You have given him his heart’s desire, and have not withheld the request of his lips. For You meet him with the blessings of goodness….
-Psalm 21:2-3a
There is a heart posture that God works to cultivate and protect in us. The desires that flow out of that heart are pleasing to Him. The requests that rise to our lips from that heart are agreeable to our gracious Father. He finds it pleasant to answer such prayers. David, the king referred to in Psalm 21, received a testimony from God as being “a man after My own heart” (Acts 13:22). David earnestly sought God, and he was repeatedly willing to be merciful when others cried out that he should take vengeance on his enemies. Yet, David did not condone sin, but dealt severely with evil in the time that he reigned. Ultimately, God was pleased with David’s heart, because it resembled His.
But this begs the question, how did David have a heart that resembled the heart of God? I believe the answer is in the psalms, where we see David over and over again running to the Lord as His only strength, hope, and refuge. And in that place, he would pour out his own heart and bear his own soul. An invisible transaction took place in his heart-to-hearts with God. By means of exposure, the heart of Christ began to be imprinted upon the heart of this man.
What ought to be more stunning is that the same is available to any of us today. In Jesus, we have full access to the heart of God, full acceptance to come into His presence, baring our souls, and pouring out our hearts. Because Jesus is fully God, He is the flawless expression of the heart of God. Because He is fully man, we have hope of being like He is! We are told repeatedly in scripture that we are “in Christ”; we are exhorted to “abide in Him,” to keep existing in fellowship with Him. That is where we all have the freedom to become men and women after God’s own heart.
When we come in a posture of surrender, of worship, of yielding to the King of Kings, He can move any mountain and remove any weight from our hearts. It comes by exchange; we pour out our hearts, and He pours in His own. But we should not pour out our hearts if we are determined to pick it all back up again, if we have no intention of leaving it in His hands. Jesus will sift through the content, remove that which does not please Him, and replace it with His own goodness!
And that is why David writes, “For You meet him with the blessings of goodness.” Every time we meet with God, it is an encounter with true Goodness manifested to our hearts. We should fully expect to touch purity, loveliness, holiness, truth, to taste and see that the Lord is good when we go to pray. Solomon made a shocking statement in Ecclesiastes 6:3. “If a man begets a hundred children and lives many years…but his soul is not satisfied with goodness…I say that a stillborn child is better than he.” In other words, even the fullest life by every earthly measure is worthless without tasting and seeing the goodness of God. God forbid that we would go through this life and miss the whole purpose of it. Lord forbid that we would ignore the Lord who bought us, the very Person by whom and for whom we were made!
Jesus, You are God, and You are the goodness of God. Take the content of my heart and conform it to be more and more aligned with Yours. Bring me to the place where we can interact heart to heart, where my heart can be transformed by Yours. Bring me to the place where all “the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart [are] acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).
-Pastor Alex
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