Your Heart’s Desire

What is your heart’s desire? Please note that the question is not “what do you THINK you want?” I am asking what your whole being wants, what the real you wants, not the you in the advertising-induced coma who wants what he or she is told to want. To answer the question “what is my heart’s desire?” requires peeling away the layers of conditioning and acculturation that we accumulate over a lifetime which drive our deepest desires into the unconscious where they are mostly forgotten.

Heart is essence, soul, strength of character, the fundamental core of an individual, the vital part. The heart organ sustains life in the body by delivering nutrients and oxygen through the blood it pumps; the heart core of ourselves provides motivation, resolve and inspiration, courage even, so that, if we are directly connected to our heart’s desire, our lives are much more interesting and fulfilling and vital.

So, what do you really want? What is your heart’s desire for your life or in any situation that you are dealing with? To get through the layers of the conditioned you, you may have to ask and ask, again and again: “Is this what I REALLY want?” Once you peel through the layers to the heart’s desire, then the next question is “How can this desire be realized?”

Have clarified what you desire, the most effective way to achieve that desire is to pray for it. Even if the Lord knows everything about us, and that includes our heart’s desires, which were created to help us fulfill the promise of our lives, still we need to pray. First, we must gain clarity about what we want, so we pray to ask God’s help in achieving our deepest desires. Secondly, we pray because we are in relationship with the Lord and prayer is the means of communication. Let’s expand our definition of prayer to include the formal and informal prayers that we are so familiar with and to add communion with the Lord. The spoken prayers really constitute a small part of a close relationship with God; it is during the times that we are in communion with Christ by sitting in his presence that the most effective communication happens.

The degree of closeness to Christ determines how well you “hear” with your heart or the inner ear the answers that God will send. Clearing away the layers of conditioning and acculturation that I wrote about above also opens up avenues of communion with God. So that when you are dealing with the true desires that would captivate you, you are also connecting in some way with the source of communion with God and opening more channels of communication.

Jesus taught this principle of the Life of the Spirit in this way in Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” He continues by pronouncing that God is ready to give wonderful things to you: “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?”[Matthew 7:9-11]

Asking, seeking and knocking imply more than saying, “God, I want this.” There’s a perseverance that is suggested, an implication that we have an active role to play in realizing what we want. To seek means to look in many places, to turn over some rocks, to investigate and do the research. It may even mean to seek training or educational opportunities to prepare for the desire’s realization. It may mean consulting with others who already do this. It may mean also that the Lord must transform some areas within you so that you will be capable of doing what you desire to do. That implies a willingness, an openness to the Lord’s transforming power.

Don’t expect to offer up your prayer and sit passively by while the Lord works his magic. We have an active role to play in achieving that desire. In this way we are working with God to bring something essential to our life in an act of co-creation.