Saturday, February 25, 2006

I Though It Meant Money and Cars…

Did you ever sing along to a song you really liked on the radio only to have someone tell you that you were way off on the lyrics? When I was a kid my dad only listened to the “oldies” station all the time, so I knew Motown music, the British Invasion, Rockabilly, and other types of American rock and Roll. One of my dad’s favorite groups was CCR (Credence Clearwater Revival). They have a song called “Bad Moon Rising” that says, “There’s a bad moon on the rise.” Well, as a kid, I always thought he was saying, “There’s a bathroom on the right.” I must have been singing it in the house or something because I remember my parents thinking it was pretty hilarious that I had gotten the lyrics wrong, but to a kid, having a bathroom on the right means more than the knowledge that a bad moon is coming.

I am one of those people who grew up in church, so I have been exposed to the Bible most of my life. I can remember hearing certain verses as a kid and interpreting them with my eight year-old mind only to find out much later that I was way off. One verse that really stuck with me from the early days was Psalm 37:4; which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I can remember working really hard trying to figure out just how to delight myself in the Lord… if I could just do my part, then He would have to give me whatever my heart desired! It was right there in black and white in the Bible! The only problem was that every time I tried to get all happy in Jesus (or whatever that verse meant) I just wound up thinking about what all He would have to give me when I finally was delighted with Him…

I would wake up like on Christmas morning and find a blue Shelby Cobra with white racing stripes sitting in the driveway, and wait a minute… that was a new driveway attached to a really phat house and I would be wearing a brand new pair of Air Jordan’s as I swam through piles of money and climbed over stacks of really valuable comic books to get to our indoor ice-skating rink and skate park. It was going to be awesome!

Well, it turns out that CCR was talking about a bad moon, and I was way off on Psalm 37! See, there have been many times in my life since then that I have been truly… completely, delighted by God… delighted in Him… who He is and how He loves. So far, I still don’t have that car, those shoes or that house, but in those truly joyous moments, the thing I wanted most was more of Him… more of His love. My heart was made by Him for Him and my heart is only truly satisfied when He is all over it. God is the only one who can satisfy a human heart completely and He made us that way on purpose. It turns out that our hearts are most happy when we are happy in Him. So, when you delight yourself in the Lord, He gives you what your heart most desires… Himself.

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