Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need (Matthew 6:33, New Living Translation).
When God wants to speak to you, He will confirm His words that are in the Holy Scriptures to you from various sources to make sure you are listening – well. The scripture text in Matthew 6, the 33rd verse has been one of those scriptures that the Lord has been sending to my heart and mind through music, meditation or through the spoken word. So it was no surprise that the word of the Lord came back around again this week through a pastor I met at a chapel service I attended on Friday and through my own pastor, Bishop Walter S. Thomas, Sr., of New Psalmist Baptist Church on this past Sunday. I thank God I was listening and God spoke more deeply to me about the verse’s meaning in the context of “desires or wants”. Let me tell you what I heard.
One pastor told a group of us that we need to write down a “desire inventory” – make a checklist of all of our desires so we can call them out of our head and put them on paper to really see what is motivating our behavior, decisions and choices. I perked up when I heard about writing down an inventory about desires because I had been praying to the Lord about a long-standing desire for something that had not come to pass yet. Interestingly, even after crying about the “desire” I had for something that is good – I realized that that my heart was not quite right about my response to the Lord about it. This pastor exhorted us that sometimes we have “conflicting desires” – both are good, but one is better. He admonished that we should pray about our desires so the Lord can to remove those desires that are not a part of His divine plan for our lives. God also has desires for us and His desires are good, right and best for us. The pastor mentioned Proverbs 10:3 in his lesson, “The LORD will not let the godly go hungry, but he refuses to satisfy the craving of the wicked.”
The other pastor, my pastor, Bishop Thomas, was teaching from Matthew 6: 33, “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (when doing a bible search on this scripture, I found Proverbs 10:3 as a companion scripture to the Matthew text). As my pastor is speaking, he stops and makes a turn in his teaching midstream. He then said, “Let me tell you something – I am careful about praying and asking too much for my wants. Our wants can take us somewhere we don’t need to go. We can even through the Laws of attraction, attract some people to our wants that are eventually, not good for us” (paraphrase). The whole time I’m listening, I’m repenting because I had just written down my desire inventory, Friday night.
When I heard Bishop Thomas’ words, I knew the Lord was speaking to me about giving all of my desires to Him and allowing Him to purify my heart so I can see the wrong response to Him about my desires. I needed to understand that God is aware of my desires but wants me to seek Him and live a righteous life more than obtaining all of the “wants, desires and wishes” I had in my heart. Right then, I decided to give my desires to the Lord “for safekeeping” – to allow Him to tell me which ones I should keep, which ones I should give up and to wait for the ones He wants to give me at the right time. I must admit, that I needed to do a spiritual inventory to make sure I want the Lord more than all of these “wants”. I do not want any desire in my life that is not the Lord’s will.
There is something else I gained as well in the lesson of the desire inventory and “want list”: whenever my desires are overshadowing the Lord, I am placing what I want above Him (that is the sin of idolatry). God is not going to satisfy our evil desires that will ruin us! I also do not have to continue to beg my heavenly Father who loves me and is always good to me, giving me what I need and many of the desires I prayed about for more “wants” all the time. He knows what I need when I need. He knows what I can handle. He knows best. Bishop Thomas also said, “God is not a means to an end”. Wow! That jumped right out to me. I am not serving God so He can give me, give me, and give me. I received a big correction in that alone – “Yeah, Lord, I love you when I am not getting everything I want or desire”, I declare.
Matthew 6:33 reminds us that God knows our desires. If they are good, He will give them to us at the right time for His purpose. If they are not good, they should be taken away from us and given to Him in surrender. He is all we need in this life and if we seek Him, love Him, serve and obey Him, He will give us only the good things that a loving heavenly Father would give to His children.
Comments