reason when it appeared in my inbox as the ‘verse of the day’ recently, I did not feel encouraged, or supported, or any the feelings I would normally associate it with. I felt panic.
It was the last phrase that did it, “the desires of your heart.” That’s all well and good if you know what those desires are. What if you don’t? What then?
To explain, currently I feel like I am on a precipice. Where I’m standing, my footing is secure, my purpose and role is clear. Yet just beyond where I’m standing, is a vast, open space, full of possibilities and opportunities and question marks. The ‘what’s next.’ It spells a new chapter of life where I am no longer my children’s caretaker 24 hours of the day and can rejoin the workforce, volunteer or serve in some other capacity. It’s exciting and exhilarating and it also makes me deathly afraid.
Why am I so afraid? Partly it’s because when I look into the void, I see only blankness. I don’t have a predetermined plan, a goal I am working towards, or a specific role I can visualise myself doing. I see only blankness. If I can’t see ahead, if I don’t know what my desires are for the next stage of my life, I’m worried that I’ll miss it: this Thing that I’m supposed to do next. How can you get from A to B if you don’t know where B is or what it even looks like? How do I get to where I’m going without any signposts?
As humans we all tend to want to know what’s coming next. Spoilers if you will. My little 3 year old loves to go through the list of what we’re doing for the day and after every single item will add, “and then?” From sun up to sun down she likes to know what we’re doing next. The order of things. There’s logic to that. Knowledge gives us security. When we can’t see what’s ahead we can feel restless, like an anchorless boat bobbing out on the waves. For me, not knowing what was next or even what I wanted to do next was terrifying.
Then I came across this passage in Lysa Terkeurst’s book, Uninvited
“abide and delight and dwell in Him, He places within us desires that line up with His best desire for us.” That… ‘He wants our hearts to be in alignment with Him before our hearts set about doing today’s assignment for Him”
Well. This hit me like a ton of bricks. Straight away the emphasis comes off ourselves and onto God. Deciding what’s next is not a task that we have to undertake alone. In fact, we can take the heat off ourselves even further and say that our most pressing job is to rest in the Father. By spending time with Him, He will mould us and shape us and grant us desires that will align with His plans for us – plans that will be infinitely greater than anything we could come up with on our own.
God has not made us to be purposeless, or useless, or lost. Even if we can’t see what’s ahead, He can. He is our anchor when we’re bobbing around in turbulent seas. In the midst of the unknowable, He is all-knowing. All we can do is trust Him with what we can see, like a car whose headlights only uncover one section of the road at a time. Even though we can only see a little bit of the road ahead, we have to keep driving in order to get home. All we can do is trust God with what we can see and keep moving forward, trusting that he will continue to light the way ahead.
Yes it’s scary not to know what’s next. But I feel that God is saying “trust me. I have a plan for you, even if you can’t see all it yet. In the meantime, when you’re doubting your worth or your usefulness or your ‘what’s next,’ come to me. Then I can start to change your heart and create desires in you that reflect me and everything I created you to be.”
Suddenly Psalm 37:4 is no longer scary, but full of hope. The potter knows his clay. The father knows His children, and His plans for us are far far more exciting than anything we can imagine for ourselves.