What Really Matters

Watching the election-year political drama that is unfolding every night on the news reminds me of one thing in particular: our nation and western culture is so affluent that we have lost sight of most of what really matters and have resorted to fighting and name-calling over things that have no eternal value.  Our nation’s “leaders” have no physical needs, but they seem to have some spiritual ones.

This scenario, as well as some recent events in my own personal life, have prompted me to think today about God’s provision for us and how wonderfully he takes care of us.  Of course, most of us think that we are working hard to take care of ourselves; but that is only part of the truth.  Literally every breath we take is dependent on the life that God has breathed into us, so our trust for provision should be in him alone rather than in ourselves.

I saw a reader-board on a church this week that bothered me.  It simply said, “He will give you the desires of your heart.”  This out-of-context quote from Psalm 37:4 changed the entire meaning of the verse.  Here is what the verse actually says: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  You see, the prerequisite for receiving the desires of our heart from God is to “delight” in him, which means to experience great pleasure and joy in his presence.  We only experience great pleasure and joy in the presence of people that we know well, so this is a call to meaningful relationship with God. 

God provides lavishly for those who commit themselves to being in relationship with him (1 Timothy 6:17), but we need to remember that God’s perspective is different than ours.  Because we live in a physical world with tangible needs, we tend to forget that our physical and spiritual selves are intertwined.  While we elevate our physical needs as the most important thing, God is equally interested in our spiritual needs.  From his perspective, the two cannot be separated.  In fact, our deepest needs are actually spiritual rather than physical.  That’s why gaining the physical desires of our heart is tied to our spiritual relationship with God in Psalm 37:4.  God may sometimes allow us to go without some physical thing in order to grow more dependent on him spiritually.  He wants us to learn that he is enough and that we need him more than we need anything else.

How grateful I am that God has revealed his truth to us and allows me to seek out relationship with him every day!  And how grateful I am for the MANY instances in my own life and the lives of my loved ones that God has provided for physical needs – in both miraculous and commonplace ways!  But I am even more grateful that God provides for my spiritual needs and uses my relationship with him to teach me spiritual principles for eternity.  Oh, that more of our so-called “leaders” would truly understand what really matters.