The desires of my heart.

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:4 (New International Version)

A while back the Lord dealt with me about that passage. It was as if He were saying He would delight in showering me with His favor, and I was to begin to speak openly and specifically about the things that would be 

        (a) in line with His character and will for my life and 

        (b) things that would bring me delight.

Being very resistant to the kind of Theology that promotes "name it and claim it" I was very cautious. I have tried to keep the desires list to things I could rationalize as "ministry tools" or some other spiritual use. It began with a new computer. My old Mac G3 was feeling a little sluggish next to the G4's and G5's, so I asked the Lord to provide a way to get an new machine. 3 weeks later I walked out of the Apple Store with the top-of-the-line PowerBook G4 on which I am writing this. It IS a ministry tool, as I use it for study, church management and last week (when the Mac G5 we use for projecting elements of our services had problems) we drove the tech aspects of our service with it.

There have been other things, but the latest was today. 

Our church parking lot is badly pocked with potholes to the point of embarrassment. We priced out a total resurfacing: about $10,000.  No way we could squeeze that out of our limited budget.  It became one of those back-burner, low priority wishes, but I added it to the desires of my heart list.  Today I heard commotion and looked out the office window. We are located on a divided highway, with two lanes in each direction, and the two lanes closest to our entry were covered with huge trucks and workmen. I walked out to see what was going on and learned that they were doing some kind of paving patch job by ripping up a lane at a time and resurfacing it. I spoke to the crew and asked how long they would be working there (two days) and made sure they would leave a clear entrance and exit for people coming for appointments at the church. I went and unlocked the restrooms for the workmen, and told the supervisor. He shook my hand, said "Thanks Pastor. Praise the Lord." I joked with him, "When I first looked out the window, I got all excited… I thought somebody was here to pave my parking lot!"  As I started to walk away, he said "Hey, Pastor; when we finish this afternoon, if we have material left-over at the end of the day, would it be okay if we dumped it on the parking lot and patched the holes? Otherwise we'll have to haul it to the landfill."  I told him if he did that, he'd be my very best friend in the whole wide world -- today.  When they completed the lane they were working on, this huge truck backed in our lot and dumped a load of hot asphalt… guys starting spreading it around and then a guy on a big asphalt roller smoothed it all out, leaving a huge problem area of our parking lot smooth and pothole free! 

The supervisor came by and shook my hand before he left, thanking ME for the hospitality (??) and asked if they could park their big trucks and equipment in the lot overnight. Of COURSE they could!  As he left, he said they would repeat the process tomorrow, using their left-over materials to patch the lot.

God is amazing and awesome. The desires of my heart.