Not in My Time

"Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass."

~Psalm 37:4-5~

I have read these verses often, thinking that it meant if I trusted God everything that I wanted will happen right away. Makes sense, right? Wrong. The other day I read this entire passage and found something interesting a few verses down.

"Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass."

~Psalm 37:7~

Whoa, whoa, whoa!! Rest in the Lord and WAIT PATIENTLY?! I think something is wrong with that wording, certainly God doesn't expect that from me! But nope, that's right....I'm supposed to delight in God, trust in Him and commit my way to Him right NOW (present tense) and then wait for His right timing (future tense). That's pretty tough and involves constant surrender; two extremely difficult things to do.

I have many things that I want, and often we think what we want is the desire of our heart. That is not necessarily true. Sometimes we want lots of things that aren't good for us, and God knows that we are frail, fallible creatures and in His wisdom He brings along the true desires of our hearts. For illustrations sake, this can easily be related to a parent/child relationship. When I was younger I wanted lots of things that weren't good for me. I wanted candy all the time, but my parents knew that wasn't good for me, so they didn't give it to me. Was I always happy about this? The answer would be a resounding "NO!" But was it the best for me, and really the desire of my heart, yes.

God is not a mean ogre sitting in Heaven taking our plans and wants and throwing them away while He laughs at our misery. Quite the contrary, God can see the big picture of our lives. Out of love He takes and gives things to His children. We may not understand, but He never asked us to understand, only to trust that what He is doing is the best for us and the real desire of our hearts.