Are We Promised the Fulfillment of Our Desires?

I read a post the other day that said, “If God has called you to write, he will see you through. He doesn’t stir a desire in you to leave it unfulfilled.” Right up to that point, the post had been a nice encouragement for me and where I am in my writing journey, but then I ran into that and sighed. Because it’s a huge theological misunderstanding that seems so prevalent in American Christianity today (possibly other areas of the world, but I doubt very much that Christians who are being actively persecuted for Christ’s sake are plagued with it.)

American Christians seem to cling to the idea that Psalm 37:4 (“Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”) promises them that God wants them to be happy and have their desires. But what God wants–and what this verse confirms that He wants–is a relationship with us. The tendency seems to be to throw away the first part of the verse (“Take delight in the Lord”) and just hold on to the second where God gives us the desires of our hearts. But we simply can’t do that.

All this verse promises us is that if we seek relationship with God–if that is our desire–then God will meet us and be in relationship with us. Because if we’re delighting in the Lord, then our desire is going to be for Him. We’re going to crave that relationship with Him above all else. We’ll be seeking first the Kingdom.

“But Elizabeth,” you might be saying, “the post’s author has a big IF in front of that idea of God giving us our desires. It presupposes that our desire is something God-given. If the desire is from God, then surely He’s going to fulfill it.”

And while that’s less off than those who would say, “Oh, I desire wealth, health, and happiness and God’s going to give it to me because of Psalm 37:4.” I believe it’s still off. Here’s why: first and foremost, God calls us to follow Him wherever He leads. And when we are faithful to do that, the only thing we’re promised is that He’ll be with us. If God called you to write, He’ll be with you on your journey. It may be a journey of rejection after rejection after rejection. It may never be a journey of success as defined by the world (publication, big advances, New York Times Bestseller list, Christy awards, etc.), but it’ll be successful because you’re being faithful to His call to follow Him where He is leading. No matter what God calls you to do, He’ll walk with you and equip you to fulfill His purpose. That doesn’t mean you won’t encounter trouble and trial (in fact, I’d suggest that the more closely and actively you focus on His calling and His purposes, the more trouble and trial you’ll find – because Satan likes nothing better than to try and thwart Christians making a difference for Christ.) But here’s the hard part to wrap our brains around: God’s purpose may not be what we consider success.

His purpose will always be to bring glory to Himself and make His name known. And therefore, that should always be our purpose – no matter what we do in life, we should do it all as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:17) – if we fail miserably at an earthly task, we fail as unto the Lord, because His glory is all we seek and our faithfulness to His calling is foremost — and then in our failures, we’ve really succeeded. Your desires may go unfulfilled. You may feel you’re not making any strides in successful completion of your calling, but take heart, because if you are seeking God and doing everything you do with the ultimate goal of giving Him glory, then you can’t fail. Not in His eyes. And really, isn’t that the only measuring stick that matters?