For Part 2, click here.
Once I developed
a sincere hunger for God’s Word, it
didn’t take long for that desire to spill over into my struggling prayer life.
I found that the Scriptures God used to speak to me were excellent for praying
back to Him at night and throughout the day. It was amazing. No longer was I
sitting at my desk or on my bed staring blankly at my journal (I write out most
of my prayers) trying to think of something to say to God. Where there had been
many, many days of pitiful little half-hearted “notes” to God were now pages
and pages of heartfelt praise and giving thanks and honest and humble
supplication. A major portion of this supplication was focused on what I had
been going through all this time. My desire for the Lord was returning, but I wanted
more. So, I asked God for it.
It may seem
strange asking God to place a desire in your heart for himself, but if we look
in the Bible, we find that King David, the “man after God’s own heart” asked
God for things like this quite often. My favorite example is Psalm 51:10-13:
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Here, we see
David asking God to renew a “right” spirit within him. Some translations use
the term “steadfast” or “faithful” in the place of “right,” but regardless of
the word used, I this was the cry of my heart -my plea just as much as David’s. I desired God and I wanted that
desire to remain strong. I wanted to be faithful to him and I never wanted to
experience that “cast away” feeling again, but I knew that none of this was
possible without God’s intervening and changing my heart.
I also
considered Matthew 7:7-8 during this time:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.
So, there I was
asking God to give me a pure heart and renew a faithful spirit within me. I was
seeking God in a way I never had before, and do you know what was happening?
God was opening the doors faster than I could walk through them. After months
of wandering around in a spiritual desert, God had led me to an oasis in himself.
I believe God
wants his children to desire him. He wants us to seek him. He wants us to walk
closely with him. I also believe he’s more than happy to give us the sincere
requests of our hearts when they are in alignment with his Word and will (which
will never contradict each other, by the way). All we have to do is ask, seek
and knock and come before him with honesty and humility.
As I attempt to
bring this series to a close, I hope to encourage everyone to continually seek
God even when you don’t feel a desire
for him. Because our human hearts are SO incredibly flawed, we must not fall into the trap of letting
our feelings manipulate whether or not we do what is right. As with any
relationship, sometimes desire requires cultivation –and when it comes to our
relationship with God, the way to do this is through the reading of his Word and
coming before him in prayer. Make these things a habit and they will transform
your life. If you’re going through a spiritual desert they will refresh your
soul and lead to water. If you’re not
in the desert, doing these things will help to keep you from wandering there.
*Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright 2001, Crossway.
***
I hope this series encouraged you in
reading it as it did me in writing it and I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything
I presented.
