Desire, Discipline, Delight part 1

There is this simple process of how God brings us to the place of giving us the things we desire. (It is in His Father’s heart to do this for us.) The process is desire, discipline, and delight. It’s based on Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” Our study this week is about going hard after God and not giving up in our prayers regarding the things we are believing God for.

I read about a Missionary who taught on this principal; he had some powerful testimonies of what happens when we set our faces like a flint and determine to see something come about through our praying. A lot of his message was based on his personal testimony and what God brought him out of. Then I got to thinking about accounts of some friends and their personal stories. 
 

I have a friend who grew up in a home that did not honor Jesus. He says, “We were Christian in name only. I went to church as a young boy, but I never heard that I needed to ask Jesus into my heart in order to be saved.” (If, like me, you grew up in a church like ours, you might have a hard time relating to that. But for far too many Christians, it’s not that unusual. I thank God that the children in our church are learning about what it means to be born-again and how to become born-again.)
 

That same friend went on: “I regularly attended Sunday school, I was confirmed, and did all that my church wanted me to do, but I still did not get any closer to Jesus than when I started. I stopped going as soon as I had the opportunity, so by the time I gave my life to Christ at age 21, I had not attended any church service for nine years. Then, through a series of events, I gave my life to Christ, January 28, 1973. So did the rest of my family. 

Those first days, weeks and months, were very exciting. We had an elder from the church start a home Bible study at our house. We invited our friends to it. Many of them got saved. It was a great time.” 
 

This may not always be true but it seems that when you come out of the world at a later age you have an urgency to get that message out to the masses. We want Jesus glorified in the lives of others (especially those we know) so that they, too, can experience what we just experienced. 

Isaiah the prophet had a similar desire. Isaiah 26:8-9 “Indeed, while following the way of Your judgments, O Lord, We have waited for You eagerly; Your Name, even Your memory, is the desire of our souls. 9 At night my soul longs for You, Indeed, my spirit within me seeks You diligently.” The prophet wanted the Name of the Lord to be exalted. He is telling us, “Who You (God) are and what You’ve done are all we’ll ever want. Through the night my soul longs for You. Deep from within me my spirit reaches out to You.” 

Do you identify with the prophet’s heart? My own desire to see God glorified continued to grow in my younger years – I can’t fully explain that, though. I wanted people to see God high and lifted up. Finally, my desire to see God glorified began to drive me to prayer (I remember my first two-day fast, was when I was about 12 – I had no clue what I was doing except trying to draw closer to God). Desire is the first step in the process of getting what we want. 

Desire, Discipline and Delight complete a cycle – but everything begins with desire. Then we move to discipline and finally delight. 

Desire is the first step towards acquiring the thing that is on your heart. Desire is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep-seated craving; an intense longing for attainment. Desire is an absolute essential toward realization. Desire goes before the request, and by it, it is created and intensified. 

Since we are talking about something we desire from the Lord we are talking about prayer; but desire goes before prayer. Prayer really is the oral expression of the desire of the heart. Prayer comes out in the open desire is silent. The deeper the desire of the heart, the deeper the prayer. 

That is part of what stirred my spirit when I read what Missionary Frank Leonette wrote as he spoke about spending hours at a time in prayer. You could just sense how desire was driving him.   

Continued tomorrow