The Joy of Simplicity

“Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart’s desires” (Psalm 37:4).

We love to know that the Lord cares about the desires of our hearts. He is a personable God, and He loves to give good gifts to His children. But we don’t always receive our desires when we want them, and many times, our desires need to be changed because they are not really what’s best for us.

When we delight in the Lord, it means that we lay before Him all that we ask and long for knowing that He is the only one who knows what we really need. We’d like to think we know best, but if we were to receive everything we ever wanted, we’d be in a terrible state. Kids don’t know what’s good for them. We can’t possibly see all the outcomes and how every decision would play out, but our Father does. He’s seen it all.

As we’ve been discussing how prayer through fasting is the avenue to greater and grander spiritual things, one of the reasons why we need to dig deep in prayer and communion with God is so that the Lord can clean up shop. He’s the craftsman—the potter—and we are His clay. If you want to know if the desires of your heart are His desires for you, you can’t clutter His workspace with lists of everything you want. He needs space to work, and He needs a heart that’s malleable, one that’s soft, tender, and pliable. – not one that’s set up, solid, and unyielding.

Not every desire you have may change, but those that need to be reformed by the Lord will begin to be molded into something new.

When we have desires already formed in our hearts that God didn’t place in us, there’s a constant struggle between what we think we want and what God is telling us we need. Fasting simplifies the chaos. It slims the choices. Too often we are overstimulated and overwhelmed, and we don’t even realize it because the enemy has deceived us into thinking it’s normal.

Get back to the basics. Slow it down. Breathe.

While you’re digging deep in the Lord, allow Him to clean out your heart. Let Him get rid of what you don’t need so that you’re not missing out on the joy of simplicity.

Take delight in Him because it makes you light. When His presence is your delight, His desires become your desires, and everything else becomes blank space. White noise. Clear and simple.