Finding God's Life For My WillMuestra

Finding God’s life for our wills is like learning to love Chipotle. I never wanted to try Chipotle. I remember when the first one was built in our town, and my sisters would always try to get me to go there. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the taste of the food. I honestly didn’t know what it tasted like. I would not try it—and this is embarrassing to admit—because I didn’t like the way the word sounded. Yup. I was a pronunciation snob. For whatever reason, it bothered me how no one could agree on how to pronounce the word Chipotle. Some people put the “l” before the “t.” They said, “Chi-Pole-Tey!” Other people called it “Chi-pot-el.” I know it’s so stupid, but I was convinced there was no delight waiting for me within that restaurant’s walls. If they couldn’t agree on what it was called, surely, they wouldn’t have the mind power to come up with exquisite tasting cuisine. Then, one day, while home from college on Christmas break, my whole family went there after church, and I was forced to try it. A river of joy came rushing into my life.

What wonders! What glories had eluded me! My taste buds danced and swooned! My heart was enraptured. I was Bill Murray in What About Bob? I cried out in ecstasy. I wept in euphoric bursts of simultaneous wonder and regret that I hadn’t tasted the godly nectar of ethically raised meats and fresh vegetables sooner! It’s still hard to accept all the times I missed out on so much culinary revelation because I arrogantly thought I knew my own taste buds. Chipotle, forgive me! I shut you out before I truly knew you!

From that day until now, I swore to myself my lunch choices would change forever. Just the other day, I drove severely out of the way to experience this fast-food marvel. Isn’t that interesting? My lunch dreams and desires, silly as it sounds, didn’t know what they were hungry for until they experienced what was beautiful and good. 

So it is with our lives before God. The psalmist tells us in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” It’s shocking how quickly some will distort this as a call to strong-arm God. This is not a promise from God to give you whatever you want. It is, however, a promise from God to become what you want.

Notice as you delight in God, just as you delight in anything, that delight will shift what your heart wants more of. Before God gives us what we want, He changes what we want, until He is all we want. He changes our taste buds, spiritually speaking. So before we demand that He give us the desires of our hearts, we do well to first demand our hearts are in line with what He wants. We must hand over our dreams and desires first. We then anticipate as we show Him our dreams, He’ll be faithful to change our dreams. Perhaps we’ll find we didn’t even know what it was we were asking for in the first place.

It’s important here to mention that He not only changes some of our desires, He also gives us the peace to live with unrealized desires. Our patience grows. When we taste and see God, we get better at waiting. Getting a taste of Him gives us new taste buds and makes us snobs in some ways, I suppose. It’s like a pour-over coffee versus a Keurig. Once you’ve tasted the sweet glory of a carefully crafted cup of caffeine, you don’t care how much longer it takes. You will wait for the best over settling for a quick fix.