My Heart's Desire Part 1
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A Healthy Heart
A Healthy Heart
Have you noticed how many hopeless people there are all around you these days? Have you noticed that hopelessness is the mood of the masses? People of all ages, all walks of life, all over the world are living in what seems to be great days of hopelessness. People have lost hope in the economy, government, family, marriages, and mankind as a whole.
How did we get here in this place of international despair? How does one lose such hope?
It is evident that as a nation we have cast out, not only God from every pillar of society, but also any sense of absolute moral truth. Even the church has made Christianity about being happy instead of holy. Proverbs 29:18 declares:
Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
The word vision is hazon חָזוֹן meaning divine instruction. So, in the absence of God’s instructions the people cast off all restraint and become lawless. Without the restraints of God’s ethical standards of righteousness, yezer hara יֵצֶר הַרַע becomes the dominant response of man and depravity becomes the norm. But blessed (‘esher אֶשֶׁר joyful, at peace, and increasing) is the man who keeps the Law of the Lord. This is why the Psalmist states:
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
So, why do even professing Christians seem to lose hope? After the death of Christ, the disciples had lost hope. In fact, they were in hiding behind locked doors.
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
You would think that a resurrected Jesus would be enough to give people hope in the face of anything. But Proverbs 13:13 tells us:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
When you have gone so long without something that the heart desires and longs for, the soul becomes sickened. But there is a difference between what the flesh desires and what the soul was created to long for.
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
The flesh will always pervert what the heart was designed to desire. And when flesh drives desire, the soul is lost and hopelessness ensues.
Often we exclaim Psalm 37:4:
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Yet, so many who know this verse still feel hopeless in life. We so often equate the desires of the heart with us alone negating the giver who is the Lord and the responsibility of delighting in Him alone. What kind of desires indeed would the Lord God Almighty give? And to delight in Him alone would seemingly bring us to a place of absolute contentment if He is our sole (soul) source. If we were truly delighted in Him alone, we would have desire for nothing more. He alone would be enough.
This is the case in a covenant marriage. I delight myself in my beloved. She is mine and I am hers. She is enough and I desire to never say or do anything that would make her feel any less than enough for our marriage to last forever. The same is with my children. Because I love them and they are gifts from God. They are enough. They need not have to become anything more in order to be my children and receive my love. I delight myself in them as they delight themselves in the Lord. My prayer is then, that they would reciprocate this love to the God of their Fathers and He too would remain their God forever.
The Psalmist put it this way in Psalms 39:7:
“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.
Hope is the Hebrew word toheleth תּוֹחֶלֶת meaning expectation. Deferred of course means to be cut off or delayed for a long period of time. And it makes ill, discouraged, disillusioned, weakened or discontent the heart (levav לֵבָב the inner man) or soul of man. But a desire (ta’awah תַּאֲוָה - an appetite of the soul; that which the soul delights in) is like a tree of life.
In Genesis man was given many trees throughout the Garden of Eden. But only one was forbidden that would bring eternal death. Yet, another was provided that would give eternal life. In time they desired and took from many trees except these two. Until a voice of discontentment grew. It stirred a different desire within them. And so, instead of taking from life at the hand of God, they sought a life from the hands of another. In the end, their souls were sickened.
There is only one “Tree of Life”. And any desire for any tree other than Him who is the Christ will lead to a sickened soul. Only He can keep hope alive and faith un-deferred.
In John 5, there is a man whose hope is all but lost forever. His despair has gripped him for so long that he no longer even makes the effort.
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.
In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”
The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”
And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.
We see here that the feast at hand was Passover. This Sheep Gate was a gate built where sheep would be brought into the Temple. These were not just any sheep. These were sheep to be used as sacrifice in the Temple. This pool is called the pool of five porches because of the five roofs covering each section. The pool has another name which is Bethesda which means House of Mercy. It was also a mikveh, a place of ceremonial cleansing for the sacrificial sheep for the Temple.
At this pool lay a multitude of hopeless people all awaiting the stirring of the waters. But the Greeks and Hellenistic Jews had built an additional pool onto the others and named it after the Greek god of healing, Asclepius. The angel, or spiritual being, that would stir the waters was not of God but instead was a demonic spirit. They would wait for the water to be stirred and only the first one in was healed. It is against God’s nature to run a healing lottery.
But Jesus asks this man if he desired to be healed. And instead of answering Jesus, the man gives Him excuses and blame for his hopeless situation. This man had done this for thirty-eight years. How long do we go making excuses and blaming others for our hopelessness? How long do we sit at the pool watching the water and hoping God would change our situation?
Jesus did not even make time for the man’s excuses or blame-shifting. Instead, He offers the man a command, “Get up. Take up your the very thing that you have clung to in your despair and walk (halak הָלַךְ) change the way you are living.”
What desires are lingering in your heart today? Are they deferred desires that were from your flesh or are they desires that were given to your heart by the giver of all good things?
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Ask God today to remove the deferred desires and give you the desires of His heart.
The hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.
The desire of the righteous ends only in good, the expectation of the wicked in wrath.