How do you know if Christ is your desire? At the beginning of this series we looked at how and why God is so interested in the heart. Our heart is responsible for deciding what is most important to us. Whatever is most important to us becomes the object of our worship. We mould our lives around it, we talk about it, write about it, listen to it, play with it, learn from it and do everything we can to see to manifest it in our lives.

Whatever we worship satisfies us. That’s why we worship it! We would never worship something or someone who does not satisfy us.

To make Christ your desire simply means to find your satisfaction in Him. In other words, in your relationship with Jesus you are completely happy and you find joy in Him. This means that YOU GET everything you need to be satisfied in life, from God.

It does not mean giving everything up and trying to live as best as you possibly can. Doing everything you can to serve in the church, pray every morning and read your bible. It means that YOU GET everything you desire that makes you satisfied from God. Does this sound selfish? YES! We has human beings are driven by our desires. What we want and makes us satisfied!!

Seeking to be satisfied in God means to pursue God. To make His will our will, to let Him and His will become the very thing that brings us joy. Our joy needs to come from Him. Our ‘wants’ need to be directed by Him.

To have joy as a Christian is not optional. Without joy we cannot worship because we worship what brings us joy. No one worships what does not bring us joy!

The chorus ‘As the deer pants for the water oh my soul longs for you…’ has profound wisdom. What does the deer do for the stream? Nothing!! It does not serve it, it does not help it, make it better. It simply drinks from it and it is satisfied and renewed. (Excerpt from John Piper sermon)

Come to God to gain satisfaction like the deer pants for the water. Drink enthusiastically so that your can satisfy your thirst. God wants to satisfy your hunger and thirst he says so in the beatitudes:

Matthew 5: 6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

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Stop for a moment! Find a way to block out the distractions for the next five minutes. Today we are going to use our imagination.

I want you to imagine your heart as a big storage room. A place where you hold everything and everyone most dear to you. As you walk through the front door there is a TV that is playing back all the good memories with old friends and family. You love to reminisce about these times, they bring you so much joy. That why you store them here, its where they are the safest. Nobody else can take these beautiful memories from you.

As you walk further in you trip over a book that is filled with all the life lessons you have learnt. Not the stuff you learnt at school, that information is housed in the brain. These lessons are more important. They remind you who you can trust, how life works and that sometimes you have to look out for yourself. They record everything in the most incredible detail. Ready for retrieval at anytime.

The room is filled with a mist which makes it hard to see everything clearly. The mist wasn’t this heavy last time you were here, it seems to get thicker as you store more stuff in your heart. The mist has a very distinct aroma, but it seems to change from a vengeful stench to a romantic perfume. You begin to realise that this mist that envelopes your memories and lessons is your emotion. That mist that is fed by what you store in your heart. It filters through the cracks in the door of your heart and starts to govern your mind and your actions.

The decisions you make in your heart are stronger than the decisions you make in your mind. The decisions you make in your heart have a stronger foundation than those in your mind.They are more personal and they have emotional attachments that cannot be shaken.

That is why God is so interested in your heart! He knows what goes on in your heart is more important than what goes on in your mind. He understands that your heart governs your life.Thats why Jesus says in Matthew 15: 8-9

‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’

Jesus is speaking about the Pharisees and how he sees that their hearts our governed by selfish ambition to be the most Godly person. Jesus says they worship in vain because their hearts are centered on themselves.

We are going into a series on worshipping God over the next few weeks and I pray that this series will challenge you to focus your hearts on God.
The Pharisees looked like they were doing well at God’s work but God was not interested in their work because the ‘mist’ that surrounded their heart reeked of vain worship.

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1. Knowing that Christ is your desire
2. ‘for me, to live is Christ’
3. When last did your heart beat?