Live Free with Josh Howerton - The Result of Delighting in the Lord | Ep. 125 | Friday July 28, 2023

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Ready to uncover the true secret to aligning your desires with God's will? Join us as Pastor Mike continues in Psalm 37, discussing the importance of trusting in the Lord and delighting in Him. Learn how prioritizing our relationship with God can lead to the fulfillment of our deepest desires. Discover the joy and meaning that comes from truly delighting in the Lord and experiencing a more satisfying life. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. Church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. A welcome to the Daily Drive podcast where no matter what mile marker you might be on in this journey of walking with God, he is thrilled that you want to start walking with him. And I'm grateful I get to hang with you for just a few minutes together as we try to get to know him better. My name is Mike Bro, and we have been talking in recent days about hearing from God and looking to him for guidance.

And we've been saying that our role is not so much to find God's will, but to follow his voice. You know, too often we want a blueprint of our life plan asking God, which school, which career path? Is it him? Is it her? Is a job option A or B? Where do you want me to live? And God says, I really will lead you. I really want to. I really do have a great plan for your life. And as you wait for some direction, just know that I will lead you every day in the little things down the right path. And that will make a difference where you currently are and bring deep satisfaction to your soul. We've been camping in a passage from Psalm 37 written by a guy who had to wait for God to unfold his plan for his life.

So let me just read it again today. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in him and he will do it. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Now, if you're like me,

verse four kind of jumps off the page where it said delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart i mean some of you hear that and think okay now we're talking now we're finally getting somewhere with this whole god's will thing forget that following god's still small voice stuff forget that character junk forget about that god working in the dark principle that sounds like there might be a little suffering involved in that finally we're getting somewhere with this hearing from god thing god finally spoke to me in the this podcast. He's going to give me the desires of my heart. And God, you've already got my long list of desires. So, God, just bring them on. Did you notice that there are two parts to this first?

There's a part A and a part B. The part A is, delight yourself on the Lord. Part B, and he will give you the desires of your heart. You see, we want to jump the B and say, Lord, give me the desires of my heart, and I will be delighted. And you know what? God wants to give you the desires of your heart. He really does. Remember, he has a plan for you that includes a hope of the future. He wants to help you clarify your passions and make sure that they are healthy and good desires for your life. He wants to do that. He promises to do that. But this is a conditional promise. It is conditional on Part A of the verse. If you and I will make the primary passion of our lives, to walk with God, to trust his better wisdom, his deeper love, is better view, and to make him our primary delight, to know him,

pursue him, build a relationship with him, open our lives to him, listen to him, obey him in the little things, trusting his goodness and wisdom, if we will make him the delight of our hearts, then he will give us the desires of our hearts. Now, I've been learning that delighting myself and the Lord is to be saying, God, my one desires you. Delighting myself in the Lord of sin, Father, clarified the desires of my heart, because I'm not even sure what they are. I mean, I think I know what my passions are, but God, I give you permission to rearrange all the desires of my heart if you need to. Delighting myself and the Lord is saying, Lord, what are the desires of your heart? Delighting myself and the Lord of sin. I just want your desires and my desires

to match up. And I'm just telling you doing that, man, it gives you freedom from all the stewing, and spewing and stressing out about here or there, him or her, this job or that job, because our delight, our focus is on him. And when our focus is on him, our passions start to match up with his, and he starts to lead us into some pretty cool, deeply satisfying adventures that are even better than what we thought we wanted in the first place. Now, I don't know about you, but I used to run all kinds of things thinking they would satisfy the desires of my heart. I would think, now that, that would be delightful.

I want this, yep, that'll work, and that too, and that too. And they all left me pretty empty. Things I thought, I really want it. There's a pretty poignant verse in Jeremiah 2 that accurately describes what many of us have spent too much time doing. This is God speaking. He says this. Jeremiah 2, verse 13, my people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Here's God saying, instead of coming to me first, the source of living water, they ran out on their own. pursuing their own passions, digging through the world to find something that would quench their thirst for more,

and they found out the cisterns they dug wouldn't even hold water. You know, listen, God created you and me to be empty, if we're filled up with anything but him. So he says, I want to give you the desire of your heart, I really do. But come to me first. Seek me first so you won't be looking for people in places and jobs and things to fill you up and satisfy you. It'll never happen. Before I ever tell you where to go, I want you to come. Come to me. Remember what we said in week one? God longs for us to desire him, more than just his

answers for our life? I mean, God don't want to play like spiritual traffic cop for you and me. It disappoints him when we just kind of whizz through the intersection of our life asking this way or that way. Thanks a lot, buddy. Wish I could say long. Got to go. He doesn't want us treating him like some sort of database on the laptop, where we log on and scroll down for an answer, grab the answer, and run out of his presence. Louis Giglio really helps shape my thinking on all this about 25 years ago. And he says this, the great danger we've always faced is the danger of being incredibly dependent on God when we need an answer

and then becoming amazingly independent once he gives it to us. God says, I long to be your father, your Abba, your daddy. And like all good dads, I want to give you good gifts. But what I desire more than anything else is for my kids? is for them to want to have a real relationship with me. I long for you to come to me and want to talk with me and hang out with me and listen to me and trust me and depend on me and be in my word and worship me and love me.

And I'll say it again because the key to learning is repetition. God's will above anything else in your life and mine is that you and I come to know Him through Jesus Christ and that we fall in love with Him in a daily relationship and that we walk with him every moment of our lives. That's it. That's why we were created in the first place, and that is God's will for your life.

So again today, just walk humbly with him, enjoy his presence, and delight yourself on him, because I'm telling you, he sure does delight in you. Have a great day, man. See you next time. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship,

join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out. For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.com.com. Church slash daily drive.