But it’s not very effective, this promise about the desire of the heart if you don’t know what it is. So many people suffer from this basic malaise. What do I want? What does God want me to want? What should I want? And on and on and on.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart. [Psalm 37:4; NIV]
The desire of the heart is serious business. This is core belief and core longing. This is essential to the day and the tomorrow. This desire keeps us going. No cliches will do. We can’t say, “oh, I desire Jesus” and all that. In this context, that is a given. With the Christ IN our hearts, what do we desire?
I have been writing a lot lately and I was sliced at the knees at one of the comments I received from a knowledgeable critic: what does your character really want (whether she knows it or not, you, the author, must know). And there it was, back again. For this issue has been tiptoeing around my soul for years.
The first time I took the enneagram, I was shocked at my results for my “number” indicated I was a bit shallow. How could that be? I always believed myself a thinker, a smart cookie who sought out the deeper things of God, living, and loving. But I had to face some difficult truth, I am really a scattered soul. I have dabbled in so many arenas from acting to photography to writing to library maven to arts management to exercise queen to organizational specialist to prophetess to prayer warrior to church matriarch . . . well, the list goes on. But where is the real desire?
When I did identify a strong desire, one that has done a lot of the driving, it made my blood run cold. It’s a self-serving desire, one that is not compatible with a life in Christ, yet rooted deeply.
My current manuscript, The Saving of Phoebe Clay, will test the depth of this desire and what it can do or not do. It’s time to unmask. For it is only in the unmasking that change can begin.
And in the meantime, as I pull the anchor from this old desire, I may flounder but I will keep this thought as near as I can:
God is our [my] refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we [I] will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging. [Psalm 47:1-3, NIV]
Meditations from Zion 
Although I have forsaken religion as a life modality, I continue to respect it when it functions to banish fear, as in the psalms of David, rather than promote fear as it does for so many “believers”. Desire is a yearning for that which is not, and all too often it is only a barrier to encountering that which is.