Surrendered longings!
Verse for Today: Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Psalms 38:9 – All my longings lie open before You, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from You.
We all have our own dreams which we try to accomplish. Some of these are daydreams which will only remain in our imagination because they are meaningless. Human life is a procession of desires and corresponding efforts to fulfill them. Thus life is full of frustrations on the one side and elevated aspirations on the other. But a sure way to aspire and accomplish what God wants in our lives is to bare our longings before Him and wait patiently. When our desires are thus presented to the Lord, He will take it from us and accomplish it for our joy and His glory if it is according to His will. God often works through our desires which He gives to us when we transform our minds to be sensitized to His plans for us. Sometimes when we lay bare our desires to God, there is a long waiting period for its accomplishment as answers to our prayers and sighs. Sometimes we are too early for God’s plan in our lives. But when we wait in prayer, God fulfills His plans for us in our lives. But we must be fully open for God to make the final decision about our longings. If we keep our desires close to our hearts and insist on fulfilling it, it might be allowed in God’s permissive will, but we will have to bear its consequences. But if we wait for God’s perfect will, He will reveal it at the right time and enable us to accomplish it for His glory. God doesn’t expect us to take our future into our own hands, but to submit it to Him to handle it His way. He wants us to have longings for Him and not for our selfish interest. He also has desires for our lives for His name can be glorified through it all. If we are fully His, our desires become His and He will then energize us with His power to accomplish it for His glory.
Dear friend, is there any desire in your heart and life today that is not for God? Do you long to accomplish anything to gratify your selfish ambitions? Are you after position, recognition, comfort, fame and fortune? Are you thinking about schemes to enlarge your worldly desires? Are you not satisfied with what the Lord is giving you on a daily basis? God wants to remind you that all your worldly accomplishments will end here on earth without any eternal impact in your life and the life of people who are linked with you. Interestingly, whether you bare your longings to God or not, He knows it all. So when you tell God about your longing, it is in a way submission of your desire for God to fulfill, redesign or even dismantle it completely. When we give God such freedom and do not take our own initiative, and as we pray for God’s will to be revealed, He will take it, reshape and give it back to us to work on it. Such openness is the mark of a person who fully trusts God to give him the best from heaven. Thus our unfulfilled dreams will not lead us to frustrations, but praise. Today let us examine our lives to see if we are totally open to the choices of the Lord in our lives. Let us lay bare all our desires, priorities, likes, dislikes, aspirations and ambitions and ask Him to rule and overrule all our situations to accomplish only His perfect will in our lives. Let us learn to be contented with what God allows in our lives on a daily basis and praise Him for it all.
Psalms 37:5 – Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this.
Thought for Today
God rules and overrules all our longings if they are laid bare in His presence and left it there.
Prayer for Today
Dear Lord Jesus: Help me to trust You to handle all my desires in life for Your glory. Amen!
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