Post # 438, Believe It Or Don't!

“4 Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4

I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Look at the order-to delight yourself in the LORD is to submit totally to Him, His Will, and in so doing, the desire of your heart will be met: to please God, to honor Him, to do what He would have you do.
Not your will in His name, not a rubberstamp for anything that comes into your head, or any foolishness you hear preached to you about “Prosperity”. God loves us too much to allow us to run wild in His name. Here’s an example:

“51When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to go to Jerusalem; 52and He sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. 53But they did not receive Him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem. 54When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; 56for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” And they went on to another village.” Luke 9:51-53

James and John had cleansed lepers, healed in the name of Jesus, and felt confident that they could call down fire out of Heaven to singe those who were not respecting their Lord.
This was wrong, and Jesus rebuked them. You can estimate how big a fool a man might become by watching what he does with a little power.

If you have a dream, brother or sister in Christ, which you feel you should be doing, but it never seems to come to fruition…Loved one, you may be wrong. I’ve been wrong. I’ve had dreams of what I thought God wanted me to do…and I had to give up those dreams, as they kept me from actually being obedient to God. There was too much Doug and no Jesus in those plans. And they failed, as they should.
You may believe that God is preparing you for a mighty work…so you go ahead on your assumption instead of inquiring of God what He wants. Maybe He has better plans for you in this world; maybe the better plans await you in the next. Right now is only a short term, a few moments compared to Eternity.
What can we do? As I quoted in the last post: “10 “Cease striving and know that I am God” or, as it is in the better known KJV: “10 Be still, and know that I am God”. Trust that if you make a mess of your life, you have lots of company (we ALL fail!). But God is sure and unchanging, and will get us through the present crisis, just as He always has in the past. We may be humbled, we may lose our pride, we may feel His rebuke as James and John did, but that just makes it easier for God to fix what we break. Praise God for His Love, extended to His children!